I’m not sure where the past month went since I decided, probably due a total lack of sense, to do a “revamp” on my website, or websites, rather.
And combine them.
And switch from a simple WordPress.com site to a self-hosted WordPress.org site.
I have plenty of education, probably a lot more than is good for me, but the last computer class I took was at Foothill Community College in…( dare I say it? ) around 1982, entitled Programming in Basic. My youngest son, a Com Sci major, looked at me sideways when I mentioned it. Clearly he hadn’t understood I was truly a dinosaur until he heard that.
All that aside, I’m not quite sure I understood all the implications of a self-hosted site before I started, but now…yep. I got it. And…I kinda like it. 🙂
Things had gotten difficult with respect to websites. I had two websites and needed another three for all of my, and now our, ventures. They were on different hosts, which didn’t talk to each other nicely.
One was bmevc.co.nz, the Blue Mist Equine Veterinary Centre site. It also had a page for Equi-Still™ Portable Equine Stocks, which really needed its own identity. Glinkowski Carriages and Arden Harness were also on there…oh, and the purchase page for my books—because I couldn’t have one on my book site.
What a mess.
My vet site used an outdated theme, if you could even call it that. Comprehensible by proper website builders, but it was…shall we say “not intuitive”? Especially by me.
Then there was my previous author website: lizzitremayne.com on WordPress.com. It was…shall we say, thorough…and it was all over the show. My provider wasn’t able to offer me multiple websites for a reasonable price, so I started looking at different hosting companies. Well…Well…Hmmm.
Book deadlines are always a good excuse. Blinkin’ terrifying, just looking through those hosting company pages. Even my techie partner wasn’t so sure where to go.
Into the too-hard basket it went.
The hefty yearly fee for the non-intuitive site builder came up for renewal. (Mwahh ha ha ha ha ha.) This would force my hand. I pulled off the site’s data—the company “couldn’t migrate” it—from my vet website, to anywhere, so I stored it.
Surely I’d do it now.
Well, it didn’t happen. Now I had no vet or stocks website…and then, Iola came to the rescue.
At our local RWNZ Coast to Coast meeting, Iola Goulton spoke on social media, including a section on building your own website! Matt and I were raising our brows at each other with gleeful grins. Iola had just created her own site, following the instructions of one young lady, Shannon, from the USA. Shannon baldly stated that anyone can make a WordPress.org site…quite a claim, considering.
I had a look at Shannon’s FREE Five Day Website Challenge, and a little something inside me stepped out from behind a rock, where it’d been hiding for months.
“Maybe I could do this,” I whispered.
I started to get excited, as those of you who know me understand happens sometimes, and I started to plan.
New Plan: I’d build five sites, all at the same time. Three for me and two for my partner, Matthew.
Carefully following Shannon’s instructions, we signed up for Bluehost and purchased a bunch of domains and began. After I’d installed WordPress on these sites and started Shannon’s process, I began to get more ideas, and increasingly worried, as things became more convoluted….
Maybe, instead, I could make a new plan.
New Plan (B): make one website with many pages…after all, most of them eventually linked back to horses, so they were at least related. Besides, getting the SEO up on one blog would be…significantly less crazy than trying to do it on each of them, individually.
Everybody said I was nuts to even attempt it.
Well, nearly a month later…
I survived. We survived.
The dogs helped, Matt helped, heaps and heaps of other people and Bluehost and their many minions helped. Even my new little grandson helped…but not much. 🙂
So now that I’m done, the dogs are…sleeping, as they have done for most of the last month, Matt’s staying away until it’s done (just kidding, fencing and swordplay called) and I’m celebrating.
Now I can catch up on what I’ve neglected and get my books ready for entry into the RITA Award next week! I’ll be entering my 2017-published books: The Hills of Gold Unchanging, A Sea of Green Unfolding (Historical Fictions) and my latest, Once Upon a Vet School #7, which I’m also formatting for publication in paperback…this week.
And taking the dogs out for a play on the farm!
So, enough of what I’ve been doing.
What was the last thing you attempted that scared you so much…
that you nearly never even tried, but did?
Let me know how you felt the fear and did it anyway!
Can’t wait to hear!
xx
Lizzi T