Suggestions

A big factor in the poor performance of GRU was related to stitching in the connections to Google analytics and the ad delivery engine provided by Orange, the french internet firm who now own the European end of T-Mobile.

GRU was not the only site to have this problem but easily the slowest to sort it out.

Anyway it is utterly predictable that people at a significant distance eg OZ, NZ, Western Canada will have these timeout based hassles on an ongoing base given the current site architecture. (Most international sites serve ads locally avoiding the timeout problem).

A fairly drastic option is to block the web sites in yr router as GRU will then not be able to attempt a connection and the timeout will not happen.

An easier and more civilised option is to go to Google and register for no ads
which will have the same effect. It is now EU and European law that ad web site using tracking ads makes it very up front to users (not buried deep in the T&C) and also offer an ez to find opt out mechanism. GRU along with most UK sites has failed to comply - the regulator has given them all a year with gradually tightening sanctions up to and including taking the site down.

Google opt out is here
http://www.google.com/ads/preferences/plugin/

Other then mega irritating popups and sudden sound ads (a Daily Telegraph favourite) I have no objection to ads UNLESS they kill performance which unfortunately was very much the case with GRU for too long. Mostly now I can let this site show its ads again - they have to make a buck somewhere.

Rollo


only a very slight improvement for me signign in from Canada


I never sign on or off, if I can help it .............


Positive ..........

.......have the Boards Summary page in Bookmarks, and get in within 3 seconds

Open most Boards within 3-5 seconds


Positive and Negative ...........

My Threads now USUALLY (ie about 75% of the time) opens within 20 seconds. Goes to Error Message 25% of the time

Opening Message Centre takes about 10-15 seconds .......... and cannot open more than 2 messages in succession without having to leave and then re-enter the Centre


Negative ...............

Posting a message results in an Error message 8 times out of 10 :-(

Opening Sent Messages is very "iffy"





sylvia

Nuts.

Over the last month connection / login performance from the UK has improved at all times of the day. Currently (no current sign on) I have the home page loaded in 2-3 secs and sign on complete within a further 4 seconds. If there is a current signon (but no gru page loaded) time to load < 5 seconds.

Current platform used for test: Firefox 12.0 Windows XP Pro SP3 Pentium 4 3.0 2 GB memory - i.e. a real old dog. Connection VirginMedia 30 via ethernet cable not wifi.

Errors connecting to boards, old tree etc nil.

I suggest that those who continue to report slow performance / various errors (a) have a careful look at their system setup including what kinds of malware may be running on it and (b) at least report the platform in use. Any version of IE 6 may be considered junk and unfit for purpose.

Given the way the site is constructed despite the performance improvement I would not be at all surprised if members logging in from Oz, NZ, Canada etc or with slow connections (USB, TalkTalk) continued to suffer problems. One sure way to improve on connection in that case is to opt out of google ads.

For instance if I use a USB radio key for access then I do suffer with poor performance and failures. Given that USB radio connections deliver not much over 1 Mb/sec and and suffer lags and dropouts that is hardly surprising. GRU have def improved performance speed but not resilience which is another matter and needs more work.

I have been as savage a critic of GRU performance problems as any over the past 6 months. Now though they are getting on top of this problem .

Progress with the bugs and poor usability, retrograde design decisions etc though is nil.

Timed out 5 timed in 30 minutes.
Can´t get onto page 2 of Ancestors for love or money. Page 3 OK but when I try to move from 1 to 2 or 3 to 2, get taken back to page 1.
How helpful.

"the GR servers / software / or whatever can no longer handle. This is what GR needs to address, and pronto."

absolutely; it is appallingly poor customer service.

"So you are telling me that the fact that GR is now carrying all those records, censuses, etc has not made any difference to the loading of the database???"

Yes, that is correct.

The problem GR have is to do with the size of the member database, which as Rollo has said is not huge compared to other sites, so should not be an issue, but, like it or nor, the GR servers / software / or whatever can no longer handle. This is what GR needs to address, and pronto.

It is a total fallacy to say that the site performance has gone down due to issues of the size of the database, in particular adding the census records. As things go the GRU member database and threads database are not especially large. Neither is the census database.

The technology involved compared to, say, FB or Skype, is trivial. Ay is a massively bigger operation with many databases, allows member complex multimedia trees but it has few performance problems. Come to that other BS products work fine.

In any case for Bright Solid the whole business case for taking on GRU was in selling census database to GRU members.

Around 1990 I was systems architect for a database that grew at a rate of 20-30 million items / day and extraction was required within 30 secs for items < 14 days old and a few minutes thereafter. No, we didn't use Windows.

GRU performance problems started with a poorly carried out move of the servers from London to Dundee. This was exacerbated with the installation of ad tracking technology. As far as I can tell the performance problems appear mostly to have been fixed.

The main exception seems to be saved threads for members with a lot of threads. As this used to work perfectly well when there was far more board activity then now and more people with large thread stores it looks like the team have broken the code rather than there being any particular problem relating to database size.

Estelle says the team are very busy. Well they have nice new offices in Shoreditch but heaven knows what they do there. There are a large number of well known and serious outstanding bugs in the core product for most members, the tree, and no progress at all in fixing them.

I myself am mystified at the changes.

1. even if they worked properly there is no extra functionality, indeed the new tree has gone backwards
2. The usability of all aspects of the changes has degraded the product not improved it e.g. the daft not to say raving mad way that messages and contacts are now handled.
3. Ten years ago paying members were prepared to be quite indulgent with site bugs. That is very much not the case any more.

When online FH became possible there was a huge pent up demand for access to data and several companies grew very quickly. Now many people have largely complete their trees and new people are picking up the hobby at a much slower rate as by and large it does not appeal to the young. Moreover people are having to tighten their budgets. Accordingly in order to retain members and attract new ones it is pretty d. obvious that a quality product which worked is needed. GRU as at Nov 2011 fitted the bill.

If BrightSolid intended to keep GRU alive then one might expect the bugs to be fixed as a matter of some urgency.

FWIW the US version of the product
http://www.censusrecords.com
has the US census records and that's it, pure n simple.
Not even a tree ...
BTW this was the hugely innovative product at the centre of BS sponsorship of this year's TechWeb conference / trade show.

:-(

IGP ................

"neither are members who do decide to subscribe now directed to 'other sites' as Estelle has said previously. "

I very carefully did NOT say that members now were directed to off-site records!

I said "the powers that be decided in 2007 that GR should carry records ............. or to be more precise, IN THOSE EARLY DAYS to facilitate access to records on other sites."


So you are telling me that the fact that GR is now carrying all those records, censuses, etc has not made any difference to the loading of the database???


Even my little mind tells me that those records do occupy space, possibly much space, on the server!



I have said many, many times that I do NOT use the tree facility.


I do have a tree on here, with about 130 names. It has not been updated in at least 2 years.

I occasionally open it to look for a specific name ................... the last time I did that was just after the new tree was instituted, because I wanted to see what it was like! I didn't like it.



Now, that is something I have said many times ........ and you have probably read it, but forgotten.


Nor do I ever access the records on here.


I do however acknowledge that I am unusual in not using the tree ...... but I do appreciate that there are major problems, and that many people are as frustrated with that as I am with the non-functioning of the Community Boards.


It might help if YOU could appreciate the reverse!

That people are frustrated with aspects of this site that either work for you or which you do not use.


The main, if not only, reason I stick with GR is the Community Boards ................. both for contact with the friends I have made, and the fun I get from helping others.


I now have contact with most of those friends elsewhere, and the fun is rapidly disappearing, or being overtaken by the frustration I experience every day.




sylvia

Sylvia, the addition of access to historical records, such as the census, BMD records etc isn't the cause of the site's performance problems, neither are members who do decide to subscribe now directed to 'other sites' as Estelle has said previously.

The reality is that performance problems are caused because of the amount of data added by members over the 10 or so years that the site has been running.

In particular, it relates to the amount of data that is connected or related to an individual member. So if you have a large tree, or have many thread postings, then you are likely to get a timeout error whenever you try to access or sort your attached records.

The same problem is likely to affect anything that has in excess of around ten thousand records involved with the action you re trying to perform.

Yes, GR need to sort but isn't an overnight fix,

The Tree Building program is another issue altogether. GR decided to replace the old version but the new one has programing bugs, so it doesn't work exactly as it should, and, probably, should not have been released when it was.

For those of us that use it just to view other trees it is fine, but I can see that manually inputting data can perhaps be problematical at times.

Sylvia, do you actually use the tree program on a regular basis? And, if so, what problems have you experienced?

IMHO .......



the greatest value of GR was the free tree building program that was lauded by other sites as one of the best free programmes available on any site, and still is the Community Board section .....................this is how GR made its name prior to 2007.

I doubt that the tree programme is lauded now!!


The value of the help given by members to members is priceless, and is really not available on any other subscriber genealogy site.


However, the powers that be decided in 2007 that GR should carry records ............. or to be more precise, in those early days to facilitate access to records on other sites.

Why pay to access an Index to a bmd, when more detail is available for free on freebmd? Yet that is what was happening, and still is so far as I know?


We are often told now that the problems are due to the enormous database ......... a database that includes the records as well as member activities such as trees and threads.



My suggestion would be to do away with ALL the records, and return to the site as it was prior to 2007 ..........................

................ a site with an excellent tree building programme, and access to the Community Boards for a small fee.


Otherwise, GR is just going to continue to deteriorate ........ new members will surely be attracted as a result of advertising and the TV programmes. But they won't stay long as they discover the unsolved problems.


And old members are already leaving in droves ................. their patience exhausted after months of trying to work through the problems and fed-up of promises not kept.



sylvia

Sing along.......

There were ten purple error messages hanging on the wall............

etc


etc


If one purple error message should accidentally fall...........

:-D :-D :-D :-D :-D

Well said Rollo

I have basic membership because I don't need any records available at GR. Most of my lang deid yins are Scottish.

I believe the GR records are mainly English. Not much use to me (one of my 5x great-grandfathers was born in Halsowen in 1732, but he moved to Falkirk).

Let's see if I can submit this without getting a horrible purple error message :-D

Over the last few weeks I only rarely get any of these error messages and never the sign in again problems.

For months I found that log in time was far too long at 40-60 seconds. It is now under 10 seconds.

I use a variety of computers and operating systems not the same one all the time. I never use IE any version or iOS.

I would like to see them fix the bugs and poor functionality which have been outstanding for months.

In no particular order:

print not working
photo upload not working
photo display implementation rubbish on new tree
maps missing from new tree
new tree search names, select one, nothing happens ...
middle initial missing on tree display
contacts a total mess
search function inc "advanced" an omnishambles
slider gadget is not fit for purpose - the old split screen layout is far better
no support for overlapping parts of tree - cousin, 2nd cousin marriages etc
very poor editing facility for moving a branch of a tree
non existent county names eg AVON
horrible colors and flock wallpaper so 70s - these can be overridden with GreaseMonkey addon if you use Firefox

Though it would no doubt enrage many of those that post here (though few in number overall) I would be perfectly happen if the community function was transferred en block to FB & Twitter.

Given the very small percentage of the claimed membership who use the boards and the scarce developer resources of the team devoting sig dev resources to the boards does not seem to be the greatest commercial decision.

The gap between GRU and Ay is now so big that GRU need to think about their business model. Right now it is focused on selling access to the census databases. How many people here have a membership grade beyond basic ?

Anyway so long as I don't have to use the new tree and can sign on quickly I'm ok.
:-D

had to sign in again, after being off site for about an hour :-|

just had to sign in ..................


but I had not signed out 2 hours ago!

I got on to the site 20 minutes ago.

Message for me........... click......... Error Message.

Try again......Hooray!

Read message, contact has sent attachment. Get attachment........ large........ try to scroll down........ attachment disappeared (minimised and cannot get to it). THEN the site hung ......... and hung...... at least five minutes

Finally got back ...... to find this message (AGAIN!) above the tool bar:

" To protect your security, Internet Explorer has blocked this website from displaying content with security certificate errors. Click here for options... "

The contact referred to above had the same idea as I did........ exchange email addresses... has to be easier than this shambles

Error Message Error Message Error Message and so on and so on

:-P

I hope somebody at GR is taking notice of the boards. My subs are due in a couple of months. I'm not going to keep paying for this - it's a waste of time!

When I get the Error message ................ which is frequently! ............... I do NOT click on the GR logo.


I click on BACK


That takes me back to the page I was on.


If I am trying to post a message on a thread .,..................... I then click on the NEXT page in the thread.

Then I click new on the page that I was on ............ my submitted message is there 99% of the time



so even getting the ERROR message, means that the post has been successfully submitted.



Try the BACK button ........ it could be one heck of a lot faster than getting in the Error cycle





I would like to know how much longer it is going to be before this site works properly!



There is NO WAY that MEMBERS should have to work out ways and means of using the site because the developers and technical team are too busy trying to make changes than in correcting errors caused by previous changes.


There should be no difference in the operation of the site when using a well-known browser ...................... any site should work equally well for a member using Firefox, Chrome, IE7 or higher.

There should be no way in which any of the Support Team should say "I'm using Chrome, and it works fine for me ....... ie, the member is wrong to use Firefox

We, the members, have known for years that the standard response from Support will be "clean your cookies, or your cache" ..................... and that there will be da*n all improvement by doing that!



My sub runs out on June 14th ............... and I will regretfully NOT renew unless it is apparent that attention is being paid to all the problems identified by members.


It will be hard to leave this site after 8 years ....... years that have been enjoyable, both in having fun helping others, and in the number of friends that I have made.


BUT there are OTHER sites, sites that do work properly, and where members are not ignored!



and I can no longer stand the hassles caused by this site.

Thank heavens I do not use my tree on here ................ so I am saved from another of the major frustrations





sylvia

Still :-| when clicking on http://www.genesreunited.co.za/messages.page/sent

12 minutes to get onto the site this morning, then timed out every 5 seconds on Ancestors board.
Such fun. :-| :-| :-| :-| :-| :-| :-| :-| :-|

No error message today just the continual ancestry.com.au ads appearing on the boards.

We live in hope that one day the site might work properly all the time.