Suggestions

AnninGlos

Am also sorry to hear you having trouble. We are actively checking on all errors that get logged from the Message Centre.

Without intending to open the floodgates, may I also ask anyone having problems getting into their Inbox to contact Support, but also feel free to drop a message onto this thread, and we will see if there is anything we can do short term.

Regards
Phil

Update on Message Centre

I am sure that you don't want to hear me apologise again (and would rather that we just fix things), but rather than leaving you in the dark and still receiving errors, I will do my best to explain the situation, the changes we have made, and the changes we are still working on. And I am sorry that this is causing so much annoyance.

Firstly, the Message Centre re-development was a new piece of work to improve the features we currently offered. It was being carried out at the same time as other work, such as the performance/error messages stuff that I am working on.

When it was decided to release, the functionality was working fine for the majority of users, but as we have found out, not for heavy users when running in a live environment.

We have deployed a number of changes today that will ensure that new emails are being recorded in a format that will allow easier tuning of the database. We had to do this task first as the tuning would have to be redone after these changes were live anyway. We have also fixed a couple of bugs which should mean less errors being seen when sending emails. However, opening large mail boxes will still cause an issue for the next few days. Currently we have 87 million email messages, and we will be applying some database updates tomorrow and over the weekend to tune access to your message records. We will have to do a small release next week so that access use an improved mechanism. Depending on how long the tuning exercise goes, you may be presented with a "preparing messages" screen while it actively converts you existing messages to the new structure, although I am hoping that activity over the weekend will make this unnecessary. Hopefully by early next week, access to your messages should be much improved.

With regard to general performance/errors, we will be supported over the next week or so by the former Genes lead developer with one aim, to eradicate the "random" error situation that so many of you have experienced and has been occurring for so long.

I realise that I should have probably posted a daily update for those that have shown concern by posting on this thread (and others), so I intend to give a daily update on our progress over the next few days.

I genuinely apologise for ALL the inconvenience we have caused, and will do my utmost to keep you informed of progress.

Regards
Phil

And apparently despite returning an error message seven times, four messages actually got through.

Beyond a joke now. It has just taken me 7 attempts to send a message. It went eventually through perseverance but 7 attempts, 7 error messages. :-( :-( :-( :-( :-( :-(

Error
Sorry. An error has occurred
The page you were trying to load has experienced an error. This error has been logged and will be investigated.

If you hit the back button on your browser, it will return you to the page you were on, and you may like to try the action again. If you repeatedly experience the same error, please contact Support via the Contact Us menu under Help.

If you were following a link from your favourites, an email or from another site, the link may have changed. We recommend returning to the home page of the Genes Reunited site, and following the existing menu options to navigate to the same content.

To return to the home page, click on the Genes Reunited logo.
:-(

That was very kind of them.... considering their e-mail service to me has been intermittent at best. :-D

What I was meaning Persephone was that the following sequence of events may have occurred:

Before 22nd - email notification stopped working
22nd - you noticed you had a message and actioned it
before 30th - GR fixed the email notification and sent notifications for all messages that had been sent during the outage.
30th - you get the email for the message you had already processed.

That thought had occurred to me KenSE,
that is why I put ,,,,,,,,
"I have been away and nearly two days have gone past since I looked so it is not as though I had got in before the e-mail arrived."

But to make it perfectly clear that my head is not sewn up at the back and that I do understand the principles of time lag etc between message box and receiving an e-mail.

My last message was received on 22 Nov which I opened on that date and sent a reply. The e-mail to notify me that I had unread messages was on the 30 Nov.

Please correct me if I am wrong KenSE but I would have thought 7 or 8 days would be ample time for this sort of action to have not taken place.

Persie :-S :-S :-S :-S :-) :-) :-S :-S :-S :-S

That is me smiling amidst my confusion..

Persie - I had that experience, too, and reported it.



I would reply to, and even view a message, but this appeared


Sorry. An error has occurred

The page you were trying to load has experienced an error. This error has been logged and will be investigated.

If you hit the back button on your browser, it will return you to the page you were on, and you may like to try the action again. If you repeatedly experience the same error, please contact Support via the Contact Us menu under Help.

If you were following a link from your favourites, an email or from another site, the link may have changed. We recommend returning to the home page of the Genes Reunited site, and following the existing menu options to navigate to the same content.

To return to the home page, click on the Genes Reunited logo.


so haven't yet been able to read it.


Using Chrome sometimes. Firefox others.

Recently the message notification was not working. Is it possible Persephone that you had and read messages then, and the email relates to those message (which you were not notified about during that period)?

I now have a complaint about their message centre...

Today in my e-mails I get an e-mail from genes:

"Persephone, you have unread messages

could hold the clues you have been looking for about that mysterious relation or lead you to discovering a whole new branch of your family tree.

Go to your inbox

Don't let opportunities sit in your inbox! ."

So being a good little Persie person... I go to my inbox.... nothing new... so I do a search for unread messages and it tells me I have none.

I have been away and nearly two days have gone past since I looked so it is not as though I had got in before the e-mail arrived.

Talk about getting ones hopes up only for them to be dashed to the ground...
:-( :-| :-S :-S :-S

All I wanted to do was delete sent messages

Page Not Found
Sorry, we couldn't find the page you were looking for.
The page you requested, http://www.genesreunited.co.uk/messages.page is not a valid address on Genes Reunited.

If you have typed this address manually, please check it and try again. If you have clicked on a link to get here there might be problem with the link. We always record information automatically regarding errors like this and actively try to fix them.

The link on the referring page seems to be wrong or outdated. Please inform Genes Reuinited about the error using the Contact Us link under the Help menu.

could they have got a virus into their servers????

"You could say it that GR are a victim of their own success."
- one could.

Perhaps if the records such as census, passenger lists etc were removed, this could improve the speed and stability of the site, perhaps.

One thing I do find interesting is that Message Centre usually opens immediately when I use IE6 .......... even though I cannot send messages


When I go to Firefox, I can send messages, but the Message Centre usually does not open first time .... it can take as many as 6 attempts before I get into it. And then several attempts to get into Inbox.


strange, eh?



sylvia

The fact the site is currently running slow has little to do with the number of members that might be logged on.

From what I can glean, the problems with performance are happening because the database has grown to such a size that it is taking longer and longer to retrieve the data you are trying to access. If it takes more than a pre-determined time then you get the dreaded error message. It is the same regardless of whether there are one or one hundred thousand people logged on.

You could say it that GR are a victim of their own success.

From what Phil Moir has intimated, the development team are re-writing code to make data retrieval much quicker which will ultimately ease the performance problems.

How long this takes? Who knows....!

The whole site was very slow early this morning, UK time ............... and I don't believe there were that many people using it at 4 am to 5 or 6 am :-D


It took me 4 attempts to open the Message Centre at around midnight UK time ...... using Firefox.




sylvia

Actually a little better today

Page Not Found
Sorry, we couldn't find the page you were looking for.

The page you requested, http://www.genesreunited.co.uk/messages.page is not a valid address on Genes Reunited.

If you have typed this address manually, please check it and try again. If you have clicked on a link to get here there might be problem with the link. We always record information automatically regarding errors like this and actively try to fix them.

The link on the referring page seems to be wrong or outdated. Please inform Genes Reuinited about the error using the Contact Us link under the Help menu.

Took 3 attempts this morning to open Messages ............. and that was using Firefox.