Under Construction
“I went to your site the other day and saw that it was ‘under construction.’ Something new coming our way soon?”
Deborah, a blogger-buddy
“I wish! I’ve been swamped with getting the site updated, prepped for migration to another host, then fixing the mess that arrived at the new host! The ‘new’ will have to wait, but I hope to have it live – intact – soon! HA! Thanks for checking up from time to time, though.”
my response
Perhaps you’ve noticed. My site has been ‘under construction’ for quite some time. Silent for even longer than that.
It’s been awhile, I know. At first, partly due to lack of time to put together a ‘quality’ post, yes. But mostly, at first, in order to keep site-traffic at a minimum in prep for a full backup download and staging of the site.
That was a few weeks ago. At that time, I worked on the too-long-ignored WP/plugin updates and tidied up the website before proceeding with the scheduled migration to another hosting service.
Nothing quite jolts one out of techie-inertia like when one’s host service end date looms on the horizon. The very close horizon.
Those of us who are wordpress.org know that hosting servers offer fantastic prices as a first-time customer. Then, once the contract is over (in this case 3 years), the renewal cost increases by at least 3xs the initial rate.
This is common practice.
I knew going in, that I’d need to find a new host to park the website when the dreaded renewal date arrived. In my case, hubby found a great package for 4 years with another host server.
A little over 2 weeks ago, I initiated the move. There’s always a bit of trepidation during the change-over, migration, re-direct of dns to the new host and how well the new host service deals with customer help once the site is in their care.
And there are always problems. In the techie-realm, problems are normal. But, as they say, there are always solutions. If you know where to look for them…
Meanwhile, my newly migrated site went live. But without the ‘Under Construction Sign’ I’d painstakingly selected, put in place and made sure it worked while the migrated site was in ‘preview’ waiting to accept the re-direct and spring back into life. Why? Because the fixes I made in prep for the migration got messed up during the migration!
I’m no stranger to setting up staging sites and fixing/testing stuff on my website. But having my semi-broken site live & visible after I made sure it’d be invisible under the ‘Under Construction Sign’ was quite upsetting to me. More so than the loss of ‘likes’ and other weird data disappearances.
Turns out, Jetpack does not play well with migration. And, active Jetpack support on the WP Forums has all but disappeared. Just sayin’…
The good news?
If not for the excellent help from the live tech assistants at my new host service – this website might have remained ‘under construction’ forever. Yes, an exaggeration about the forever part. However, I reiterate: high accolades for the live tech assistants who walked me through the fixes!
Now for the leap of faith: pushing the staged site to live. Again.
If there are problems, so be it. Otherwise, it’s great to be back!
As per the title of this post: The Sounds of Silence phrase rounds out the content of this post – even if the lyrics of the beloved piece do not. I added it here for an aural respite from all things techie. 🙂