The last few weeks I have changed a number of things on the Sponsored By The Wind website. The whats and why’s.
A new service provider
That was easy. I gave my credit-card number and I had the space and the functionalities I wanted. A very extensive screen with all kind of goodies as an extra help in setting up the site and maintaining it. I didn’t even need to use a terminal emulator to define the crontab jobs.
I just downloaded all the directories and files, made a export and import of the SQL-database and everything was running.
It took 24 hours to get my domain-name changed to the new DNS entity and after that the world would not have known anything, except that the performance was faster. That was the main reason to change from my old provider to Bluehost.
The next day, a Monday-afternoon, I was doing some fine-tuning and suddenly there was nothing anymore. I could not even log-in. I barely could get their support-number that I called via Skype. It was a holiday in the USA, so nobody available.
I thought I picked the wrong company to do business with and as soon as possible I called them on Tuesday to ask them what the hell was going on.
The guy started to ask the same questions as I filled in yesterday. It turned out that I was ‘automatically’ killed because my billing address was in the Netherlands and I was doing things on an IP-address in Colombia…
I still don’t get why they didn’t insist on talking to me when I started subscribing but only after 24 hours. They had all the info the minute I subscribed. I was even sitting in the same Internet Cafe.
>From then on, everything OK. The helpdesk even reacts on emails.
A definite choice to go with WordPress.
Before now, I used WordPress a bit, did a bit of HTML, did some things with PHP and databases. In short: it was a mess.
Right now I have made the choice to do most of my things with wordpress, mainly with moblogging or email blogging.
To become friends with WordPress I developed my own lay-out. Most of it I copied from various themes and I had even to develop a plugin and some enhancements on the postie plugin.
I now can post in history or future (set the date of the post by hand) and update my posts by email. I try it a week more, and if it is working, I’ll document it and set it free. Check the email blogging, moblogging or postie tags.
I realized that Internet Explorer is not doing too well in showing my site in the nice way it was designed. I myself use FireFox and don’t check the behavior of other browsers. I hoped this browser-war would be over after I’ve been sailing for 8 years. But it is still the same. I’m disappointed about Microsoft and about the ability of people to distinguish so-so from quality. I will be aware a bit more.
Some things to come
There are still some things to come. You already notice the tags in the text. That will be the big power to steer you through my site in the future. Right now it is in an experimental stage, but as it is highly intuitive, you will hardly know the difference. This could not be possible without the UTW plugin of Christine Davis.
Pretty soon I hope to be able to deliver your some sounds. Of my concerts and more. I only have to get this small recording-instrument through the Columbian Customs.
