Site maintenance last week

Question

[announcement updated]

WikiTreers,

Last week we updated our server operating system and programming language. This was necessary to keep the site stable and secure, and to enable some performance enhancements.

We need to ask for your help and patience.

The update is complete, but there are some remaining issues around the site. For example, there is a problem with categorization. There are probably other bugs we have not spotted.

If you spot any sort of problem, please report it here by clicking the answer button. (To keep things organized, comments at the top will be hidden or moved once read.)

Thanks for understanding. This community is special and your work here is important. Our job is to make sure you have a stable and secure platform.

Onward and upward,

Chris and the WikiTree Team

Comments

Having ongoing problems trying to connect to the website

Answer 1

Not sure it is related to the update but the site is excruciatingly slow this morning and it seems to be getting worse. At first it was mostly switching to edit page, saving and creating profiles, now it's everything, even navigation and G2G is also affected.

Comments

I suppose this is the bumpy road we were told to expect.

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Thanks, Isabelle and Eva. We are working on this right now.

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Thanks, Chris!

Answer 2

Server also very, very slow for me at the moment, including G2G. Also having problems doing a full save on a profile. Saved the draft ok, but then it acts as though it’s done the full save even though it hasn’t. The full save button is greyed out even though it hasn’t completed the save iyswim.

https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Melbourne-349

taking about 20 seconds to load a single page onto my browser I’m using an iPad Pro and latest iOS and Safari.

Maddy

Comments

It's weird - I couldn't save the draft so I deleted it, and it's actually saved the changes I made.

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Someone plugged the site in - it’s working now. maybe you fixed it Gill :-))

Maddy

Answer 3

The site is sloooooooow. I don't know if that's because of the transition, I thought to mention it here anyway

Answer 4

Wow its no more slow!

The dates in after autobio are now in American format no more in European. Month-day-year should according to my setting day-month-year

Comments

Slow again

Answer 5

at 13:16 UK time the site is unresponsive and unable to save profile edits.  It took around 3 minutes to load this g2g so I could post

This is not at this end as other sites are their usual fast loading

Warren

Answer 6

Just going from one page to another both are G2G posts, and got. I had 2 tabs open so was able to answer here.

This site can’t be reachedwww.wikitree.com refused to connect.

Try:

Checking the connection

Checking the proxy and the firewall

ERR_CONNECTION_REFUSED

Comments

Hi M.,

The site should be accessible now, but we are still working on the intermittent delays.

Chris

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Not seeing much improvement.  Still taking quite a while to load a profile https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Horn-7162

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Chris: Not really a big problem, sometimes I can be patient!

Answer 7

The speed's back up to normal for me now. Thank you all :-)

Comments

I spoke too soon...

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Yes it got slightly better around 13:36  (UK time) but took a dive at 13:57 (uk time)

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Thank you, Susie and Warren. We have a fix in place but are still looking at root causes.

Answer 8

Update at 14:03 UK time.  It has got worse over the afternoon and at one stage it refused a connection.

Comments

14:13 UK time very fast

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Appears to have settled.  Good performance

Answer 9

It seems that the G2G feeds don't work, e.g. https://www.wikitree.com/g2g/feed/tag/german_roots.rss

Comments

This should be fixed.

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That was fast, thanks

Answer 10

Bug: Relationship Finder, Alternative View Generational Path, is broken. For each profile, the first time that I do Relationship To Me, Related Via Marriage, it doesn't show the topmost row of most-recent ancestors. If you close and click it again, it displays normally. This also applies to all the featured connections in the weekly email for example.

(By the way, I wish that the generational path were the default view, the other one is useless.)

Comments

Me too.  I could see all of it if I chose the reverse view, and then the "Alternative View: Generational Path."  (Which I also find more helpful than the standard view.)

Answer 11

By now I imagine this has been reported, but just now on a profile, mouse-over did nothing on profile links. Click through or nothing.

Comments

Check your settings.  Preview may have toggled itself off.

First item "Tools", last item under tools "Profile Previews:"

https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Special:Settings

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The disable previews box is still unchecked, so previews should display on mouseover.

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I'm not having a problem with seeing on mouseover previews.

Perhaps it might help others to help you if you say what type of device you are using (I'm on a laptop), the operating system (I run windows), if you have any extensions or apps that might be affecting it for you.

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Yes, you're right. I'm out of practice for bug reports! But...the previews are showing for me again, so all is well.

Answer 12

There seems to be a problem in categories. There are profiles still showing in a category even though the category has been removed from the profile over two days ago.

Example category is https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Category:New_Zealand%2C_Needs_Profiles_Created with the three "Y" profiles all without the category but still showing. Profiles are https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Young-62406, https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Young-62407 and https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Young-62408 .

Comments

I have seen this too, another example is the profile for Olive Beatrice Victoria Enticknap (1892 - 1892), which is stuck in the {{Unsourced|Victoria}} category.

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This is a known problem and Brian is looking into it. Thanks for additional examples.

Answer 13

Possible issue with relationship display. On this profile, the sibling is not displaying. In the past, I have always seen siblings display straight away once added.

Comments

This has nothing to do with the upgrade. The parents are switched on https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Elton-851 (mother is entered as a father and father is entered as a mother). Once you correct that error, the siblings should display correctly.

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Oops! Thanks Aleš!

Answer 14

I am not sure if this is a problem due to the site maintenance, did that take place on the 13th Dec ?

This relates to a William Dyke :-

https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Dyke-1517

his profile comes up when i go to the tab 'Find' and then 'Unsourced Profiles'

From a previous question that i had asked on one of the "Ask Aleš" sessions - i now have a spreadsheet which lists the unsourced profiles of which i am the manager.

William Dyke was in that list, so on the 15th December i added a source to his profile.

Strangely enough it now appears that someone else had edited his profile the previous day on the 14th.

So, as it stands at the moment William Dyke has a source and no 'un_sourced' sticker in his profile so i am not sure why he is appearing when i click on the 'Find' and 'Unsourced Profiles' tabs.

I know that from past experience that as soon as the 'un_sourced' sticker is removed, then the profile does not appear when those two tabs are pressed.

Comments

There is some weirdness with categories not updating correctly, so this is probably related.

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Hello Jamie,

Thanks for the reply,

Allan

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Just as a note, the problem with William Dyke :-

https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Dyke-1517

is still there

is this because the categories are not updating correctly,

thanks, Allan

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If you make another update to his profile it should be removed from the category. We have to create a script to update all the profiles that were affected, but we are waiting until after the 1st.

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Hello Jamie,

I notice that there are still profiles which were sourced in December 2023 which are appearing in the 'Unsourced reports' which are created by Wikitree+

Table prepared at 02.04.2024 18:03:21 (Slovenian time). Condition to prepare list (Country is England and Region is Cheshire)

Answer 15

I found myself unable to add a child to an Open profile. I clicked on "add child," selected "create new profile," and was sent to the URL https://www.wikitree.com/index.php?title=Special:EditFamily&u=40977485&who=child . The browser hanged. I tried refreshing the page several times (after excruciatingly long waits), but the situation didn't change.

I finally added the child from the profile of the other parent, but I report this as an issue that may be related to the recent site update.

Answer 16

Would this be the cause of a category having it's numbers change each day yet profiles no being removed from them?  I work on this category https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Category:New_Zealand%2C_Needs_Profiles_Created and ones I edited days ago are still showing in there, ie  https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Young-62408 was last changed on 15 Dec and does not have that Category on it yet continues to appear in the category.

Comments

Hi Kylie,

Yes, you are correct. This categorization bug is related. We are working on it.

Thanks for reporting it,

Chris

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Another discussion of what may be the same categorization bug: https://www.wikitree.com/g2g/1689783

Answer 17

There seems to be an issue with the Changes tab. For example, I edited the marriage info for https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Lightner-347 to add "United States" and when I display the changes, the previous information is blank. When I go to her husband's profile (https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Workman-120) and view the Changes (I didn't make any updates to his profile), the correct previous information is displayed. I've looked at this in both Chrome and Firefox and it is the same result.

Comments

This is probably related to https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Relationship_Tracking_Bug and not the infrastructure update -- because marriages are stored in a separate database, sometimes the diffs of the individuals are a bit wonky.

Answer 18

Dear Chris Whitten and dear WikiTree team, thank you very much for the explanation and this great opportunity to thank you all for your great work for the Treefolk and your dedication to the idea of the one world-connecting tree! I wish you all a smooth update and a peaceful, healthy and happy end of the year and a wonderful New Year!

Answer 19

Problem with dates on profiles, months are displaying only in short form eg Apr rather than April, and cannot be edited to full name, typing in full name for month then saving dosn't work, I disabled WBE and still have this issue. I only noticed this yesterday so may be another issue.
 Am amazing feat, the entire system rewritten and installed with only minor problems, in the last 5 years 4 NZ Govt systems either crashed when made live and accessed by the public or had significant problems.

Comments

As far as I know, the system here displays only abbreviated month names in the profile data fields. It's been that way for years. Did you see full month names in the past?

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Yes, and I always changed month abbreviations to full name, I need to get to work, but will check WT help when I get home for date formats.

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https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Help:Date_Fields

Input Formats

For inputting dates, any of the following are acceptable:

• Month DD, YYYY (e.g. December 12, 2012)
• Mon DD YYYY (e.g. Dec 12 2012)
• Mon. DD, YYYY (e.g. Dec. 12, 2012)
• DD Month YYYY (e.g. 12 December 2012)
• DD Mon YYYY (e.g. 12 Dec 2012)
• YYYY-MM-DD (e.g. 2012-12-12)
• MM-DD-YYYY (e.g. 12-12-2012)
• Month YYYY (e.g. December 2012)
• YYYY (e.g. 2012)

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Input does not equal display, though, and I have never seen anything on profile view except dd mon yyyy.

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Currently not accepting full month name for input.

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OK, I've made a mistake, but I've never seen the date format entered change immediately when I enter it, possibly the new code?

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I stopped typing in the full month-word when I noticed it never saved that way.  I have not had occasion to add a date since the maintenance.

Answer 20

I'm seeing a problem with the First Name search on the Genealogy pages that I haven't seen reported in any of the above answers. I'm working from the CURLEE genealogy page. I wanted to search for various first names to see if unconnected profiles had been created for someone's children. 

When I put the first name "Lonnie" in the search box and clicked Search, the results (20,090 profiles) appear to be for every profile that has a given name, nickname, or possible alias name for Lonnie. The Surname is not considered at all. I know for sure that's not how it used to work.

Comments

Also, found at the same time but a completely different item ...

In the search person page parameters, the "Include name variant matches" radio button is no longer sticky. I don't know about the others because I haven't tested them. Could we get sticky buttons back for as long as we stay on the page?

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Strange. I just tried searching for Lonnie as you described, and it found 14 results (which I'm assuming is the correct behavior). Just confirming -- you used the search box on the side, not the one at the top?

I'm also not having the issue where the radio button isn't staying as selected.

If you have any WikiTree-related browser extensions, can you disable them and try again and see if you are still having the same problems?

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Looks like it's related to the BEE extension, Jamie. I first disabled WBE, refreshed everything, and did the search. Still >20k results. When I disable BEE, I get 14 results like you.

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Oops, forgot to answer your question. Yes, I'm using the search box at the side. Also, the radio buttons "fixed" themselves after I reported it. Don't know what that was about but I'm gonna say don't worry about it.