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Monday, September 22, 2008

FamilyLink.com responds to my rant

I appreciate Whitney Ransom McGowan's speedy response (11:37 am on the first working day back) in a comment to my earlier post - FamilyLink.com Rantings about problems with WorldVitalRecords and FamilyLink.com.

Whitney's response was:

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We did indeed change the FamilyLink.com site to FamilyHistoryLink.com. This announcement was made in WorldVitalRecords.com’s Family History Bulletin last Friday (September 19, 2008) and also on the WorldVitalRecords.com blog today. The primary reason the Website FamilyLink.com was changed to FamilyHistoryLink.com is because FamilyLink.com will have a new site design with lots of new features and functionalities. An exact date for this change has not been set up, but it is coming soon. FamilyLink.com, Inc. will also have a separate site in the future that allows people to link to all of FamilyLink.com’s products and websites. Another reason FamilyLink.com was changed to FamilyHistoryLink.com was to give it another website instead of removing the entire site from the web. This allows all the current users to continue to connect with other genealogists. As per the problems uploading GEDCOM’s, the developers and programmers are working on the new site and other FamilyLink.com, Inc. products and are not spending development time fixing bugs on the beta site of FamilyHistoryLink.com.

As per the newsletter (Family History Bulletin), it has gone out every week. There is a newsletter archive you can access (note, you must be logged in to WorldVitalRecords.com when you click on the link): http://www.worldvitalrecords.com/newsletterarchive.aspx?page=1 This archive has all of the past newsletter editions. Also, I checked our list, and you added your name to the list on September 5, 2008. If for some reason you do not get the newsletter on Thursday, please contact me, and I will look into the issue further.

As per the Genealogy Blog Planet, it has not been updated for 2 years, which is why some of the links are dormant. Lots of people have requested that their blog post be added to the site, and no sites have been added. This is simply because we are not focusing on that part of the site right now; more time is being spent on working on the new site, which will be much better than the current site. So, please do not feel offended or rejected. No sites are being added, regardless of status.

We are working as fast and as hard as we can to bring additional improvements to WorldVitalRecords.com, and the rest of our sites. We appreciate user feedback and always take comments into account when deciding on what to focus on next.

Whitney Ransom McGowan, Director, Corporate Communications, FamilyLink.com, Inc.

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The change from www.FamilyLink.com to www.FamilyHistoryLink.com was announced today on the WorldVitalRecords blog by Whitney. It was announced in the 18 September 2008 issue of the weekly email newsletter (which I did not receive even though I signed up (again) on 5 September, after receiving it weekly until 11 August and not requesting it be stopped).

From Whitney's response, it appears that the developers have a higher priority to develop the new corporate website than an existing social networking site. I'm glad we understand why we aren't getting any improvements on www.FamilyHistoryLink.com, and I hope that they will be able to improve the site in the future.

The link that Whitney provided for the Newsletter Archives works fine. However, I could find no link to the Newsletter Archive or to the WorldVitalRecords Blog on the www.WorldVitalRecords.com home page or the "free newsletter" web page. I hope they can add links to two of their best communication tools in the future.

My thanks again to Whitney for her timely and informative response. I'm sorry for the rant... I really don't like to be the squeaky wheel, but I was really frustrated on Friday!

1 comment:

  1. Congratulations, Randy! You are a winner!

    The great and wonderful Wizard of Oz has just awarded you your heart's desire! No... Wait... There's a man behind the curtain...

    Fudge! It's just the Ancestry Insider giving you an "I *Heart* Your Blog" award. He's a nobody, but he does read your blog, pert' near everyday, and published a link to it in his latest article.

    But at least you get to display a cute graphic on your website and drive traffic to the Ancestry Insider's website by linking the award to him. And if you act now, the Ancestry Insider will throw in seven years of bad luck repellent! Simply forward this chain-letter award on to seven more bloggers. Otherwise all your readers will lose your address, forget you ever existed and park in your parking place at work. For complete contest rules, visit http://ancestryinsider.blogspot.com/2008/09/i-heart-your-blog-award.html

    With all my *heart*,

    -- The Ancestry Insider

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