LDS site search problems

[Susan D. Young]

Hello Clive,

I may have some information that helps to clarify your quandary.

During late 2004 the LDS sent round a mailer to all Family History Centres
concerning an alarming number of repeated hits on their servers over a short
time span. Apparently, the problems originated with a number of individuals
and companies using programs to "cull" information from their system in huge
quantities. Problems further arose as many Family History Centres were
installing third-party temple ordinance checking software, all resulting in
massive hits on the servers within very small time spans. One solution Salt
Lake adopted was to institute a system whereby it became impossible for
mechanical culling of the I.G.I. data.

Of course, the benefit being that Salt Lake's servers are now running much
more efficiently - and, yes, they have even recently moved to new servers.

The downside for the genealogical computing community is that in order to
return to your search results on the I.G.I. you now have to click on the
link in the upper left-hand corner that says "search results". If you do
not follow that protocol, you will be taken to a timed-out page. And, as
you have discovered upon 'refreshing' you are returned to the original
search screen which has become quite devoid of the search criteria that you
had originally entered.

One last word - not all search results pages on the familysearch.org website
have been created equal. In the absence of a "return to search results"
link just clicking on your browser's back button should do the job. But, if
the link exists, you must use it, instead.

Best wishes,
Susan D. Young
[email protected]
http://www.ancestrysolutions.com