My web master is retiring. She has been wonderful for several years of managing my web site. All I ever had to do was send things her way and voilà. Within hours or at worst a day, the new material would be there. The only drawback was that I had no direct control over how the page looks or adding things on my own. I was the administrator of the site without direct access to administer. It was certainly workable and I got to be a bit lazy. I would say, please do —— and it would get done.
Fast forward to now:
She's retiring from 20+ years of managing web sites, building web pages, etc. Great job, but she is ready to be done. Therefore, I have to do it on my own now, including finding a place to host the site. This has sent me off on a BIG-ASS journey. I have until April 1st. Then my web site goes bye-bye. I am determined not to have this happen.
I am fortunate to have an involved husband, one with a few skills and more than a few ideas. He suggested I try something called RapidWeaver 7.5 to build (rebuild) my site. He suggested Go Daddy for hosting. They are where I get my domain name and renew it.
Based upon his suggestions, I immediately started the journey to autonomy as a web author and blogger. I had already been blogging (albeit intermittently) for years and knew I could simply link this site to my web site as it was linked previously. Whew. One less thing to do over. I already have the domain name, so I simply needed to renew it (which my previous web master had done each year). What needed to happen, the two BIG things were:
1. Get my domain administration moved over to my ownership and sign up for hosting services.
2. Rebuild my web site. (This is the BIGGEST thing, requiring loads of time spent and things to master that I have never tried before.)
Getting my domain administration moved to my ownership meant I had to send in my passport face page and my driver's license copy to Go Daddy. They need to know I am me. I suppose I could have waited for my current web master to send me the login and password, but she is out of town right now and I am impatient. After all, I need to be up and ready by April 1st. Tick Tock.
Rebuilding my web site is really involved and a bit complex, but also a load of FUN. I rely upon my husband to interpret things for me, but Rapid Weaver 7.5 is a treasure trove of things one can do to make a site beautiful, efficient, and user-friendly. My site will be uniquely ME. It will be interactive too, with opportunities for readers/visitors to chat with me via my contact page. I have a place to say why the person visited, what was most interesting and what questions could be answered by me. I love this!
I'm learning about plug-ins, stacks, links, and so much more. I think I am about 90% finished with the rebuild. I think I will be fully ready to go live on March 31st. That is my goal. I still have to put PayPal on my site for selling my books and artwork. I still have to tweak the way my books are displayed (stacks maybe?) and I still have to make sure all the pages are ready to be found by my site visitors, so I also need to add an SEO so my site pops up on search engines everywhere.
So, in the meantime, enjoy visiting the site and my blog as they are right now. I think (hope, plan) all will be smooth in the transition.
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