FYI
-----Original Message-----
From: Timothy Stowell via
Sent: Friday, June 12, 2015 5:49 AM
To: state-coord(a)rootsweb.com
Subject: [STATE-COORD] Rootsweb - support or the lack thereof
Wondering how many of you know of the goings on of issues with Rootsweb?
A number of years ago after Ancestry bought out Rootsweb, things started
changing, which I suppose most would expect after such an acquisition.
A couple of years ago issues arose with the query boards that to date have
not been fixed.
Around April 1st of this year, Ancestry instituted a new wave of change,
which changed the banners on sites to include a search feature which
directed visitors away from the sites to Ancestry's search engine.
Thankfully people like, Joy Fisher, figured out the code changes needed so
CCs could get back the banner that reads USGenWeb.
Another change that occurred at that time was that the link between the
query boards and the mailing lists was broken / changed and the boards
tried to send HTML to the mailing lists. For listowners who released the
messages, they discovered that most of the message released was advertising
for Ancestry and perhaps 5% a genealogy query.
Two months ago I took over an abandoned county and Rootsweb sent a new
password. Unfortunately the new password did not work. Contact back to
Rootsweb and received canned replies and finally = we can't change the
password to something that will work. Huh? Thus my only course of action
was to move the site elsewhere and someday perhaps I'll get access to find
out what else is in the account that I can't see by just drilling down
through the pages I can see on Rootsweb.
Sadly the same thing happened in other states who I suppose happen to have
counties hosted on that particular server and needed a password change.
The canned reply on this was, we know of the situation and it has been
given to the engineers to fix but we have no time line on when the fix will
occur.
Recently a news story indicated that Ancestry itself may be on the buyer's
block which would most likely entail more change.
Since a good number of counties remain on Rootsweb, the CCs need to be
aware that services we've used for nearly 20 years may change or cease to
exist as we know them today.
Tim Stowell
co-SC MNGenWeb
ASC NYGenWeb
-------------------------------
To unsubscribe from the list, please send an email to
STATE-COORD-request(a)rootsweb.com with the word 'unsubscribe' without the
quotes in the subject and the body of the message