It’s a new year and for me a new BLOG and new hosting vendor. After 9 years with my last hosting site, I decided to move. Generally there was no longer a match between my needs and what the vendor wanted to sell and service, so I moved my little WordPress blog over to Bluehost. As with any move it had it’s challenges…. but a least I’m not a stranger to technology.
So when the first level help desk failed me, I just logged into the portal to the domain section, found a page called “zone editor” and sure enough, some of the pointers still had the reference to the sandbox that I was in while I was building my site. As soon as I changed those to my domain…boom! Everything worked. So after being told that the propagation was not complete (which I knew was) I just fixed it myself and got back to work finishing my migration.
Lessons learned from my WordPress migration. Yes you can move your posts and pages. And yes, the images that you inserted into your posts will stay in the posts as long as you reinstall your images in the same place on your new site. But here’s the kicker… IMAGE GALLERIES DON’T MOVE OVER!! Unfortunately for me, my normal method or building a post was to put a featured image on the page, then write the article and insert the remaining images about the topic into a WordPress gallery. So most of my posts that I reinstalled when opened on the new site… well there is one image and a reference to click on a gallery that no longer exists. BUMMER! I would have to go back into every post that held a gallery, find the images I had shared and re-insert them into the post. WAY TOO MUCH EFFORT for history.
So it’s on to the FUTURE. I’ve completely archived 2010 through 2014 so those posts are no longer showing. Posts from 2015 forward are available, but the experience reading backward will be mixed based on the gallery issue described above. I tried to fix 2018 and some of 2017. I may correct more as time permits, but I would rather spend my time on building new content.
Looking forward, the new blog will be structured much the same as before with 4 categories; (1) General Photography, (2) Travel Photography, (3) Post Processing Techniques, and (3) Digital Art. Once on the post page, you can filter by category and only read posts listed by these categories if you like.
A new section that I’m building, not yet visible, is for TUTORIALS on compositing. I’m hoping to dedicate an area of this blog to the one topic that I truly enjoy, and that is Photoshop Compositing. I’m going to try to write some very specific articles about various techniques and tricks you can use as a compositor. Yes, I know, YouTube has a thousand videos on compositing out there. But generally, they show you how to complete a full piece of work but don’t necessarily walk you through each technique. Some are technique specific, but after you watch the video, you don’t have that reference material to help you actually execute the process yourself. I’m hoping to write out articles that find a happy middle ground. Some simple technique, one at a time, such as “rim lighting techniques”, or “removing color cast on edges” or “cleaning up your cutout”.. take-aways that you can put in your library and use over and over again. We shall see… I have to build the content over the next few months… then I’ll begin hosting it on the site for download.
As part of my new year and new focus, I’ve also eliminated all the other social platforms. No more Twitter, Instagram, Linkedin, and any of the other host of sites I use to have accounts on. I will continue to keep the Facebook account open, mainly because I manage a page for the Corvette Club and have some professional groups that am hooked to via Facebook. Other sites are either closed or will be ignored in 2019. I will be focusing on the Blog and my Portfolio on Smugmug.
Here is wishing all of you a healthy and prosperous 2019.
Terri
