FamilyCrossings Blog

Its a New Look for Family Crossings

It started in June of 2016 on a Sunday afternoon. Our lead web developer sat down with Bruce Collen to flesh out the redesign for our Family website product. The MyFamily.com customers had shown us where we could improve the product now we needed to focus our energies. So we re-read all of your feedback email, watched your actions during training session, & reviewed the survey results from our various customer polls. If you are a member of a Familycrossings.com site we hope you will enjoy the new responsive interface. It will work well on any computer or mobile device. You won’t need an app just login.

So here is what you get:

1) A new, cleaner interface. We have removed the left navigation system completely. You can now use our simpler top tab and sub navigation to move through the different site sections. In a tab the Active section is now underlined to better show the active feature. On the right hand side of the navigation you will find Tools/Actions- click this to add, change or delete content from a section.
2) Image of Day (IoD) is now a vote based process. Every photo has a vote function located to the right of the image. Click it to register your vote. The home page Image of Day will immediately change. If another image is voted up by more people than the existing image the new image will replace the other image immediately. All Image of the Day photos will be available in the IoD Photo Album.
3) More Storage – Standard now includes 500 MB of storage. Premium now includes 1 GB of storage. If you order extra storage you will now get twice as much for the same price ie get 2 GB for the price of 1 OR 4 additional GB for the price of 2 GB
4) Save as you write function has been added to Stories and Database
5) Parenting Center section has been changed to Requests
6) Photo Galleries section has been changed to Photos / Album thumbnails enlarged
7) Family Database has been changed to Library
8) Personal Profile section has been moved to upper right
9) Larger text in Help area
10) Feedback- Has been moved to the Admin area and can only be used by Administrators
11) Removed “Family Site” text from the label of site

12)Added the ability to use an image as a background with set transparency

13) Increased Address Privacy- It is now possible to hide your personal information by clicking on your Profile, click on My Addresses, scroll down to Privacy Options, click the button for Selected Members and then choose ONLY the family members who SHOULD see your address and email account information.
14) Shopping- This section is revamped with brand new stores offering uniques products and special savings. Want to save $10 on groceries every week? Check out our Coupons area.
15) History Medical section added 10 questions

So what are you waiting for? Go login here and start adding new items to share with your family.

A Unified Approach to Family Scheduling -Using an Online Calendar

I was listening to a podcast yesterday while out walking the dog and the subject was keeping track of the children.The ‘caster was complaining that it was almost impossible to deliver and pickup their 3 children from after-schoool activities. He went on to say that both he and his wife have showed up in different cars at the same time to pick up a daughter from dance class. The family had resorted to a dry erase board that each family member was responsible for maintaining. The 5 dry-erase boards took up an entire wall in their kitchen. Of course this solution did not work very well since 5 dry erase boards are not portable and are impossible to update remotely.

So I wrote the podcaster a personal email explaining that the Familycrossings.com family calendar is the perfect solution. Everybody can enter their own events (including weekly recurring events), assign category colors, send email notifications, reminders and text alerts to themselves and the parent who is supposed to pick them up. Family members can remotely login from their cell phones. Familycrossings Monthly Calendars also can be printed out and replace the dry erase boards in the kitchen.

You can sign up for a free, standard or premium account by clicking here.
To read more about our family calendar function click here.
You can see an example of a Dance Class event by checking our Twitter feed.

Family Crossings Update

For the hundreds of MyFamily clients who converted to Familycrossings.com your wait is over. We listened to your feedback and have delivered a new Family friendlyfeature.

Located in the “What’s New” area the link named “New to Me” will bring you every photo, every story, every comment that you have not clicked on. The site will start by bringing you the last 30 days of content and then will start removing from this page the items you clicked. There is a “dismiss” function if you wish to delete from “New to Me” all the content by area or by each item.

An update to our navigation will be coming soon.

Member Bytes

This morning we uploaded a new feature to Familycrosings.com called Member Bytes. It is an alternative to the Home Page and What’s New.

Member Bytes shows ALL the content and comments added by each Family Member and can be sorted by “Most Recent”, “Member’s Name”, or “Content Score”. Content score references the amount of content and comments that each Family Member has added.

Check it out the next time you log in.

MyFamily Alternative Making Subscribers Smile

Familycrossings.com new FTP function makes uploading the MyFamily photos fast and efficient since when the zip file is unpacked all the MYFamily photos are rendered into new galleries. As an alternative to starting over creating a family member directory you can create a .csv of first name, last name, email address and send everyone in the family new invitations to Familycrossings. Using these two tools will save hours while you are creating your alternative to MyFamily.com

MyFamily.com Final Answer from Ancestry.com

On June 25, 2014 Familycrossings received the email below from Ancestry.com regarding our requests that they step up and provide additional support for the subscribers of MyFamily. Our development team has worked quickly to provide you with a way of importing your members and adding your photos. Both tools work perfectly however we will not be able to provide any further tools to make for a better transition because of Ancestry.com’s response.

Click the image below to read the actual email.

Familycrossings.com will continue to assist Myfamily.com subscribers in transitioning to our family web site product.

Transfer Photos From MyFamily Via FTP is Now Available

MyFamily.com members who already have zip archives containing photos can begin uploading them via FTP. The process will be at least 6 times faster than http based uploads. We have also made it easier rotate and add titles, descriptions and tags to your family photos as you review each new gallery.

Save time and read the instructions before you start. Check this space for webinar times for the Week June 23 to June 29, 2014.

BTW As of 6/22/2014 the status of MyFamily.com is not available. (Day 5). We will let you know by tweet @familycrossings and this blog when we have more info about MyFamily.com.

Transfer Files From MyFamily to Familycrossings Ready

MyFamily is providing web site subscribers with a zipped archive that contains photos organized in folders. There are no comments, titles, or descriptions. Starting June 20, 2014 subscribers who enter the “myfamily” promo code will get access to a special tool to transfer those files. Subscribers will need to use FTP to upload the MyFamily zipped archives. These files from MyFamily can be as big a 1.5 GB each. Once uploaded to your family site the administrator can click a link to start unpacking your archive. We suggest that you return the next day to sort through all the Galleries. Editing Galleries and Photos navigation are located on the left menu.

If you used the “myfamily” promo code when you signed up you will automatically get an email when the transfer file tool is ready for you to start using on your family website.

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