Welcome back to Austen Promises and the Writer’s Journal!
As you can see, I finally got my new website set up. It still has some glitches to work out, but I think it looks pretty good!
I was nervous about the whole thing, from start to finish, and I’m still not convinced I did it all correctly. The mere thought was overwhelming at first. I didn’t understand the lingo, and to be honest, I still don’t really. I started out by upgrading my blog, Austen Promises, from free to paid. I bought a domain name along with it, and an email account. Then, I found a web host running a Black Friday sale. The yearly price was really cheap, it seemed, and so I paid for a year. In the end, I did pay almost what I had feared I’d need to, because WordPress was so not running any sales. LOL
So there I was, the proud owner of a domain name in one place and a paid blog in another. I couldn’t transfer the name to the new host for sixty days, though I didn’t realize that at first and tried anyway. 🙂 I discovered next that I had to “point the blog to the new domain.” I did that, it looked weird, and I undid it. I’m telling you, I was a mess about this!
All that happened in late November, and early December. Fast forward to mid-February. I have a little time, and I know it’s well beyond the sixty-day restriction, and I try to transfer the thing. I was going to pay Siteground, the hosting site, to do it and they were offering an extra year of hosting free. I thought, “Hey, hey, hey! I’ll shell out $16 for that!” Nope. Despite figuring everything out on my own, when it came down to it, there was a glitch, and I had to chat with a tech guy at both WordPress and Siteground. I was able to pay for the transfer, but lost out on the extra year.
Speaking of chatting, I can’t speak highly enough about both gentlemen I chatted with. They were polite and knowledgeable and didn’t make me feel like an imbecile for being so clueless.
It took WordPress a week to actually transfer the domain. I think they wanted me to change my mind, which I didn’t. I’m happy I didn’t, too, because being hosted elsewhere means I can use plugins, which I could not with WordPress unless I upgraded again.
So, here I was yesterday, happily recreating my website/blog. I had to change the theme, as the old one did not transfer and was not available to me here at the new host. I lost images in the move; the Inspirational Tuesday images and images within Writer’s Journal posts are still there, but all the headers for Thursday’s 300 are gone. And, none of those show up in my media files, either, oddly enough.
I had purchased a domain email with my name, and it was having issues yesterday, as well, but I managed to fix it all by myself. 🙂
I ended yesterday feeling intelligent and accomplished and pretty darn proud of myself. So far, this website thing hasn’t been as scary as I thought it would be!
Before I go, I need to thank my patrons at Patreon for their support. Without it, this new website would be nothing but a dream. <3
Come back next Wednesday for another peek into my journal! <3
