Genealogy Group Owners for groups relating to England and Wales

The Online Family History Show, Saturday 10th February

wharcher@... (Wendy Archer) — Mon, 05 Feb 2024 04:44:12 -0800

Hello Genealogy Group Owners -

The Online Family History Show is this Saturday.聽 There are 100 or so stalls, so most counties have one or more exhibitors.聽 In my experience, there are many exhibitors who don't achieve doing social media publicity, so it's over to us if we want to post about the Show.聽 Nag the FHSs - or feel free to copy or modify my wording below!

The exhibitor list's at https://thefamilyhistoryshow.com/online/exhibitors/

Wendy - PS - No commercial connection with the fair organisers!

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Come (through your computer screen) and visit about 100 stalls, mostly family history societies from Scotland to Sussex, at the online Family History Show, on Saturday, 10th February!聽聽

Not only does the show have plenty of exhibitors, but there are talks through the day as well, which you can also listen to later.

See https://thefamilyhistoryshow.com/online/

Earlybird tickets are 拢7

Forthcoming virtual Family History Fair by East Surrey FHS; 28 January 2023

wharcher@... (Wendy Archer) — Sat, 21 Jan 2023 09:36:17 -0800

Over 20 FHSs will be at this virtual fair by East Surrey FHS next weekend, with experts happy to help enquirers. You can visit them all, free, from home! Visit https://www.eastsurreyfhs.org.uk/ and click on the fair banner to see all the attending societies; scroll to the bottom of the page to register for the morning or afternoon sessions - or both! Wendy

(Group owners - you're very welcome to spread this around if appropriate for your groups!)

East Surrey FHS (UK) Virtual Family History Fair (free) - Saturday, 7 May

wharcher@... (Wendy Archer) — Tue, 03 May 2022 06:28:11 -0700

Feel free to spread the news!

Wendy

East Surrey FHS is holding a free Virtual Family History Fair next Saturday, 7th May, with both morning and afternoon sessions.

聽

As they say, "It will be fun!"

As of a few days ago, attendees were listed as:

the Anglo Italian Society, Berkshire FHS, Chesterfield & District FHS, East Surrey FHS, FACHRS, Gloucestershire FHS, Hertfordshire FHS, Kent FHS, Lincolnshire FHS, London, Westminster & Middlesex FHS, North West Kent FHS, Oxfordshire FHS, Quaker FHS, Shropshire FHS, Somerset and Dorset FHS, Sussex Family History Group, West Middlesex FHS and West Surrey FHS.

The whole fair will be held on Zoom, with each Society in a separate "room", and help given to move between the rooms.聽 Society members will be happy to talk about their resources, projects, meetings, & membership, and give advice about all aspects of their society.

Details, and link to booking, at https://www.eastsurreyfhs.org.uk/

Wendy

Seeing your pending messages for all your groups in one place

wharcher@... (Wendy Archer) — Wed, 13 Oct 2021 13:23:07 -0700

Just been announced by Mark Fletcher is that when you go to there is a new column where you can view all the pending messages for all of the groups you admin.

https://beta.groups.io/g/main/message/30571

Wendy

John Sermon RIP

wharcher@... (Wendy Archer) — Fri, 01 Oct 2021 06:16:29 -0700

Fellow group admins -

Some of you may have the late John Sermon as a subscriber.聽 (I've heard of his decease both through the Guild and from his son.)

He may be in your groups as:

design@...聽 (very old address, non-functioning)

and/or

johnsermon183@...

Please delete!

Wendy

Making people chose a display name

sherry.landa@... (Sherry Landa) — Tue, 24 Aug 2021 08:58:52 -0700

Hi,

On British-Jewry we require users to have a display. We have this clearly stated- we have bolded it and underlined it on our home page
"When you join you聽must include a聽Display name.聽To do this, complete the free text box.聽If you do not do this your request聽will be rejected.聽We are receiving a high number of requests without a Display name and we are unable to write to each person individually to explain this rule. Thank you for your cooperation."

YET we still get almost all our requests with this field blank. Jackye (my co-admin) then has to message the person and ask them all over again - these messages are probably 80% ignored!

Is there a way to set things so that people can't even progress their request to join without completing the display name field?

Thanks so much.
--
Sherry Landa (nr Wokingham, UK)聽
Co-owner of British-Jewry with Jackye Sullins

AVG and Avast footers

wharcher@... (Wendy Archer) — Sun, 18 Jul 2021 05:56:37 -0700

Hello, fellow admins!

If, like me, you wince when someone's post has their AVG or Avast footers at the bottom, and you maybe edit them out, here are the removal instructions for each if you want to contact the poster.

https://support.avast.com/en-gb/article/Antivirus-email-signature/

https://support.avg.com/SupportArticleView?l=en&urlname=AVG-Antivirus-email-signature

Wendy

The virtual Family History Federation Really Useful Show this Saturday, 10th April

wharcher@... (Wendy Archer) — Wed, 07 Apr 2021 03:32:12 -0700

This coming Saturday, 10th April, is the date of the virtual Family History Federation Really Useful Show.聽https://www.fhf-reallyuseful.com/

It looks to be a very interesting and enjoyable "day out" - or聽 more of a day in, and virtual day out!

There are 25 speakers, listed at https://www.fhf-reallyuseful.com/talks , with subjects ranging from Death at Sea to Coram鈥檚 Children: The History of the Foundling Hospital.

The Exhibition Hall is filled with over 70 booths, mostly of Family History Societies, so it's very possible your county or region FHS will be there.

Their logos are listed at聽https://www.fhf-reallyuseful.com/exhibition-hall聽 The Federation has said that the image below聽can be used in email publicity.聽 It聽only contains some of the logos though, so, if yours isn't there, maybe clip part of the Exhibition Hall webpage.

Wendy

Breconshire on 开云体育

jeff.coleman@... (Jeff Coleman) — Thu, 09 Apr 2020 14:44:25 -0700

A new Group has been established at /g/Breconshire-Wales-Genealogy as there does not seem to be any other group covering family history in the historic county of Breconshire (Brecknockshire, Sir Brycheiniog). If you have research interests in this county, by all means join us. https://www.genuki.org.uk/big/wal/BRE is a primary source about the county.

聽

Jeff

聽

Re: You can still work on your RootsWeb lists!

polly@... (Polly Rubery) — Tue, 03 Mar 2020 04:18:48 -0800

Wendy - now how did you get the From address in this email to display as the
Prepend and not the full address?
Or is it just how you have it set up in your own email program?

Just to let you know besides Jon Nixey, myself and Helen Verrall
co-operating on setting up HEF & WOR, I have transferred my two ONS Lists,
ROWBERRY and TOCOCK to 开云体育 too. Looking at the New Groups List there
seem to be quite a lot of new Surname Groups being set up.
Polly
Still reeling under the onslaught.....

You can still work on your RootsWeb lists!

wharcher@... (Wendy Archer) — Tue, 03 Mar 2020 01:19:31 -0800

Ann Mitchell has said on Facebook that, although email delivery has stopped, the RootsWeb list tools will be available for a further 48 hours (written yesterday afternoon, UK time).

So - time to put a new URL in place, deal with outstanding held posts, and, in theory, download subscriber lists - though, since you're in this group, you've probably done that!

Wendy

Re: Hints and Tips

pwberndt@... (Paul Ohio USA) — Sun, 01 Mar 2020 16:29:14 -0800

Hi David & All,

I know this is a late reply to your post, yet I will add that if you want to assure that all members get "Special Notices" you have to disable the "No Email" option. This is located in "Settings" under "Message Policies." If you don't make this setting, the only way to communicate with members who choose "No Email" is one by one. The "Special Notices Only" email option functions the same as the "No Email" with the exception that the owners can communicate with the member.

We moved MonGenes to 开云体育 from Yahoo Groups. Yahoo didn't have a way to disable "No Email." I had to go through the members, on a regular basis and change members to "Special Notices Only" & send a notice to the member reminding them that we didn't allow "No Email." The benefit of this was when we moved to 开云体育, we were able to communicate that we would be moving. If we had allowed "No Email," I know that the process would have been very difficult. If you moved from Rootsweb, I don't believe they had a "No Mail" option.

A couple of suggestions:

If you don't have a co-owner of your group and you don't want to have your group go dead should something happen to you, you should consider making someone a co-owner. This has recently been greatly disscussed on the Group Managers Forum (GMF) with many different opinions. We have 10 Co-Owners.
Make yourself a second Owner's account. In the groups I co-own, I have at least 2 Owner Memberships. This is simple but requires that you have a second email account. I have a Yahoo and Gmail account that I use. This comes in handy if you should accidentally delete your own membership. I know this sounds impossible, yet there are more than a few postings on GMF from people who wonder how they can regain the ownership of their groups.

Paul, Ohio, USA

Re: Invite Message on Groups io

polly@... (Polly Rubery) — Sun, 01 Mar 2020 10:49:54 -0800

OK I think I have answered my own query by trying and finding what you type
pops up in the middle of the pro-forma message...
Polly

Invite Message on Groups io

polly@... (Polly Rubery) — Sun, 01 Mar 2020 10:46:13 -0800

Well well done Jon Nixey for persuading me into helping him with
Herefordshire & Worcestershire (actually called on io
HerefordshireAndWorcestershire) - yes we found the limit to the number of
letters you could have too!

Anyway we have, thanks to previous messages on here set up a Group
Description and Welcome Message which agree, put a new URL against
ENG-HEREFORD on the Rootsweb List and downloaded a list of subscribers from
ENG-HEREFORD too. I contacted Helen Verrall (List Admin of ENG-WOR) and she
sent me her download of List members too. I have merged the two lists and
weeded out duplicates and known deceased persons and email addresses,
although I am sure there are a lot of the latter left in there.

I hadn't got as far as the messsage about New URLs when I was speaking to
Helen last night, but I have asked her to do the same for ENG-WOR, and
forwarded Wendy's instructions.

Now all I need to do is to write a sensible Invitation message.

But I'm a little perplexed by the presentation on the Web Page where you get
a set message and then a box below marked Customize Message - which says
message to be included with each invite.

So does this mean that you cannot edit the Proforma one, just add more to it
or not? I can't see anything regarding this on previous emails so can
someone please help?
Thanks
Polly

Email Attachment Purge

pwberndt@... (Paul Ohio USA) — Tue, 11 Feb 2020 14:43:48 -0800

Hi All,

Just read this on Group Managers Forum (GMF). Evidently, the purge of attachments for those who have exceeded their storage quota has not been functional. The owner of GIO has fixed the problem and will turn it on, as far as I can tell, tomorrow evening. I don't expect it will impact any of the newer groups, yet it will be nice to plan for the future. The discussion in the Beta group can be read here:聽 https://beta.groups.io/g/main/topic/69516487#23979
And in the Group Managers Forum here:

Take Care,
Paul, Ohio, USA & Co-Owner of MonGenes Genealogy Grou[

MIDMARCH, Herefordshire, Worcestershire etc Lists

polly@... (Polly Rubery) — Fri, 31 Jan 2020 10:41:00 -0800

Sorry with all the problems I have myself at the moment I haven't really
been paying sufficient attention!

I have someone who would like to set up a Herefordshire or reinstate
MIDMARCH on 开云体育.

So have there been separate lists established for any of the other counties,
please?
Thanks
Polly

New Subscriber - MonGenes for Monmouthshire Genealogy

pwberndt@... (Paul Ohio USA) — Wed, 22 Jan 2020 14:33:52 -0800

Hello All,
I'm Paul Berndt and I'm one of ten co-owners of MonGenes here on GIO. We moved here about two years ago from Yahoo Groups, they just go too hard to manage. We had about 900 members on Yahoo and when we moved, only about 500 came along. We found out that we had many members who weren't active, were no longer interested or simply were no longer attached to the email addresses. You may be finding the same thing. We are up to around 950 members, with many who joined just to use our transcription database and never post.

I'm guessing that most of you are pulling your hair out trying to get everyone transferred before Rootsweb locks down. Don't despair, in short order your groups will be up and running. I'm not a "Power User of GIO, MonGenes doesn't have Sub-groups, nor do we use Wiki's. We get between 100 & 250 messages a month, so not extremely busy.

I've been in touch with Jeff Coleman & Wendy Archer about the move to GIO and passed along some things I've done. I'll post, a little later, what I sent them.

Thank you for having me as a member,
Paul, Ohio, USA

Re: New URL(s)

sherry.landa@... (Sherry Landa) — Wed, 22 Jan 2020 12:07:03 -0800

Thanks so much. That's fab!

Re: New URL(s)

dcbanks@... (dcbanks) — Wed, 22 Jan 2020 11:58:37 -0800

Hi Sherry, yes you can, as many as you like (well at least 5), RW puts them on separate lines 鈥� I suspect it is looking for 鈥楬TTP:/鈥� then it does a new line. You can add a bit of text after each URL but your browser thinks that part of the URL and you get a 404 error when you use it.

聽

David

聽

New URL(s)

sherry.landa@... (Sherry Landa) — Wed, 22 Jan 2020 11:05:09 -0800

This might be a stupid question but...

does anyone know if you can put more than one URL onto the Rootsweb page to redirect members to new group on here?

I have Eng-Lan-Yorks. Now have (thanks to Lynne) an option for the Lancs interested, but if/when I get a Yorks equivilant will I be able to add a second option?

I am a bit snowed under so sorry if this has been discussed somewhere already.
--
Sherry Landa (Slough, UK)聽
Co-owner of British-Jewry with Jackye Sullins