Dear IO and Dear Group Managers,

Serious question -- with the current system outage over at YahooGroups, I am seriously considering moving my Yahoo Groups here, as there have been positive reviews.

Several questions --?

1.? Is it easy to transfer the groups?

2.? What implications for the member?? Especially, will they have to create a new account here, or if they to date have been only using the YahooGroup via their email to send and receive messages, will it be a seamless transfer with no verification step necessary?

3.? If *everyone* having trouble at YahooGroups is getting the same advice, to transfer to Groups.io, how is capacity?? Are you going to be able to handle the deluge?

Many many thanks,
I may make the move in the next few hours...

Michelle
(moderator in Geneva, Switzerland)

On 23/11/2017, at 17:21 , Shal Farley <shals2nd@...> wrote:

Most of my group members are the same way, in my PTA group (which is an Announcement Group) and in my classmate groups (which are discussion groups). My classmates are all 60+, varying widely in experience with computers and email, and most have managed to stick with my Yahoo Groups until I transferred the groups here. Everyone seems to like the change, at least those few who've ventured onto group web site for a look-see. The PTA members are generally a lot younger, but they don't have to do anything but receive announcements and (hopefully) show up for events. So far no one has acted or commented on being confused by the links at the bottom of messages, or by anything else about Yahoo Groups.

My lot never used the Yahoo web site. Many of them do not seem to even understand the concept of an account. Each year, about 70% of them (about 140 people) have no idea what their account is on our club website to renew their membership. So they ring up the website admin to find out their username and password. Then they promptly forget it and do the same 12 months later. The effort that has to go into support is far too much for volunteers. The simpler we can make it the better.

It is subtle, and I think much easier for them and for you than you're anticipating, but they are given a Groups.io account and profile the moment they accept your invitation (even by email reply). And if they accept by web they're logged in to their account at that moment, and stay logged in for 30 days (or they log out, or they clear their browser's cookies).

For an announcement list, why would they want to go to the web site? If they are already on the list, they have received the message. The issue is with getting them on the list in a smooth and simple manner, and the website does not help with that.

But more importantly, if you're transferring these members from existing Yahoo Groups you don't need to invite them - and they don't have to accept anything. Instead they receive a Welcome message from Groups.io and are members of your group (with a Groups.io account) as part of the transfer process. The Welcome message does have an opt-out in it in case they don't want to be members.

Except that this is a high turnover club. Typically 30-40 new members each year. And of those 30-40 people, there are always a few who never manage to get onto the mailing list. The Yahoo messages are so obtuse it is not surprising. I was hoping groups.io would be better.

I found it helps to put a ruling line at the top and bottom of your customizable section. That helps guide the eye and clarify what's boilerplate and what's personal message.

That's a useful tip, but really it does not look good to be saying "Ignore anything after this".

Most of my classmate group members came over from my Yahoo Groups, so in a sense maybe they aren't "newbies" - they'd put up with Yahoo Groups footers and other distractions already.

In our case, Yahoo has been a challenge that has caused many hours of unnecessary effort. I thought groups.io might be better. It certainly is in some respects, but in others it is no different.

The question is whether to make the effort to move them or not. It needs to be significantly better to make it worthwhile.

David

yes - the yahoogroup remains unchanged

one thing i suggest (after having made the move for several groups) is to set all member on the yahoogroup to moderated after successful transfer and after having them notified them ..

whenever someone posted on yahoo by accident i released the message, after adding a little note "YOU ARE POSTING ON THE WRONG LIST, PLEASE CHANGE YOUR ADDRESSBOOK", and i took longer and longer times to moderate - this stopped the massive majority of mistaken addresses in a week or two ..

Servus

markus

?

Simple enough on the old group you can turn off the ability for persons to post messages, and one can change the groups page to inform users that the group has move and the appropriate links.

--
Cecil - k5nwa

chicopaddleheads,

Doesn't seem to be a removal function, and creating a first subgroup
appears to have altered the root address, apparently changing the
submission path. Advice?

You can delete the subgroup(s). There's a red Delete button at the bottom of the subgroup's Settings page.

However, the change to your group's web and email addresses is permanent; deleting all subgroups won't restore their original format. Your only option there would be to contact [email protected] and ask if the addresses can be reverted to the original form.

Shal

Ellen,

There's a lot of stuff on Wwtta so I'm guessing that groups.io is big.

Some pretty large groups have already moved over, so I wouldn't worry about that.

The message storage doesn't actually take much space, by today's storage standards, even for decades of active group participation. The limit you may run into is the 1 GB total storage limit for Files, Photos, and Attachments in a Basic (free) group. It is not that hard to have more than 1 GB of photos if you have a lot of them, or they're high resolution.

That happened with the move of one of my classmate groups - one Album had 400+ photos which were camera original size (10 and 10 megapixel). During the transfer Groups.io support (Mark) informed me of the problem and offered to downscale the photos to fit. At 2k x 2k they fit.

Who is running it? someone has to provide the space - and pay for it.
Or it comes from google?

Groups.io is an independent start-up company. Owned and run by Mark Fletcher. The About link at the bottom of each page contains a link to the history of Groups.io.

Groups.io runs on a "Freemium" business model. Which means that the free groups are being paid for by the Premium and Enterprise customers (I have one Premium group at the moment, so you're welcome). No ads. Mark buys compute and database storage from a web services company (a much bigger company than Groups.io) that specializes in hosting web sites. He also buys storage space for files and photos from Amazon Web Services - yes, that Amazon, and you have some idea how big they are.

So as to the size of Groups.io, it can grow dynamically. His service providers handle all the hard work of keeping the servers running, and they bill him by how much he uses.

I am now taking the first step. Let's see if Wwtta takes the transfer
groups URL.

You mean email address, right? Hopefully Yahoo will send out the invite, otherwise contact [email protected] and see if they can use a -subscribe command or home page join button instead. But if even those aren't being processed there may be a problem.

Shal

Ellen,

When I move (if I manage this) the yahoo group to io., all the stuff
remains at yahoo right?

Correct. No changes are made to your Yahoo Group.

I end up with two groups. An original on Yahoo which is now defunct
because Yahoo is not fixing it, and its continuation on io?

Correct again.

Though if Yahoo (Verizon/Oath, rather) does fix it you'll have two active groups. So at some point you may want to change some settings in your Yahoo Group to prevent new content postings from members. For mine I set the Yahoo groups on moderation so that I can "Reject with reply" any messages posted there, and remind them about the new group posting address.

Shal

David,

They are also only ever going to access the list via e-mail - they
will never go to the groups.io site, and they will never sign up as
groups.io members.

Most of my group members are the same way, in my PTA group (which is an Announcement Group) and in my classmate groups (which are discussion groups). My classmates are all 60+, varying widely in experience with computers and email, and most have managed to stick with my Yahoo Groups until I transferred the groups here. Everyone seems to like the change, at least those few who've ventured onto group web site for a look-see. The PTA members are generally a lot younger, but they don't have to do anything but receive announcements and (hopefully) show up for events. So far no one has acted or commented on being confused by the links at the bottom of messages, or by anything else about Yahoo Groups.

It is subtle, and I think much easier for them and for you than you're anticipating, but they are given a Groups.io account and profile the moment they accept your invitation (even by email reply). And if they accept by web they're logged in to their account at that moment, and stay logged in for 30 days (or they log out, or they clear their browser's cookies).

But more importantly, if you're transferring these members from existing Yahoo Groups you don't need to invite them - and they don't have to accept anything. Instead they receive a Welcome message from Groups.io and are members of your group (with a Groups.io account) as part of the transfer process. The Welcome message does have an opt-out in it in case they don't want to be members.

This is it. There is a second page if you open the PDF.

Thanks! Ok, so it is mostly a clone of their Subscription page, which they'd find if they clicked that link (in the left column of your group's pages).

Then you get the actual invitation message, which I thought was
customisable. Well, no. You can add a message in the middle of it (the
red bit), but you are still stuck with a lot of confusing stuff.

I found it helps to put a ruling line at the top and bottom of your customizable section. That helps guide the eye and clarify what's boilerplate and what's personal message.

But again, this applies to later newcomers, not to the members who transfer over.

You have been invited by xxxxxxxxxxx@... to join the Groups.io

That's odd. In the invitations I've sent to my groups my Display Name (which is my real name) appears in both places, not my email address. If you haven't you probably want to set a Display Name for yourself, maybe even the club name instead of your real name.

group [email protected].

Ah, I see you've got subgroups. My PTA group does, my classmate groups don't. Still, for the PTA group Members@[PTA name].groups.io seems to be clear enough.

1. They want to be invited by the club, not an e-mail address.
3. The e-mail address is displayed twice at the top - just
unnecessary.

See above about your display name.

4. If they have questions, I would rather say to contact me at an
e-mail address they already know, rather than some strangely formatted
address they do not recognise.
6. I would rather the signature be the club name than groups.io, for
similar reasons to above.

I wrote my custom section as a full message of its own, including a signature block at the bottom with my full name and email address. The paragraph just above that invites them to write to me if they have any questions.

It seems to me that groups.io is oriented towards sophisticated users
who know the difference between e-mail and forums. In this respect it
is very powerful. But loading newbies with all this is going to cause
*me* trouble.

Possibly, though that hasn't been my experience.

Most of my classmate group members came over from my Yahoo Groups, so in a sense maybe they aren't "newbies" - they'd put up with Yahoo Groups footers and other distractions already.

My PTA group members are mostly newbies - but I used Direct Add (a Premium group feature) to bring almost all of them into the PTA group. Fortunately the PTA group gains the vast majority of its new members during each school year's registration - so I've only had to pay for Premium one or two months each year.

Shal

Doesn't seem to be a removal function, and creating a first subgroup appears to have altered the root address, apparently changing the submission path. Advice?

开云体育

This is it. There is a second page if you open the PDF.

chicopaddleheads,

There was an annotation originally on the #wiki home page which
stated that a new post could REPLACE the wiki home page.

Do you mean where it says (or said) "Create a page with the title of Home to replace this page"? Note that's _page_ not _post_.

To experiment this was done. So the table of contents which
originally appeared is gone. How can this be UNdone?

Change the name of that page to something other than "Home". The index page that appears by default should return.

What customizations are possible?

Browse through GMF's Wiki for some examples. I replaced the Index page with a Home page that isn't an alphabetical list of the pages (that's available via the Pages button) and instead made a directory that's broken into sections. But all of that is manually written and maintained, not an automatically generated table of contents.

On some of the pages (for example "Composing New Topics and Replies: tips and tricks") I've used the TOC feature to create an automatically maintained TOC for just that page. There is no feature (that I know of) which will generate a list of the pages in your wiki, other than the default Index page or the Pages button.

What's the best way to INTEGRATE a Google Drive? (into any part of
Groups.io)

I don't know about that.

An easy thing is to have a link to it in the wiki, or the group description, or a sticky topic, or the group guidelines, wherever makes sense. But that's not really "integrated".

Shal

[excess quotes trimmed by moderator]

Perhaps, but hopefully not too quickly. There could be hundreds of thousands of Y! groups looking for a new home all at once...

Drew

On Wed, Nov 22, 2017 at 05:21 pm, Shal Farley wrote:

Apparently Mark's getting more than a few questions about it.

Maybe the patient is finally dying....and good riddance!
?
--
J

New moderator trying to figure things out.

There was an annotation originally on the #wiki home page which stated that a new post could REPLACE the wiki home page.
To experiment this was done. So the table of contents which originally appeared is gone.? How can this be UNdone?

What customizations are possible?

What's the best way to INTEGRATE a Google Drive?? (into any part of Groups.io)

J,

I said:

Apparently Mark's getting more than a few questions about it.

And Yahoo's Help community too.


Shal

J,

From the sound of this thread, things are going downhill fast over
at yahoo.

Apparently Mark's getting more than a few questions about it.


Shal

When I first saw this thread, I thought, what is this conversation doing here? I don't even want to have to THINK about yahoo groups any more, they're so bad. I even requested that the thread be deleted as OT. But now I see you are here BECAUSE of yahoo's failings.

Yahoo, to me, is so bad that I avoid it now at all costs. I've been running a groups.io group for a couple of years now, after having transferred from yahoo groups, and would never dream of going back. Yahoo, to me, is like the Dark Ages. I checked out your group and would be interested in joining, but not if it's still in yahoo. That's how bad yahoo is compared to groups.io! I avoid joining groups that are there!

Besides the infinitely better ease of use, and countless extra features (none of which you have to use if you don't want to), is the level of support already mentioned. I feel like I have a personal friend in Mark Fletcher, who runs it, because he is sooo responsive, perceptive, and dedicated (not to mention smart - he does things right).

You would have to write a book on how much better it is here. I shudder to even think about going into my old yahoo account any more.

Make the move! You'll get lots of help here. I would do it soon, too. From the sound of this thread, things are going downhill fast over at yahoo.
--
J