Genealogy Chat

bdm, yes it is bdm not freeBMD is back online again. You can get credits for leaving your certificate information. There's a months free trial because ukbdm is no longer free. The BBC programmes have generated such a flood of enquiries that programmes such as ukbdm have been swamped. (the online certificate service is also taking much longer to deliver certificates!) I put in my certificate information that is not relevent to my family history so that it is not a complete waste of £7.

So the site is getting information for free and charging people to look at it. Have they changed the search facility, or can you still only search for 'Smith' and end up swamped?

I don't know what you mean by 'only for Smith'; would you like to explain? I use the name or place search by putting in the name or place I want. I think the charge is to prevent people from logging on and printing whole pages of information without contacting the person who provided it and is hoping for a contact. It's bit like this site (but cheaper) where you put in a name and might get something that's relevent. Also the forum is there with people offering help and advice.

Twinkle, Following this message, you will see a number of messages I posted about this subject. Paul

Twinkle These are some of the various messages that were posted on the boards here on Genes Reunited, and on the ukbdm boards. As you may see, there were major problems on the ukbdm site connected to the host and server. The decision to make a charge was not taken lightly, and was open to comment by all users. Please read them. Paul Added By Paul Pearce-Smith on 23/11/2004 16:52:22 | Update Message | Delete Message A copy of my reply this morning on Records Office. I feel I must make a point here.Over a period of time, ukbdm experienced major problems because of server problems. Graham Pitt, the administrator tried for a considerable length of time to rectify the stuation, and met with very limited success. The original host and server were not up to the job. Consequently he reluctantly had to change hosts, and has had to implement a charge to cover the costs of using the new host. I assure you that the decision was not taken lightly, there are no 'money grabbers', and that there is no ' millionaire' at the other end. I repeatedly see remarks about the cost of GR, and how cheap it is. Granted £7.50 is small price to pay for use of the site and the information gained by all. Conversely, do you not think £5 is a small price to pay to add a possible valuable avenue to your research. Those of you who state that you have deleted all your entries, each one allows a credit of a free days membership. In that case, allowing for the extra month, some of you would pay about £2.50 for a years membership because the number of entries you had would have given nearly a year extra.Paul. Added By Paul Pearce-Smith on 23/11/2004 16:54:50 | Update Message | Delete Message And a reply added this afternoon to those who gave kind thoughts (edited).Added By Paul Pearce-Smith on 23/11/2004 16:36:26 | Thank you, on behalf of Graham, for your kind words. It is good that some people are seeing the other side of the matter. Graham asked me to be an Administrator on the site earlier this year - my computer know-how is very limited, it is Graham doing all the work. I just try and help out where I can. Plus the fact that there is a lot of miles and the Irish Sea between us, so contact between us is all electronic. There was a notice posted on the site homepage asking about feelings on making a charge, everyone was given a chance to vote on whether they wished to pay a charge or not, and it remained up for some time. There were also threads on the Boards as well. Unfortunately the problems with the server meant that there was difficulty in logging on, and I respect the fact that a lot of people may not have been able to see the page that Graham set up. Graham worked long and hard to try and sort the matter out, as I previously said, and was upset that it lead to a charge being made. What I have done is to copy some of the postings Graham made about the problems on the Boards, and they are shown below, and one that I posted with regard to the same problems. Posted 25/10/2004 7:54 AM (#2584) Subject: Website slow or not working We appear to be having some difficulties with the website at the moment. We are working to identify the problem but as yet, we don't know why this is happening. Posted 9/11/2004 5:15 PM (#2612) May I ask all of you to read Graham's posting on the announcements board with regard to the problems the site has been having over the recent weeks. He has been working hard to rectify the situation and has had some success. In recent contact with him, he has advised me that the only sure way of restoring the site to full operation is to change the web host, as it looks as though the one in use at the moment is unable to cope with the demands put upon it. If you look at the entry at the bottom of the home page www.ukbdm , you will see that approaching 700,000 hits have been made on the site since it came into being. I have personally noticed the increase in the number of registered members over the past few months, and they are still joining. The move to another host will cost money. Therefore, before Graham commits himself to the move, he wishes to consult the members of the site. After entering your password on the home page (not here to enter the Forums), you will see that Graham has asked for our thoughts on the matter of making a contribution. In my own mind, it is a small price to pay to allow the site to return to its former glory. Please read the message, and give Graham some feedback. Without prejudice, I have the feeling that there will be some people who will object to it, that is their right. There may even be some who think that Graham is in this for the money; let me assure you that he is not. He saw a gap, went for it, and the rest is history. Please do not let the site become history. Paul Posted 15/11/2004 6:23 PM (#2646) Subject: Forthcoming Changes Well we've had many votes in now and the majority feeling is that we move to a better server. I have therefore begun work on this move. Hopefully things wll go according to plan something like this... In about a week or so you will find that the whole site will shut for about a day whilst I transfer all the files, check that nothing has gone missing and that everything is working correctly. The new site will then open and should look similar to the old one except that when you go to login you will be taken to a payment page where you can choose how to pay. Either by phone or online. The charge will be £5.00 GBP per year. You can purchase either one or two years worth and gain an extra month or three months respectively. In addition you subscription time will be extended by one day for each record that you enter. Enter 365 records and get a free year We hope that this level of charge will cover the costs involved in running and maintaining the site. Therefore the expected benefits are....Greatly improved speed through the siteIncreased information available for each type of recordBig reduction in the number of failed loginsMore options for personal preferencesAbility to organise and send out newslettersAbility to notify you when a new entry with one of your name is listedAbility to print a record (without email addresses)Purchase of a dedicated server eventually Apart from the great speed increase most of these changes will happen gradually as I will be re-writing the entire site oin a different language - which I still have to learn:D - but which will allow a better way to display the data, work faster and altogether allow us to do more. The two languages will run together and are interchangeable so you may see one page change whilst another will take longer. In other words we should not need to take the site down again whilst it is being updated I really would like to take this opportunity to thank you all for putting up with the ever-growing problems we have experineced of late, in spite of my best efforts and may we all look forward to a greatly improved experience.CheersGraham Posted 18/11/2004 7:31 PM (#2660) Subject: New Server Hi everyone The site has now been moved to the new server - not without a few teething problems. The company hosting it are looking into the internittent problem that occurs now and again. Namely that the server will go reeeely slow. We have setup something that will clear this problem at least once per hour. It is something to do with lots of bits of information that are left hanging around as we move from page to page. All in all though this has been a quicker move than I had anticipated and the server generally is amazingly fast compared to the others we have used in the past. There will probably still be little problems from time to time whilst everything settles down. Please do let me know at graham don't sit there thinking it will clear eventually - it won't if I don't do something about it. If it is something you a

This site doesnt do complete cover does it?

Heather, It is not a site like 1837 or FreeBMD. Certificates are entered by users for one of two reasons. It has been put on for reference purposes for someone possibly searching for the same name, or it could be that someone has got an incorrect certificate and is offering it to anybody who might want it. The question of cost is strictly between those two people. There are also message forums where queries etc can be entered, allowing those able to help to do so. Regards Paul

Hi everyone so what has happen to all the certificates we have put on the site? are they still there,and is it just certificate's or is there other thing's on there. Cheer's Lita

Lita, The certificates (or rather the details) are under the relevant headings (Births, Baptisms, Civil Marriage, Church Marriage etc). When entering the details, if you have a certificate you do not want you can indicate that by ticking a box. If you are just entering the details so that others can view the details for a possible match, then the box is left alone. It is not only certificates that can be entered. If you have details that you have proved from indexes or church records, they can be entered as well. Pre-1837 (or whatever date, depending on area) can also be entered under the relevant headings as well. Paul

Jill What I mean is that it's an incredibly broad search. If I want to search for a marriage in 1860 for Mr Smith, the old search facility only allowed me to search for Smith. It was great that so many people volunteered their info but the number of results to go through was enormous and would only have increased as more details were added. I haven't been onto the new site so I don't know if it's changed at all. Paul Thanks for explaining the reasons behind the charges. However, it's easy to see why people are annoyed that a site touted as free starts charging 18 months after it began.

When I search, I look for names on the place where I am searching first before sifting through the names. Although again I look at the counties first when I put in a name search. Are you a Smith? You poor thing, I understand your frustration as I've been looking for a McMillan in Scotland for two years now. Anyway, have a go on ukbdm (but not today - too busy like everywhere) there's a free trial. Good luck Jill