If you see a few funky things on Route 66 News in the coming days, there’s probably good reason for it.
Route 66 News is moving from WordPress.com to a hosted site using the WordPress.org platform. It should be a fairly seamless transition, and you shouldn’t have to update your route66news.com bookmarks. News coverage of the Mother Road will continue as usual — or as best as possible — during this time.
I’m paying WordPress.com to make this transition, so I hold a fair amount of faith this should be accomplished with little fuss.
But, again, moving a large website goes into somewhat uncharted territory for me, and Murphy’s Law might be a factor in a few things.
The bottom line to you readers: Please hang in there, and everything will get ironed out eventually.
Incidentally, the host for the new incarnation of Route 66 News has been supplied by GRandall Web Design. Its owner, Guy Randall, has been a Route 66 enthusiast for a long time, and has built websites for several businesses on the Mother Road, as you can see here.
I’ll make more announcements about the future of Route 66 News as soon as this transition is finished and everything works smoothly. One of the changes won’t be drastic, but it should be exciting for a number of businesses associated with Route 66. Stay tuned.
Incidentally, we’re doing the same this morning with https://smalltrailerenthusiast.com. However, we’re doing the transition to webhostingbuzz.com ourselves, with the help of online support from them. Unfortunately it switched before we had all our ducks in a row and the site’s in a holding pattern somewhere in cyberspace. That $119 WordPress charges to do it may have been a worthy investment. đ
I just checked your site, Pat, and it seems to be up. Unless, of course, you posted something since Dec. 30.
Ummm, actually I got it all done in about an hour. Yes, I did need a little guidance from the good folks at https://webhostingbuzz.com but it’s done…one hour, the site’s up, running, all blog posts, comments, categories, tags, themes, etc. are good to go!! Next, onto the widgets.
Good luck getting the $119 out of Pat.
I sprang for it. One big thing that WordPress will do in the transition is preserve my email subscriptions, which number nearly 300.
Actually, I’m the CFO! LOL He seemed to want to spend the $119 at one point when I just had a deer in the headlights moment on how to proceed. Way back, when I read about moving to WordPress.com to a hosted solution, I felt overwhelmed. Now that I did it, it wasn’t bad. The web hosting buzz people were very helpful though and I got through it with minimal intervention. I found a plugin to the email subscriptions Pat has (not nearly as many as Ron!). I’m not sure if it’s ideal or how it will work, but we did export the emails and I’ll be tweaking things in time. That feature was not a dealbreaker, and I was able to get 99% of his site over without shelling out $119. But, I’m sure it’s a nice feeling to have someone else do it if you have the money!
Well, Ron, you’ve made me feel good two days in a row. First was the comment about traffic and now this. I went with “locally” installed WordPress.org software from the beginning but often wondered if I did the right thing. It seems like WordPress.com certainly does an awful lot for you including some promotional stuff like their FreshlyPressed selections. I have thought of moving the other direction but will probably never think that way again. I suspect you’re making the move for volume considerations which certainly isn’t my concern but seeing both you and Pat moving from wp.com to wp.org gives me some confidence that I didn’t make a terribly stupid decision. Best of luck with the move. BTW, it appears to me that both wp.org & wp.com have their act together pretty darned good.
Good luck with the move, Ron. We will track you down! It’s worth the trip.
We’ll stick out the bumps! Don’t worry!