I started a MyFamily website back in 1999. Over the years it’s become the central hub of news, pictures and communication among my many family members. The site has made very few changes over the years and the look and feel is quite outdated. But it has enough features and is easy enough to use that it’s been worth paying $109 annually to continue the site. My family has posted more than 1000 pictures and 500 news articles so far. Everyone in the family really enjoyed the site.
A couple of weeks ago I received an email invitation to sign up for the latest version of the MyFamily website which is still in beta. But here’s the big problem: In order to use the beta site I’d have to start an entirely separate website from the one we all already use. Why on earth would I want to do that? It would be confusing to maintain two different websites. I’d really like to try out the updated version of MyFamily but they need to find a way to port my existing site over to the new version rather than telling everyone to create an entirely new site. Sure, I can sign-up and preview the new features, but the whole point of the site is the communication with other family members.
I went to Beta MyFamily tonight and found the contact form asking if it was possible to move content from an existing site over to the beta version and here’s the message I received after I hit the submit button:
“Contact Us. We’d like to hear from you. Let us know what you think, or if you’re having trouble with our service. While we can’t respond to every message, we read each one”
I sure feel better knowing they may not respond to my inquiry but they will at least read it!
You’d think MyFamily would want to gather feedback from their most loyal customers. But this new beta program only seems to court those who are not existing users of their service which is a mistake. Someone who has used the service for over 7 years is most likely going to provide better feedback compared to a new user.
Nordquist Blog 
Amen to that! I did not get invited, although I also have had numerous MyFamily.com sites with them for at least a handful of years. I have tried to give them suggestions but they always seem to fall on deaf ears. I have been wanting to create my own site that does what MyFamily.com does but do it better and with all the added features that I want. Time has been the issue in my completing that though. When I heard that they were doing this beta I got my hopes up that it would actually improve some things.
Thanks for the link to the beta, by the way. I was hoping to take a look at it.
They mention this on their beta site: “Soon, we will provide access to your original myfamily.com site information from beta.myfamily.com.”
The features and functionality look to still be lacking.
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MyFamily is an odd beast. They do a lot of things right. Yet a lot of things frustrate me as well. But it would sure be a pain to have to move everyone over to another site, not to mention the 7 years worth of content. For now anyway, they have us by the you-know-what.
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