ALERT, Zenfolio Archiving wiped out half my galleries today

‘Circling the drain…’

Victor Engel said:

Time is running out for me - and it looks like about a dozen new galleries are getting archived per day, so unarchiving may not catch up to archiving. I've asked that my most recent complaint to support be escalated - how did you get in touch with upper management?

Click to expand...

I wrote a (snail mail) letter to the CEO; I then sent a copy of that letter via email to the generic support address and asked that it be kicked up the chain.

--Kerry

VisionLight said:

Kerry,

Since you first advised me of this, as we have conferred, I have still not been able to see it on my site. Maybe my database project in which I have opened all 156 of my galleries and downloaded the Metadata files from each has put a hold on this process executing. I have also been syncing File Names and Titles to match between Zenfolio and my database, which in a good number of instances has meant deleting the file from Zenfolio and downloading a new file from my database. Other than Victor's new Zenfolio Logo appearing a lot, all images seem to be appearing without individually archiving. My database project is now about 70% complete, so I hope it stays this way for the remaining 30%. I'll keep looking.

(Side Note: Sorry to see that your Bruins won't be facing my Rangers. That would have been a great series.)

Ed

Click to expand...

Ed, I can't be certain why you're not seeing any images going into archive; I'm just glad that you don't have to deal with the annoyance of it happening, at least for now.

I kept generating the problem by attempting to do a mass download of all the images in each of my 447 galleries. If any of the images in the galleries archived (and they did, in 314 of them), I'd get a message confirming that there was an image archive issue and that the entire gallery would go into the restoration process. The restorations, in my case, all took place within 12 hours of the automated request. (I confirmed this by going through the mass download process again with each of the 314 galleries; on the second attempt, all the images downloaded.)

Do understand, however, that what I'm describing has been confirmed by Zenfolio support as something that does/will happen. The exact pattern (e.g. why it happens with some images in a gallery and not all of them) has not been explained to me.

--Kerry


P.S. Bruins-Rangers would, indeed, have been a great series. I don't think that the Panthers are going to crawl into the fetal position either, however, so get your skates laced up.

Ahh - sounds like when the gallery is unarchived, there's a failure in processing an image. It also seems like when this happens, there is not a process to handle individual images, hence the whole gallery must be reprocessed. This seems like a recipe for thrashing.

Thanks for addressing the issue with Zenfolio. I've been with them for a long time (ten years?), and have some pretty important / unique galleries on my site, galleries that interest museums, publishing houses, CNN and my academic peers. So when they started to archive stuff, I immediately reacted and reactivated (un-archived) stuff. I also streamlined my galleries, culling about a thousand images. So far so good from my side of the fence (I only have one or two galleries still in an archival state), but I am also considering my options going forward. Part of that reasoning is the sub-par state of SEO tagging in ZF, which has been the subject of much discussion over the years.

Again, thanks for keeping people updated on the lines of communication and technicalities behind this bizarre decision making process.

T
___________________________

Thanks, T, for joining the conversation. When we band together, find out and keep each other informed of what is really going on, we get things done.

Victor Engel said:

Ahh - sounds like when the gallery is unarchived, there's a failure in processing an image. It also seems like when this happens, there is not a process to handle individual images, hence the whole gallery must be reprocessed. This seems like a recipe for thrashing.

Click to expand...

It seems that when a gallery is ARCHIVING, it is not available to unarchive. It is also not available as a gallery. I got a note from support that I can tell when a gallery is scheduled for archiving by navigating to it. But it is not possible to navigate to these galleries.

Victor Engel said:

Victor Engel said:

Ahh - sounds like when the gallery is unarchived, there's a failure in processing an image. It also seems like when this happens, there is not a process to handle individual images, hence the whole gallery must be reprocessed. This seems like a recipe for thrashing.

Click to expand...

It seems that when a gallery is ARCHIVING, it is not available to unarchive. It is also not available as a gallery. I got a note from support that I can tell when a gallery is scheduled for archiving by navigating to it. But it is not possible to navigate to these galleries.

Click to expand...

Down to 28 galleries showing on the top line of the archive page. Irritatingly, 4 of them are showing as Archiving. I thought I had tweaked them all so they wouldn't archive. It turns out there's misleading behavior.

If you go to a gallery and then tap on the title, then press enter. The modified date is updated. So I thought the modified date was updated. However, if I then go to another gallery and then back again, the old date is there. It seems I can't edit any item on the gallery but must tweak an image in the gallery. I complained to support about this but have not heard a response yet. What are other people doing to get galleries to appear recently updated?

Had I known they were going to archive galleries, I'd have done something like this with all the galleries. This way it's possible to tell at a glance when one gallery has an issue. On this page, each thumbnail comes from a different gallery (for the most part - there are a couple of exceptions). https://www.victorspictures.com/oneofeach
With this sort of setup, it makes no sense to have to update galleries regularly. Most have static content.

BTW, open that page, click on the view all link if you don't see all the thumbnails and search for Pseudoxenetus. THAT IS NOT MY PICTURE. Do you recognize it? Is it yours? AND THERE ARE MORE - any picture not a bug picture is not mine.

--
Victor Engel

This is inexcusable.

--
Victor Engel

It's not quite as serious as I thought, but still a breach. If I navigate to each of those wrong images and select download, the correct image downloads.

Victor,

I didn't look all the way back in this thread to see if I quoted this before, but here is a snippet of one of my conversations with Zenfolio about the underlying causes of the whole problem in the first place:

". . . we ran into a series of issues that culminated in one big problem that our engineers have been working around the clock to correct since then. To put it simply, there's a discrepancy in play between how us here at Zenfolio actual and our data storage provider are handling the archiving of user images/Galleries. That discrepancy is the underlying cause of a majority of the issues that our users are experiencing at the moment.

To clarify, there are two major "moving parts" to archiving:

1. The archiving of Galleries, which is what our Archive system does, which has a graphical/UI element to it. That's the part you can see - when our system archives your Galleries, they are moved to your Archive tool where you can manage them. In the archive tool, you can manage Archive settings, restore galleries, see gallery information, and so on. However, there's another piece of the puzzle, that of our data storage provider;
2. Our data storage provider is archiving user images separately from their containing Galleries, and because that part is not handled directly by our system, there isn't a UI component to it - which means that our users aren't able to see when that has happened.

To further complicate the issue, because our data storage provider's system is divorced from our actual internal servers, it is not subject to the strain of the 100,000,000 transfer requests that we experience every day, nor does it have to share any storage space with our 20 Petabytes (20 million gigabytes) of user data that we have stored on our servers. As a result, their system can move at a much quicker pace than ours can - and because of that, they have been able to archive images much faster than we've been able to archive user Galleries.

This has lead to a "desync" between user Galleries and Images, where our system thinks that the Gallery and Images are not archived and tries to query the user's request - but because the images are already archived (and aren't on active storage anymore), it isn't able to proceed.

This has caused problems for users . . ."

I believe this explains why we are seeing a lot of the problems like the one you are showing us.

Ed

Have you seen this? https://shuttermuse.com/zenfolios-a...move-photos-from-your-website/#comment-201242

I found it when searching for a way to rebuild images for a gallery. I tried downloading the images that I stated are not mine, and the downloaded ones are correct. So rebuilding the images should fix the problem. But finding that site, it seems we should be somehow migrated over to their new architecture. If it has to be a manual process over the next 14 months, so-be-it. I can't believe it can't be automated, though.

Do you see the people filter? https://success.zenfolio.com/hc/en-us/articles/7430773985299-Using-the-People-Filter-Feature

I've never seen such a filter, and the instructions don't seem to match my screens.

Victor Engel said:

Victor Engel said:

Victor Engel said:

Ahh - sounds like when the gallery is unarchived, there's a failure in processing an image. It also seems like when this happens, there is not a process to handle individual images, hence the whole gallery must be reprocessed. This seems like a recipe for thrashing.

Click to expand...

It seems that when a gallery is ARCHIVING, it is not available to unarchive. It is also not available as a gallery. I got a note from support that I can tell when a gallery is scheduled for archiving by navigating to it. But it is not possible to navigate to these galleries.

Click to expand...

Down to 28 galleries showing on the top line of the archive page. Irritatingly, 4 of them are showing as Archiving. I thought I had tweaked them all so they wouldn't archive. It turns out there's misleading behavior.
If you go to a gallery and then tap on the title, then press enter. The modified date is updated. So I thought the modified date was updated. However, if I then go to another gallery and then back again, the old date is there. It seems I can't edit any item on the gallery but must tweak an image in the gallery. I complained to support about this but have not heard a response yet. What are other people doing to get galleries to appear recently updated?

Click to expand...

I have been editing the title of the first image in a gallery. I edit it, save it and then reedit is back to what it was before. Thus, no real change. This seems to work as far as I can tell.

Victor Engel said:

Have you seen this? https://shuttermuse.com/zenfolios-a...move-photos-from-your-website/#comment-201242
I found it when searching for a way to rebuild images for a gallery. I tried downloading the images that I stated are not mine, and the downloaded ones are correct. So rebuilding the images should fix the problem. But finding that site, it seems we should be somehow migrated over to their new architecture. If it has to be a manual process over the next 14 months, so-be-it. I can't believe it can't be automated, though.

Click to expand...

Sorry for the delay in replying, Victor. It took a while until I had time to read the whole article, which was very informative. But one of the most important things I read was your comment about the new Zenfolio vs. Classic Zenfolio dilemma which I will insert here:

"On your comment about classic Zenfolio vs. modern Zenfolio, if they offered something like this:

* create an empty new site (no charge to classic Zenfolio users)
* let us migrate over the next 14 months from classic to new site.
* retire old site

I think I’d be game for that. Having said that, I don’t buy the excuse that they can’t automate the process. Or does the new Zenfolio lack features of the classic?"

I agree, and I'm wondering if Zenfolio's answer is they still can't do the migration or if this is somehow part of their new "archive optional" plan. I'll ask them.

Browsing online, I saw a post where they gave instructions for doing facial recognition. I asked support about that. Here is their partial response:

"The People Filter is actually a feature tied to our nextgen platform, which is completely separate from our Classic platform where your account is located. The guide you're viewing there also pertains to that platform as well.

While this feature is indeed part of the feature set offered on the nextgen platform, we unfortunately do not have a comparable feature on our Classic platform at this time, Victor. Sorry for the confusion!

When you're looking through our support center guides, please make sure to take note of the root URL - if the root is support.zenfolio.com, then that means the guide pertains to your platform, the Classic platform. If the root is success.zenfolio.com, then the guide pertains to our nextgen platform."

What if I want success?

VisionLight said:

Victor Engel said:

Have you seen this? https://shuttermuse.com/zenfolios-a...move-photos-from-your-website/#comment-201242
I found it when searching for a way to rebuild images for a gallery. I tried downloading the images that I stated are not mine, and the downloaded ones are correct. So rebuilding the images should fix the problem. But finding that site, it seems we should be somehow migrated over to their new architecture. If it has to be a manual process over the next 14 months, so-be-it. I can't believe it can't be automated, though.

Click to expand...

Sorry for the delay in replying, Victor. It took a while until I had time to read the whole article, which was very informative. But one of the most important things I read was your comment about the new Zenfolio vs. Classic Zenfolio dilemma which I will insert here:

"On your comment about classic Zenfolio vs. modern Zenfolio, if they offered something like this:

* create an empty new site (no charge to classic Zenfolio users)
* let us migrate over the next 14 months from classic to new site.
* retire old site

I think I’d be game for that. Having said that, I don’t buy the excuse that they can’t automate the process. Or does the new Zenfolio lack features of the classic?"

I agree, and I'm wondering if Zenfolio's answer is they still can't do the migration or if this is somehow part of their new "archive optional" plan. I'll ask them.

Click to expand...

. . . is that support received Victor's latest request before Management received mine. Here's the reply:

"Interestingly enough, one of my colleagues, Jon, just replied to an email that Victor Engel sent us and I believe it covers a great deal of the concerns mentioned in this thread.

It's quite a lengthy reply, so I'd like to give some time for Victor to review and ask any follow-up questions before I share some of that response with you. I know the community is very strong at DPR and many of you are in close communication, so I imagine you might see that reply within the coming days.

For now, I can let you know that creating a migration path for Classic customers to move over to the New Zenfolio platform is one of our top company goals for 2024. We've assembled a team that includes stakeholders from all departments to plan a migration solution, and while the details are still in the research/planning stage, it is our mission to make this process as simple and painless as possible."

OK, Victor, we await your reaction to their lengthy reply.

VisionLight said:

OK, Victor, we await your reaction to their lengthy reply.

Click to expand...

Among other things that dealt with issues specific to me, they confirmed the classic v. new platforms. I need to do an overhaul anyway, so I asked if it were an option to do the migration manually. The response was that they don't advertise that as a possibility because it requires a lot of work, having to create a new account on the new system, then upload everything (downloading first from the old if you don't have a local copy). The new system has a free 2 week trial. Then I was given a discount code, which is equivalent to the existing discount published online that expires at the end of the month. After the new site is set up and everything uploaded, if there is a custom domain name, it can be switched over as the last step.

So that's likely what I will do. There was one particular gallery that was not restored after restoring for about 5 days. It's now completed after the engineering team was called on to get it working. I currently have 12 galleries being restored. It was 11 earlier today, but another one mysteriously got archived.

I'm seeing this in some of my restored galleries also. And if you think about, it's really a Big Frickin' Deal, as I'm sure there are boudoir photographers using Zenfolio.