Records entered at iRecord not syncing with butterflyrecording.org

Is there any way to get this fixed. I've contacted iRecord numerous times and raised this with butterfly conservation (who have raised it with iRecord) but nothing ever happens. I used to enjoy recording butterflies, it would be a shame to miss yet another year of recording.

Your two accounts aren't really the same, even though they may have exactly the same username, email and password - it's the account number that's the critical distinguishing feature. (To confirm the account number, log in, open the My Account page and check the url in the address bar).

As an experiment, I created a new account on butterflyrecording with exactly the same details as my iRecord account, and then added a new record. The butterflyrecording Explore All page shows that new record - but it does not show any of the hundreds of butterfly records I've previously added via my iRecord account. When the new record appears on iRecord, I cannot edit it (since it belongs to differenct account), and it shows the source as "92|413", which is displayed as "Survey: Butterfly records" in the record details page. You can create a filter for this dataset by clicking on "Source" and then selecting "Website: Butterflies for the New Millennium" and "Survey dataset: Butterfly records". It seems that the butterflyrecording site is effectively using the same filter, which is why you don't see any other records from iRecord.

All my previous iRecord butterfly records are in the "23|42" dataset, which is "IRecord general data". The big problem with the butterflyrecording site is that it doesn't allow users to access all the filter options that iRecord provides, so there's no way to specify all the datasets you want to include - you just get a fixed default of the site's own records. Presumably, this is what changed earlier this year, so you need to take this up with the butterflyrecording admins. OTOH, since all the records have to go through iRecord, I don't see much point in ever using the butterflyrecording website. Once the records have been verified, they'll eventually all make their way to Butterfly Conservation anyway, so it doesn't matter which method you used to upload you records, nor which dataset they originally came from.

Thanks Barry, you've been more help than butterflyrecording and iRecord have been in two and a half years.

I've always understood that specialist sites like butterflyrecording are just portals that feed into iRecord. The look of the butterflyrecording site and the way it closely mimics the iRecord site suggests that they weren't developed in isolation. In fact both use Drupal as a CMS and as far as I can tell butterflyrecording may use Indicia just like iRecord does.

I started off biological recording by recording butterflies so butterflyrecording was my first account but when I started recording bees and hoverflies I opened an iRecord account too. I'm almost certain that originally I could enter butterfly records at either butterflyrecording or iRecord and view all the records at either site. In fact on the account creation page at butterflyrecording it still says "This site allows you to submit records of butterflies which form a shared pool of data with those submitted via iRecord... If you wish to maintain all your records together from these different sources, please make sure that you register with the same email address on each system". It seems likely that the butterflyrecording site is just drawing records to display from iRecord—as record IDs must be generated at a central source—and as you say you have no control over the format of the "explore my records" page. The most likely answer (as you suggest) does seem to be that the butterflyrecording site changed the format of the "explore my records" page and it no longer shows records entered at iRecord. I also have some records with a source of 23|100 which I assume is one of the iRecord forms for entering multiple records.

Once I opened an account I did tend to enter all my records on iRecord but I did still use the butterflyrecording site sometimes when the ability to lock inputs on iRecord was only working sporadically... I think, it's so long ago now it's hard to remember. The butterflyrecording form was also more streamline than the iRecord one although it doesn't accept GPS coordinates, like iRecord does, which was a bit of a pain. Anyway I'm a bit wary about using the butterflyrecording site now as I've noticed they are still using Drupal 8 which was declared EOL in 2021. The official advice is "Drupal 8 sites no longer receive critical security patches, making them easy targets for hackers. If you are still running Drupal 8, you are at significant security risk and need to migrate to a supported version immediately." I hope my email address is safe; you might want to delete your newly created account.