The Big Switchover

​We’ve finally hit the mark when it’s time for the switchover to the new platform, which will go live…next Monday, July 20.  Some final tweaks were needed by the team that designed the new site and transported it from the Weebly platform (that we're on now) over to the higher-end hosting service Wix.  I’m just double-checking a few final things.  And then when everything is set, I’ll give an “In one day” heads-up.

That team – Wix Legends – did an impressive job to make the new site on Wix as similar as can be for readers here on Weebly.  It was a convoluted process.  That’s because Weebly uses a propriety database, so they had to move over every article one-post-at-a-time.

 And there were a lot of articles I’ve written over the past 13 years.  For reasons too unimportant to get into, many articles got multiple-posted during the transfer.  I manually deleted these additional posts for the past month, but going through 13 years of articles just didn’t sound like fun for me.  This will affect almost no one, since most people will never scroll back over the years.  If you search for an article, though, it will be there.  (And in some cases it will be there several times.)  My guess is that the accurate number of articles is around 12,000.  Which is still a whole lot of typing. 

The new site on Wix is much more complex (for me, not readers), so there’s a lot for me to learn.  I’m sure I’ll screw some things up, but that will be on my end.  There’s much I’ll never learn, but I think I have the basics down.

Before getting to the small differences, here’s how the switchover will work –

 When Wix Legends “hits the switch” to go live, it usually is instant.  Though it could take a few hours.  But however long it takes, this site here on Weebly will stay live until the Wix site is running.  That’s why it shouldn’t affect any readers at all. 

(If for some unlikely reason the site goes dark, just check back later.  We aren’t going away.  We will be live.  But it should be seamless.)

As I said, Elisberg Industries should look very similar.  Any differences are minor. For those interested, here is an explanation of a few of the differences for readers that are most-worth mentioning -- several of which I wish were otherwise, but all are borderline insignificant:

 There is now a list of topic categories displayed horizontally at the top of each blog page, so readers can click on any that interests them, and all articles in that category will be accessed.  (The horizontal list is partial, with a full drop-down list at the end.) 

There is still an archive of past articles on the far right, but it only archives material for about the previous year-and-a-half.  Though I suspect most people rarely use the archive. 

For reasons unknown to man, articles inexplicably do not include the year they were written, just the month and day.  (I’ve noticed that “adding the year” is a change many have requested to Wix management, so perhaps this might eventually change.) 

Also, for some odd reason, new articles posted during the past week are not identified by the date they were posted, but instead by how many “days ago” it is.  However, after a week, the posts all become dated. 

Articles use a different, though very similar font.  (It’s a touch “lighter.”)  I haven’t found a way to change this, though since the font is extremely close, I’d likely keep it as is.

Because of the process of transferring the old articles from Weebly, many have a wide space between paragraphs.  This is only for the old articles.  It won’t be an issue going forward.  I fixed this manually for articles posted the past month.

Oddly, there is no native audio player on Wix.  However, I was able to figure out a workaround.  As a result, the audio player for songs and some podcasts is larger than the one used by Weebly, but I found a way to “compact” it, which I’ll probably use.  So, all is well. 

This lack of a native audio player on Wix did, however, cause a big problem – though it’s not one that will affect almost anyone.  But not having a native audio player means that when old posts that had an embedded song or podcast were transferred over, that audio did not get embedded with it.  (This is not the case if the song or podcast was a YouTube video – those show up.)  This means several hundred songs or podcasts from old posts are gone.  But if anyone comes across such an old article with a missing song, I can always get emailed with “Hey, buster, where’s the song?!”, and it will be easy to add it in.  Podcasts are another matter – though the podcast files did get transferred over into a folder, just not embedded.  So, if anyone wants to hear an old, missing podcast and emails me, there’s a fair chance I can track it down and upload it.  But as I said, as annoying as this is, most people never search for an old article, let alone one with an embedded song or podcast. 

The “Search” feature has been moved, but only slightly.  It’s still at the top, but a bit off to the side.  And there’s no box, just a magnifying glass and text. 

And those are the most notable differences I’ve found, so far.  As I said, they’re minor and likely won’t even affect most people at all.  There are other differences, but they’re even more minor.  And I’m sure we’ll all discover a few together.  But as you can tell, the new interface will be very similar to the old one.

The serious differences are all under the hood for how I manage the platform, with zero impact on readers.  But that’s the main reason I’ve made this transfer.  A few things are a bit more difficult for me – though still easy enough.  However, because Wix does so much more than Weebly, there are added steps to do things.  But even with that, most of the changes are significantly for the better on my end.  Eventually, I’m sure it will become second nature. 

In an earlier article here, I listed many of the problems I had with Weebly that built up over time.  No need to repeat them, but I wanted to mention the two biggest changes that will make things so much easier.  And will have benefits for readers, even if you never notice.

The first is that I can now write articles in advance (like, when I have free time and can get ahead, or if I’m going out of town) and schedule when they should be posted later.  O huzzah!!

 And at long last, I will again be able to use HTML code to embed videos and photos.  One of Weebly’s huge issues for me was that for the past five years or so, there was an unfixable glitch, and I couldn’t do this – which is completely bizarre since not only is HTML code the foundation of all websites, but the normal process should have been as simple as copy/paste the code into a box.  As a result, I either had to go through time-consuming steps to convert material and then upload it…or not be able to embed material I wanted.  But now I can!  Another big huzzah!!

So…that’s basically where we stand.

The official transfer to Wix should go live this coming Monday, July 20, scheduled (for the moment) in the early afternoon.  And when it happens, it should be instantaneous. But even if not, if it takes a few hours to “populate,” this site will remain active.  And then at that point – the switchover will be immediate.

For readers here, things should be very similar.  And most, if not all, things that are different should be minor.  For anything that isn’t, please know that I not only also wish a few things were handled otherwise, but most importantly -- I know the changes are for the better.  And if you have any questions, please ask. 

Onward!