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The Online Photographer Will Be Relaunching (Blog Note)
This is a pretty major announcement. Existential, possibly, even, for this site.Β
It's time for another reset. The Online Photographer has been on TypePad since 2007, and on the Web since November 2005. Unfortunately, we will not quite celebrate our 20th anniversary here: TypePad announced yesterday that it is closing down at the end of September and that all content will be removed from the Web. Including all of TOP. For me, it's a lot of content and not much time. Jeez.
So I'm starting by making fresh backups of everything and will immediately begin the task of building anew on a different service. Whether I can export the old content over or not is something I do not know. They certainly didn't give us a lot of notice...at least not specifically; the handwriting has been on the wall for a while now. I probably should have done something by now, but, you know, hindsight is 20/20. (Ironically, 2020 is when I should have done something. Let's move on.)
I'm leaning toward relaunching on SquareSpace (or perhaps Hostinger or Wix)* and am now actively looking for professional help with that. I would welcome your comments! Not something I know much about.
Does anyone know a good SquareSpace or Wix site designer who might be available, um, soon? I've tried and failed to build my own SquareSpace site in the past.Β
Dangerous pivot point?Β
This is a "dangerous opportunity," as John F. Kennedy used to say in his speeches. He said it was the translation for "crisis" from the Chinese. I'm told that's not quite correct. The Chinese word for crisis is wΔijΔ« (ε±ζΊ), the first character (wΔi, ε±) meaning danger and the second (jΔ«, ζΊ) meaning a turning point or inflection point.
But it's time. Maybe this will be good for me. This old site had gotten clunky, ineffective, and kind of fustyβit's not responsive, and there's zero SEO. Basic functions have been deteriorating. For one thing, simply loading illustrations on to the site has gotten extremely problematic and frustrating in recent months, soaking up a lot of time and leading to regular frustration.
Can't say I'm happy with the short noticeβawkward time for this to happen, since I'm also in the run-up to a medical operation with a long recuperation periodβbut maybe we'll be okay.
Any advice, information, opinions or thoughts?
βMike, the mostly incompetent TOP IT guy
*I've made multiple attempts to come up to speed with WordPress and it's just too complicated for me. I'm an "old dog" in the Learning Tricks Dept. The simpler this can be, the better. Also, I know a lot of people like the idea of Substack, but affiliate links can't be used in emails, so I'm leery of launching on anything that's basically an email newsletter. I'd like to continue as a classic, plain, old-style free blog.
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