Welcome to the new and improved eTenerife.com. What do you think of it?
Although I was terrified of making the move, the original old girl was tired and messy (just like this old girl, really). It was way past time to change from the old html website into a new wordpress theme. In the end I had to admit that scary though it might be, this was a journey that had to be taken and my God what a journey it was!
The first job was to find a theme that I liked and that suited all the information that eTenerife has gathered about Tenerife in the last 10 years. I must have tried 30 themes before I finally settled on a theme called Grungemag by Elegant Themes.
Not only do Elegant Themes have a beautiful collection of WordPress Themes, they also have a friendly support forum and a growing base of fans. Thank you, Nick 
But then, having found the theme, I had to get ten years of articles packed in to it and get them linked in a way that made sense. With all the other things going on right now, I could never have managed that job alone. That’s where my friend Clair came in. What a star! Thank you, Clair. The flowers are for you.
In order to get eTenerife.com to the semi-ready condition you see it in today, I had two versions of it running on two different hosts. That enabled me to get the pages of this one populated before changing the nameservers and pointing the domain at the new site. There is always a nail-biting couple of hours after changing nameservers so I timed this for a period when I knew I would not be in the house and not able to check on it every five minutes. I was even strong enough not to check up on the site last night (I imagine the vino at Bev’s bbq had something to do with that).
This morning I was delighted to see the new site up and running but there was a problem. All the urls included the IP number which looks ridiculous and is just not acceptable. Thankfully, the Hostgator has a Live Chat function and I was able to walk through this problem with one of the techies there.
With that fixed I left the house to take the kids to school, came back and the site had reverted back to the old style. Aaaargh! The nameserver change had not stuck. I was back on to Hostgator and they tried their best to help me again. I reset the nameservers and expected that would be the end of my problems. Not!
Although my new best friends at Hostgator were seeing the redesigned site, I was only receivng the old one. No matter what I did I could neither bring up the new site nor get to its backend by going through the IP.
Eventually, I had to just give up and trust that the site would be fine after re-propagating but it was not. What a nightmare. I have been chewing my fingernails all day. In the end, in frustration, I called Gaga for a moan and she told me the new site was lovely. What?
Weirdly, my own home computer was stuck on the old site. Like an old horse that knows its way back to the stable, it just kept returning to its old stamping ground. I had contol+ F5′d to flush the cache until I was blue in the face but it still kept going back to the old site.
So there you are. After all that faffing about, finally I was reminded of the first thing you should always do when having computer problems. Turn the damn thing off and go and have a cup of tea. When I came back, everything was hunky dory. Works every time.
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{ 11 comments… read them below or add one }
Julie, the new site is beautiful (and so are the flowers–thank you, although we both know my contribution was small). Looks great, and I think your readers will appreciate being able to dig back and find pieces that they remember from the “old” site. I think you’re providing a huge wealth of information that residents, the newly settled, and visitors alike will find invaluable–topics that really come in handy but one would never think to ask about before arrival on your sunny shores. Congratulations on this new rollout!
Well done on the changes! It must be, as you said, nail bitingly frightening making the change after so long. It certainly looks good from here … now to have a good look around again and remind myself what a helpful site this is
.-= Stephen & Cathy´s last blog ..Magic in Arona, Tenerife =-.
Thank you Stephen and Cathy,
The worst is over, (I think). There is quite a bit of tidying up to do and lots of articles still to link but… at least the urls have sorted themselves out and I can get back in to the backend.
Well it was worth all the worry and work, Julie, it looks fabulous (much like its owner
)
I love the vibrant colour scheme and the layout, everything seems so fresh and new but with all the invaluable content that you’ve taken years to build.
Good luck! May you get vistors by the bucketload, you’ve earned them!
Thank you Andy,
Still working out some kinks but glad the worst is over. I can’t take any credit for the design – except for having the exceptional taste in picking it of course – and it may take me till Christmas to get everything back up again but at least there are fewer cobwebs and oose lying about.
I can imagine how daunting and scary the whole process must have been! Well done Julie, new site looks great and navigation is nicely intuitive.
Now I bet you start tinkering with all the cool wordpress toys!
Lol. I think I am already tinkering with too many toys. I will need to do a bit of reading up on your marketing blog to see which to keep, won’t I ?
Nice web page you have got here. Will keep coming reading these good articles you are going to write. Maybe you want to check out my golf blog site.
I’m a first-time visitor to your site. So, I don’t know what your old site looks like but I think your site looks wonderful. It’s colorful yet gentle on the eyes and easy to read. It was great to read about your experience moving your website. That can be so scary and at the same time necessary. This is a great post. Thanks for sharing.
Hi there,
I thought this was the first time to your site, after being directed through Twitter. I then realised I just didnt recognise it.
It is so refreshing to have a site that really is about Tenerife and written so honestly.
After living here nearly 10 years I am ashamed to say I, myself, am only just discovering the Real Tenerife, and am eager to discover more. I look forward to being a regular visitor.
Good luck and thank you
Hi Karen,
Thank you very much for taking the time to comment. I have wondered if eTenerife was still relevant in these days of super interactive blogs, flogs, forums and whatnot. Comments like yours prove that it is. I have been in Tenerife just over ten years and I am also just beginning to see the real Tenerife. Having my babies soon after arriving had a lot to do with that, I guess, but I think it is great that there is still so much to discover about this small volcanic rock, after so much time, don’t you?