Suggestions

I agree.

The old tree - one page, add a name and the details, save. No problem.

The new tree - two pages, takes SOOOOOOO long!! Then you have to wait for the "downloading lines" to get on with it. Very annoying.

Get rid of those silly male and female outlines. Old Old Old! I really don't think my 17xgreat-grandmother had that hairstyle.

Going back a year ago and more one of the features of the site were several "helpers" who made a very large number of look ups on other FH sites and relayed the results to other members.

Of course it is fair enough for somebody to ask for help in locating a record - Ay in particular has some terrible transcriptions - or to discuss possible relationships.

However in a large number of instances swathes of info from other not-for-free FH sites were copy and pasted into replies for look ups on Gru. That is why some members ended up with "My threads" containing thousands of entries.

This may have been quite a good business model for Gru but was not so popular with the sites which were being leached. Such copying took a coach and horses through the T&C both of Gru and the other FH sites. Some people were warned about this and decamped in a huff. Some of these members also had a great deal of general FH knowledge which is no longer available on the boards.

So now "free look ups" are no longer so free and easy and carry a certain risk.

Taking the technical and software gyrations of the past 9 months as a whole plus the free look ups issue it is hardly surprising that traffic is down. The deletion of the stats figures from the home page is a silent witness to that. Nevertheless the old tree view is not coming back so people may as well get used to that. The old flock wallpaper drove some people nuts.

The never ending thread referrals hardly encourage new people to post either.

Some people say the boards are only a tiny fraction of all members so any opinions here don't count. Not at all the boards are a sample of the wider membership.

The questions for Gru are (a) can they win members back (b) can they get members to ug to platinum or buy more credits (c) can they win and keep new members ?
If they don't the site will go the same way as the Dandy and FRU.

The site makeover has resulted in a bland and boring product which has very little "fun" element , is harder to use than the old tree and requires a lot of effort in what hitherto has been a lightweight product. There is little new functionality and the issue of cousin marriages has been funked. Media support, never good, is now abysmal. It seems to be the idea to replicate other sites which, given Gru/s resources, is chasing the moon.

Select "My tree"

Highlight the person you wish to add a relation too - a darker grey line will appear around the box
Click on "Add" which is the left option
A box will appear with the choice of "SIbling (brother/sister), Partner (Husband/wife/etc, Child"
Choose one of these - I am using child as example
There will be a new box "Add child "
The boxes will already have template entries, just overwrite them
Enter names, dates etc as far as known, parents of child
Click "Save" which is at the bottom left of the box

That will save the BASIC information for the new person to your tree.
You now have to select the new person and choose EDIT to add more information which again must be SAVED.
With the old tree this process was 1 step now it is 2 steps.

Some people seem not to see the "Save" button on the first "Add ... " box.
The most lilkely reason for this is having a screen resolution of 1024x768. As the screen cannot be scrolled the only
work around is to zoom out. To do this hold down the "Ctrl" key and press the "-" numeric key at the same time.
Unfortunately the font will shrink as well.

The bug which added spurious extra rellies has been fixed.

good luck

Hi I have tried & tried but i still cannot add my Relatives to my tree seems im not the only one please please help me Stella :-(

The boards have been quite for well over a year.

Maybe people dont want help or maybe they have found they can get their info free elsewhere rather than spend £20 a year to use this site.

Facebook did'nt do the site any favours

Tree looks fine to me ......then again I did'nt like the old one

If the site is running down then GR will ultimately fold. Bringing back the old tree will not change that as it doesn't earn any revenue.

Even if 400 people could be persuaded not to desert by resurrecting the old tree, that would only bring in about £8,000 in a year. Not enough to pay the staff for more than a few days if that.

The customer dissatisfaction has been caused entirely by GR themselves, and was totally avoidable

They have consistently refused to take account of the views of the paying members, without whom they wouldn't have a little 'empire' to play with.

Such a pessimist, Detective.

Someone has said on another thread that volume has dropped considerably. Tree building is down, he/she says that these Community boards are much quieter. It is a logical conclusion to be drawn that people are leaving and will continue to leave.

We are in a commercial world. GRU have to respond to this customer dissatisfaction. I think they have asked for time to sort things out. Then we will hopefully get a response that will give hope to us all. And may even answer the heartfelt plea that started this thread :-)

Nope - its gone for good!

have we got go back on Genes,I want to go back three months or at least a month

Caz