We have a new site, and you can find it at southboonechurch.org.
That's the good news. The bad news is that southboonechurch.com, the URL for our original site, is broken beyond belief. What, you want more details? Are you sure? Well here goes…
The Original Host
When I inherited our site about two years ago, I immediately started having problems with our hosting provider. Uploading new content to our FTP server was hit-or-miss at best, but usually problems would resolve themselves after a few attempts. It was a pain at best. At worst, it would keep our site offline for hours at a time. Even fixing a spelling error was stressful.
Related to this problem was the fact that, after many updates, the site would start requiring visitors to enter a username and password for no apparent reason. Without doing so, though, no images or other media would display. Again, re-uploading a couple of times sometimes fixed that problem.
Finally, the site would only work on our host if the index was .asp instead of .html. Weird, right?
As a footnote, there was also the fact that I could never reach our host by phone; they never returned emails; and their site looks like it was last updated in the late 90s. None of that really added to the hair-pulling experience that was updating our site, but it certainly didn't help.
The Last Straw
Friday was it. I went to add two new pages to our site, and I cleaned up the layout for a slightly fresher look. I uploaded the whole thing…and nothing. The old version of the site still loaded. I double-checked that I had renamed the proper .html files to .asp, found one that I had missed, and the site went up with broken links. Okay, that made sense because some extensions changed.
I fixed the links (read: accounted for our host's weirdness), manually deleted old files on our server that could confuse things, went to upload the revisions, and everything went crazy. The server was randomly refusing to replace some files and folders. It kept insisting some folders were there that I had deleted months ago. Visiting the site was prompting user log-ins. This went on for hours, and none of my usual voodoo was working.
Finally, close to midnight, I set up a hosting plan with Dreamhost, set up a new domain (because I'm not sure how I'm actually going to get our old domain away from this particular host) and went live. And that's where we are right now.
Walking Away for a Bit
I'm not even going to try to fix the issues we're having with the old host or get the old domain redirected for a few days. I'm going to put all my energy into this blog and our new site, and I'll get to finishing the migration after I've cooled off a bit. Not much pushes my patience, but I know my blood pressure was rising earlier tonight.
That said, I like our new site. (And I kind of prefer a .org address for our kind of organization anyway.) Go check it out.
That's the good news. The bad news is that southboonechurch.com, the URL for our original site, is broken beyond belief. What, you want more details? Are you sure? Well here goes…
The Original Host
When I inherited our site about two years ago, I immediately started having problems with our hosting provider. Uploading new content to our FTP server was hit-or-miss at best, but usually problems would resolve themselves after a few attempts. It was a pain at best. At worst, it would keep our site offline for hours at a time. Even fixing a spelling error was stressful.
Related to this problem was the fact that, after many updates, the site would start requiring visitors to enter a username and password for no apparent reason. Without doing so, though, no images or other media would display. Again, re-uploading a couple of times sometimes fixed that problem.
Finally, the site would only work on our host if the index was .asp instead of .html. Weird, right?
As a footnote, there was also the fact that I could never reach our host by phone; they never returned emails; and their site looks like it was last updated in the late 90s. None of that really added to the hair-pulling experience that was updating our site, but it certainly didn't help.
The Last Straw
Friday was it. I went to add two new pages to our site, and I cleaned up the layout for a slightly fresher look. I uploaded the whole thing…and nothing. The old version of the site still loaded. I double-checked that I had renamed the proper .html files to .asp, found one that I had missed, and the site went up with broken links. Okay, that made sense because some extensions changed.
I fixed the links (read: accounted for our host's weirdness), manually deleted old files on our server that could confuse things, went to upload the revisions, and everything went crazy. The server was randomly refusing to replace some files and folders. It kept insisting some folders were there that I had deleted months ago. Visiting the site was prompting user log-ins. This went on for hours, and none of my usual voodoo was working.
Finally, close to midnight, I set up a hosting plan with Dreamhost, set up a new domain (because I'm not sure how I'm actually going to get our old domain away from this particular host) and went live. And that's where we are right now.
Walking Away for a Bit
I'm not even going to try to fix the issues we're having with the old host or get the old domain redirected for a few days. I'm going to put all my energy into this blog and our new site, and I'll get to finishing the migration after I've cooled off a bit. Not much pushes my patience, but I know my blood pressure was rising earlier tonight.
That said, I like our new site. (And I kind of prefer a .org address for our kind of organization anyway.) Go check it out.
