Getpersonas.com Migration Update

Amy Tsay

86 responses

** 3/26/13 UPDATE ** The final stage of migration will begin Thursday, Mar 28 at 2pm PDT. At this time, getpersonas.com will go into read-only mode, which means it will not accept any new registrations, logins, or theme submissions. We expect this process to last up to two weeks. After migration is complete, you will be able to submit new themes on addons.mozilla.org.

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We are making progress on the migration of getpersonas.com to addons.mozilla.org (AMO), and we wanted to give you an update! As many of you know, getpersonas.com was the original home for background themes, and was created as part of a Mozilla Labs experiment. The site became strained as a result of its success, and a move to the add-ons (and Marketplace) ecosystem is necessary to ensure it continues to thrive.

Background themes on AMO already enjoy features such as ratings and reviews, and support for over 30 languages. When the migration is complete, we’ll also have a brand-new submission page, artist profile page, and a vastly improved reviewer tool. (See below for screen shots).

We are aiming to complete the migration within the next three months. If you are a getpersonas.com user, you will receive an email containing more details in the coming weeks.

What it means for you as a getpersonas.com user

  1. If you have an AMO account using the same email address

    After the migration, log in to addons.mozilla.org using your AMO credentials. Your favorites from getpersonas.com will appear in your My Favorites collection, and any themes you have created will appear on your profile page.

  2. If you don’t have an AMO account

    After the migration, log in to addons.mozilla.org using your getpersonas.com credentials. Your favorites from getpersonas.com will appear in your My Favorites collection, and themes you have created will appear on your profile page.

  3. If you have accounts on both sites, and log in using different email addresses

    We won’t be able to automatically match accounts that have different email addresses. This means you will continue logging in to addons.mozilla.org using your AMO credentials to access your AMO content (e.g. add-ons you’ve created and your add-on collections), and log in using your getpersonas.com credentials to access your getpersonas.com content (e.g. themes you’ve created and your favorite themes).

    • If you’d like your content consolidated automatically (scenario #1), please change your email address on one of these sites ASAP, so they match.
    • If you don’t change your email address to match by the time the migration is complete, no worries—you can still transfer ownership of themes between accounts afterwards.

Last but not least, previews!

Theme submission page:

parisbridge

Profile Page:

Screen Shot 2013-02-27 at 4.47.17 PM

Review Tool:Screen Shot 2013-02-21 at 2.10.11 PM

86 responses

  1. MarkS wrote on :

    How about a checkbox, near tags, for animated themes. As a major category ?

    1. Amy Tsay wrote on :

      Hi Mark, due to performance issues, themes have been static since Firefox 18. You can read more about it here: https://blog.mozilla.org/addons/2012/12/11/improving-performance-with-static-themes/

  2. Zuri wrote on :

    wow this should be really cool!

  3. Gary wrote on :

    There should be at least 2 more categories
    -“Science and Technology” (or both or at least 1 anyway)
    -“Religion” or “Philosophy” or just “Metaphysics” if you prefer

    There are tons of religious and science & tech personas already

    Maybe a “Animals” cat. too unless “Nature” covers that.

    thanks

  4. Cathy wrote on :

    After the migration is complete, will we be able to organize our Favorites Persona collections into different categories or groups?
    For example, if we want to look through Personas we’ve collected for a particular holiday, ideally we wouldn’t have to go through random pages of Personas looking for those that fit the holiday.

    1. Amy Tsay wrote on :

      Hi Cathy, on AMO, you can create different collections of themes to suit your needs. So you could create an “Easter” collection, for example, and populate it with your favorite Easter themes. https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/collections/

      1. Cathy wrote on :

        Well, I’m not trying to start a collection of addons. I just want to organize my “My Favorites” Personas that I’ve already collected.

        I have a ton of different Personas under “My Favorites” and would like a way to organize them in folders/categories or something … that could be accessed by logging into “My Favorites.”

        1. Amy Tsay wrote on :

          This isn’t a feature we have currently, nor was it done for the migration. The work-around I mentioned earlier isn’t exactly what you describe and takes a little more work, but should help you organize your favorites better.

          1. Cathy wrote on :

            OK. It’s a little disappointing, because I remember several months ago a group at Mozilla was taking comments on potential features/improvements to Personas. I mentioned the idea of being able to easily organize large Persona collections and was advised I wasn’t the only who had asked about that. Perhaps it’s a feature Mozilla can consider in the future?

          2. Pat wrote on :

            I have to agree with Cathy. There, sorely needs a way to organize our favorites! I have 28 pages of themes. It would be so much easier to if here were folders where we can organize.
            Everyone, that i know that uses this app, says the exact same thing.
            Please consider this option for faithful users!

            Thanks!

          3. Amy Tsay wrote on :

            Thanks for your feedback. Would it meet your needs to be able to search within your Favorites, or sort them?

          4. Daniel Veditz wrote on :

            Excuse my out-of-order reply, the comment I’m replying to did not have a “Reply” link (comment nesting limit?)

            “Would it meet your needs to be able to search within your Favorites, or sort them?”

            Sorting sounds useless. Searching /might/ work if there’s a tagging mechanism; searching that’s restricted to the AMO information alone won’t do it, there needs to be a way for us to designate our own criteria on which to search.

            There appears to be a comment field when adding an add-on to favorites. If you add a search feature and include the comments that might work for a hack, but I can’t find the comment after I add the group. Is it saved? Only a small percentage of us will have so many favorites that grouping is necessary, but we will tend to be the feature’s biggest fans.

        2. Pat wrote on :

          I totally agree with you. So do many other members!

          1. Kristen wrote on :

            I agree with Cathy and Pat. Right now I have to delete my holiday personas and hope they are still available next time around. Most of the time I can’t find all the themes I had before. Organization of the ‘My Favorites’ category and Holiday categories would be very helpful.
            Keep up the good work! I love my Mozilla!

  5. Maik wrote on :

    Super.

  6. Margo Fennell wrote on :

    Hi
    I’ve noticed my personas rotator is staying on only one of themes. It’s not rotating. Is that to be expected becoz of the switch? Perhaos becoz of not being able to login? I have rotation enabled. Thanxxx….Margo

    1. Amy Tsay wrote on :

      Hi Margo, that’s correct–Personas Rotator will have to be updated for it to work after the migration, and we have reached out to the developer.

  7. akiha wrote on :

    I can’t say I fully understand these changes but I am concerned about all that sharing. I don’t want to share nor want anybody to know. I liked the old system better. Plus how will this effect other add-ons such as Persona Shuffle, Persona Next, and Persona Rotate?

  8. Jonathan wrote on :

    So all my fav’s should be migrated into my addons account? (as the persona and addons account use the same email).

    Also will does that mean the persona rotater add on will now be redundant? I will definitely miss that… 🙁

  9. Jean wrote on :

    Wow I love Personas and can’t wait til you come back.

  10. TheWalkingCactus wrote on :

    I hope this will fix the log-out bug that some people have been having! (The one where clicking ‘keep me logged in’ did nothing)
    It’s been a real pain to having to always log back in.

    1. akiha wrote on :

      I’m with you there. I do hope that’s fixed as well it’s bothersome having to log back almost every time I close the browser.

  11. JH wrote on :

    I think there are way too many personas that were submitted as tests or as errors, and should be deleted, especially if there has never been a user for that persona. Can you consider a purge??

  12. minstrel wrote on :

    The move sounds exciting, and I’m hoping for even better Personas maneuvering.

    I too would like to hahve a way to organize favorites. When using Personas Rotator (fabulous addon!), various holiday favorites rotate in, and in June or July I don’t really want Christmas Personas popping onto Firefox. If we could have the Personas organized into at least a few categories, we could choose which of our favorites we want to be rotated into the mix.

    I would also love to see a way to make comments to the creators of the Personas. Often I have wanted to compliment and thank a Personas creator, and I have found no way to do that.

    The log-out bug has been annoying. Even when I have Firefox remember my login info, I still have to go to the Personas login page to activate the login each day.

    Thanks! I love Personas!!!!

    1. Amy Tsay wrote on :

      Hi minstrel, you can review themes on AMO already–from any theme detail page, e.g. https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/addon/downy-white-dandelion/ (this is the one I’m using at the moment), scroll to the bottom and you’ll see an area to comment and rate.

      The log-out bug has been addressed in the migration.

  13. Cathy wrote on :

    Hi Amy, thanks for listening to those of us who are faithful Personas users. I don’t think searching within our favorites is what we’re asking for. Instead, it’s an easy, intuitive way to sort/organize/categorize the Personas we have already collected.

    Like Pat said, many of us have a dozen or more pages of Persona themes. It would be terrific if I could move all the Christmas themes to a folder or album labeled “Christmas,” or something like that. Also, if I find a new Persona I like, say a beach scene, it would be nice to be able to save that one into an album or folder labeled “Beach.”

    Just to give an example, if you use an iPhone, in iOS 6 your pictures are saved in one big group on the Camera Roll, BUT you can create separate albums with the desired labels and move pictures from the monolithic Camera Roll into those named albums.

    In the case of Firefox Personas, the way we’re doing it now is just saving Personas to the equivalent of our “Camera Roll,” with no way of organizing or categorizing them.

    1. Amy Tsay wrote on :

      Hi Cathy, in your scenario about finding a new theme you like, I would create a collection called Beach. Then when you come across one you like (e.g. https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/addon/seashells-on-the-beach/), click on Add to Collection (below the green Add to Firefox button), and choose the Beach collection.

      As for organizing the many themes you already have in your Favorites collection, I have filed this bug: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=857287

      1. Cathy wrote on :

        Thanks Amy. If I was just starting out collecting themes, I can see that would be a good tip.
        I appreciate you filing a bug in regard to organizing and sorting the Favorites Personas we’ve already saved.

        1. Cathy wrote on :

          Just to add something to my previous comment, it looks like the bug report says this is for just the Mac OS.

          Wouldn’t the inability to file/categorize an existing collection of Persona themes also apply to Firefox users on Windows or Linux?

  14. Sam wrote on :

    Will each dedsigner have his/her own page that will show only their work like it was on getpersonas? This is definetely needed.

    1. Amy Tsay wrote on :

      Yes! And you can see a screen shot of it above, under the “Profile Page” header.

  15. Linda wrote on :

    In the past few months the bug thats bugged me the most, besides having to log in constantly, is that all my personas now RANDOMLY rotate, they are different every time I log on! Also, the animated personas are no longer animated, AND many personas that I have deleted, keep coming back again, kinda like zombies!!! So, those three things are top of my list for annoying Persona problems ever since the latest edition of Mozilla has taken over.

  16. Kim wrote on :

    What is the expected start date to login on AMO using our Getpersonas credentials?

    1. Amy Tsay wrote on :

      Hi Kim, we went into read-only mode on 3/28 and expected the migration to take up to two weeks, so we should be done by next Thursday. Thanks for your patience…

  17. Danial wrote on :

    Logged into AMO
    none of my favourited persona’s are present

    1. Amy Tsay wrote on :

      Hi Danial, the migration is still ongoing, and as expected it should be completed in the next week. Thanks for your patience!

      1. Quik Nick wrote on :

        Hi Amy,

        Can you confirm the openning on tomorrow ? And getpersonas website will be still active after migration ?

        thx

        Cheers

  18. MonaK wrote on :

    When will Personas be working again? Seems like it has been offline forever. Will users be notified? Do we have to re-register for it again or install the add-on again?

  19. JimBeaux wrote on :

    Your “2 weeks” is up TODAY; Personas – – – where are you???

    1. Amy Tsay wrote on :

      Yes, we are planning to push today at approximately 2pm Pacific Time. We’ll post here when it’s done!

  20. T wrote on :

    Can you be sure to emphasize what this means “If you don’t change your email address to match by the time the migration is complete, no worries—you can still transfer ownership of themes between accounts afterwards.” Copied from above.

    1. Denise wrote on :

      How do you go about doing this?

      1. T wrote on :

        I don’t know how, that’s what I was asking Amy Tsay about.

    2. Amy Tsay wrote on :

      Hi T, we intended to have a feature that would allow people to edit ownership of their themes. However, it didn’t make it into the push yesterday. We’re tracking the issue here: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=861240 We apologize for any confusion…

      1. T wrote on :

        Thanks for the reply, I think I did something wrong when I changed my account/email over so I needed that. I’ll just have to watch that link.

  21. Denise wrote on :

    I’m so frustrated. None of the Persona’s that I’ve created in getpersonas.com are showing up in my mozilla.org account. Please advise how I go about transferring. I can’t even find them.
    Thank you.
    Denise

    1. Denise wrote on :

      I just tried uploading a new Persona and noticed that the dimensions have changed. Why is this? Does this mean our old Persona’s won’t work?

      1. Amy Tsay wrote on :

        The dimensions haven’t changed, so they should still work.

    2. Denise wrote on :

      O.K., I found my Personas. They are now under an account titled: ootfmonty-1364605217.5
      I need help getting them into my mozilla.org (ddjenne) account now. Also would like to move my favorites as well.

  22. Denise wrote on :

    Another thing. How do you sign into The Forums? When I try to register, it says I already have but I still cannot get into the forums to ask questions.
    Thanks.

    1. Amy Tsay wrote on :

      You’ll need your username to log in, which you can find here: https://addons.mozilla.org/users/edit

  23. Annette wrote on :

    Wow. This migration was a surprise to me. I’m trying to personalize my browser. It states “move your mouse over a background theme to try it on”. This is not working, and I’ve been doing a little searching on my own to try to resolve this, but with no luck. Any idea why I can no longer seem to preview themes?

  24. Sam wrote on :

    I’ve got a problem when trying to log in on addons.mozilla.org. My getpersonas account used to be just a nickname and a password, but now I need an e-mail address to log in. How can I log in using my getpersonas credentials if it had no e-mail address? Will I be able to recover my favourite personas with only that nickname and password and am I required to create a new account on addons.mozilla.org and collect all the personas again?
    I hope you can help me with this. Thanks in advance.

    1. Amy Tsay wrote on :

      Hi Sam, you were asked for an email address when you signed up for a getpersonas.com account. This is the email you would use to log in to addons.mozilla.org. Does this help?

      1. Sam wrote on :

        Hello Amy,
        Last time I tried to log in with an e-mail address (yesterday?) it didn’t work, but now it does! Yay! Now I can access my favourite personas/themes again. I guess I just didn’t try hard enough.
        It’s been fixed, thank you!

  25. Seeing old favorites? wrote on :

    If you type in “about:addons” and click Appearance on the right, is that all your favorites you use to have on the getpersonas.com page?

    1. Amy Tsay wrote on :

      These would be themes you’ve previously installed, not necessarily a list of your favorites. You could mark a theme “favorite” without adding it to your Add-ons Manager. Have you been able to log in to addons.mozilla.org and see your favorites?

  26. T wrote on :

    Is there anyway to view your old favorites from the getpersonas.com? I know you can type about:addons in the url bar and click appearance, but I can’t remember if that is all the themes I have added to my favorites on the site before migration.

    1. Amy Tsay wrote on :

      Assuming you didn’t already have an AMO account, if you log in to addons.mozilla.org with your getpersonas credentials, you should see your favorites.

      1. T wrote on :

        I think I had an account at both sites, but I couldn’t login to AMO with my getpersonas.com credentials. So I believe I changed my AMO account email to match my getpersonas.com credentials, but I don’t have my favorites.

        1. Amy Tsay wrote on :

          Please private message me with the email address you used for both accounts so we can look into it: https://forums.mozilla.org/addons/memberlist.php?mode=viewprofile&u=5946434

  27. Renee wrote on :

    Hello, Personas Plus and Personas Rotator no longer work. I have several personas/themes in My Favorites but they will not rotate any longer. This is very unfortunate. Will the Personas Rotator work with these ‘themes’ in the future? Thank you.

    1. Amy Tsay wrote on :

      Hi Renee, Personas Rotator hasn’t been updated yet, but Personas Plus should rotate your favorites. Are you using the latest version?

  28. Lenka wrote on :

    Hi! I can’t access my favourites after this migration. When I’m trying to do that, I’m asked to enter my e-mail and a password. But my credentials on getpersonas.com were only my username and a password, not e-mail. What shall I do to be able to see my favourites again? Could you please help me?

    1. Amy Tsay wrote on :

      Hi Lenka, do you remember the email address you used for getpersonas? You will need that to log in to AMO. Please private-message me if you still have problems. https://forums.mozilla.org/addons/memberlist.php?mode=viewprofile&u=5946434

  29. Lenka wrote on :

    Unfortunately, the link is not helpful. After I enter my username and password it says “The specified username is currently inactive”. How can I contact the board administrator or private-message you?

    1. Amy Tsay wrote on :

      If you have an account on addons.mozilla.org, you should be able to log in to the forums with your username (all lower caps) and password.

      1. Lenka wrote on :

        I’m not sure I have an aacount on addons.mozilla.org. I seem to have had an account only on getpersonas… The point is that I didn’t use any e-mail for getpersonas. While registering to be able to add personas to favourites, I was only required to enter the username and the password. What kind of account was that?
        I definitely use correct username and password, but it keeps saying that such username is currently inactive. My username was lenkabenka.

        1. Amy Tsay wrote on :

          Ok, I was able to look up your email, and will look into your missing favorites.

          1. Lenka wrote on :

            I’ll be really grateful if you could help. But I’d like to make sure you understand my problem correctly.
            I had no account on AMO till April 23, 2013. I created it because I was not able to log in to see my personas faves. (I was required then to enter my email, although I didn’t have one, only username and password for getpersonas). So I decided to create a new account, using an email address this time but also the same password and username as I used to have on getpersonas. But when I tried to log in that new account, I got “Oops! We had an error. We’ll get to fixing that soon.” Three days have passed but the problem still remains.
            I can neither use my getpersonas credentials nor enter my new account (I’m not even sure if it exists at all).
            I seem to have the same problem as Sam (above), the only difference is that he had his getpersonas account and email which helped him to log in. But as I said before, I have no email. And when you say you were able to look up my email, it is probably the email I used to create that new account of mine, which doesn’t work and thus has no favourites at all.
            I hope I an clear to explain this to you. I’m sorry for bothering you wth such long messages. I’d simply like my favourites to be back again.

          2. Amy Tsay wrote on :

            Hi Lenka, it wasn’t possible to create a getpersonas account without an email…is there an address you likely used?

          3. Lenka wrote on :

            Hi, Amy! After you said it was impossible to create a getpersonas account without an email, I did my best to search for something like “personas” message among my letters, and I was lucky to have found one eventually. It was resetting personas password notification. Thus I found the email address I used for personas. I can access my favourites again! Thanks a lot for your precise answers and comprehensive explanations.

          4. Amy Tsay wrote on :

            Hooray! Enjoy!

  30. Cathy wrote on :

    Hi Amy, I’m experiencing a rather strange behavior in the Personas I select to use as a browser theme. This behavior began after the Migration. I’ve never seen it before, and it doesn’t occur on any specific Web site.
    Personas have always appeared as the background area area for the Nav bar, bookmarks bar, etc. with a little bit showing above those bars. Now, after maybe half an hour or so of reading on the Web, suddenly the Persona background slides down and shows an extra 2 inches of theme above the regular space it occupies on my older, 20-inch iMac. That takes up a huge chunk of screen real estate!
    The phenomenon goes away if I restart Firefox, then reappears after a while.
    I’d be happy to send you a screenshot, just let me know how.

  31. Amy Tsay wrote on :

    Hi Cathy, a screen shot would be great. You can use this add-on to capture your screen: https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/addon/awesome-screenshot-capture-/

    1. Cathy wrote on :

      Thanks Amy, I already have a screenshot. Here’s a link: http://i914.photobucket.com/albums/ac349/islandgirl452009/StrangePersonabehavior.jpg

      1. Amy Tsay wrote on :

        Hi Cathy, which extensions do you have installed? It doesn’t seem like the theme is the issue…

  32. Cathy wrote on :

    Hi Amy, I’ve listed below the extensions I have installed. As I mentioned in the initial note, this behavior did not appear until after the Persona Migration. I’ve never seen it before and I’ve run Firefox, with the same extensions installed for many years.

    Adblock Plus
    Add to Amazon Wish List Button
    BarTab
    BetterPrivacy
    ColorfulTabs
    DoNotTrackMe
    Download Statusbar
    FastestFox
    Firefox PDF Plugin for Mac OS X
    Fission
    Flagfox
    Googlebar Lite
    GoogleEnhancer
    HTTPS-Everywhere
    LastPass
    Lazarus: Form Recovery
    Morning Coffee
    MR Tech Toolkit
    Open in Safari
    OptimizeGoogle
    Personas
    Pocket
    PriceDrop
    Readability
    Speed Dial
    Tab Mix Plus
    Tweak Network
    Update Notifier
    Xmarks
    Yahoo! Mail Notifier

    As an aside, I notice we can only view our “Favorites” in a 2-across format, with just two across and lots of surrounding white space left on the screen. I think there used to be about 5 Personas going across under the old setup.
    I have about 500 Personas saved as “Favorites.” Is there a way to modify the current default view of “Favorites” and see 5-6 Personas (or more) across the screen?
    Thanks, Cathy

    1. Cathy wrote on :

      I forgot to add, this weird Persona behavior is occurring with other Personas as well.

      1. Amy Tsay wrote on :

        Hi Cathy, some of your add-ons are quite old and haven’t been updated in a while. Would you mind disabling all but the ones you can’t do without, and see if that helps? Or even better, disable everything, see if it’s better, then re-enable them one by one.

        Re: your favorites page–you should see 3 across, like this: http://i.imgur.com/ISmw2Nw.png

        1. Cathy wrote on :

          Amy,
          Yes, I know some of my extensions are quite old. I can’t update any farther with them, or FF 3.6.28, because I’m using an iMac with an older operating system, OSX 10.4.11. This computer is not mine; it is owned by my employer and was purchased for me to use several years ago, as I work out of my home.
          I think it’s important to reiterate, as I said before, I have never seen this odd behavior for Personas until after the Persona Migration. Thus, the reason I asked you about it.

          1. Cathy wrote on :

            Oh, I forgot to add, I see 3 Personas across before I log in to my “Favorites.” Once logged in, I see only 2 Personas across as this picture displays…
            http://i914.photobucket.com/albums/ac349/islandgirl452009/Favoritesscreenshot_zps288f93a0.jpg

  33. Twyla McKee wrote on :

    so, what happens when after resetting firefox due to a malware issue, your favorites list JUST DISAPPEARS LIKE YOU NEVER HAD ONE.

  34. Chris wrote on :

    I have a login on getperosnas.com, I have not signed in for a while but cannot login at all.
    I have my password in lastpass so I have it correct.
    If I register say username is used and email.
    Getting my password resett does not help don’t get a email even though it says email has been sent.

    I am lost 🙂

    1. Amy Tsay wrote on :

      Hi Chris, have you tried logging in to addons.mozilla.org with the email you used with your getpersonas.com account?

      1. Chris wrote on :

        Yep sure did, with no luck. Ummmmmmmm I just tried again and it logged in
        *doh* feel like a tool … this time I typed the passwd rather than copy paste!

        thank U!