All the Confusion with the Blog

Hello everyone. Welcome to the blog post where Jo tries to explain some of the topsy-turvy stuff that has been going on here on the blog.

For the last month or so, on the writing side of things, I’ve had terrible trouble with writing the blog. The program freezes. Pictures show up on my side but not your side. I am back and forth trying to figure out what things could be. I can see things on my side but they don’t show up on your side.

I’ve been completely frustrated as writing a blog post takes an hour vs what would have taken me 45 minutes to write. The computer freezes…I wait for it to respond. When I click the cursor won’t move. It’s been very frustrating.

Kalissa came over one day and said-Mom. That enough. Something has to change. You can’t work like this.

I lamented that it would cost a lot more money to upgrade and she told me my choice was either I would be forced out of blogging because eventually, she felt this would all permanently freeze or I’d pay a few dollars, or I need to pony up the money. I gave in and agreed to do whatever she thought was best.

So…Last week we moved the blog to a new server. For those of you who don’t know what that means, think of my blog as a storefront in a mall parking lot. My storefront started out as a small business. All of the stores in the mall share the same parking lot. Over time, my store grew by leaps and bounds. There was no longer parking in front of my store I was starting to take up the parking spaces of the other stores and they were all getting frustrated with me and my customers were getting frustrated because there were no parking spaces ever open near my store because it was so busy. You guys are the customers with your cars wanting to park near my store.

Because there is no parking everyone is frustrated and things at my store aren’t moving as freely…as now I am too small for my store too. I don’t have space to add more merchandise (blog posts) and I don’t have room to navigate in the store.

That’s when a business knows it’s time to move and expand. That’s what we’ve been working on this week.

I’ve moved to a new storefront with a bigger parking lot. In internet terms, it means I moved to a new server with more space and hopefully here there is more room for me so writing will go easier and there’s more room for you so you aren’t fighting for parking spaces…meaning it is faster and as a viewer, you have a better experience while you are at the blog.

Sadly, that doesn’t really happen seamlessly. It’s good but not seamless.

So…here’s what happened.

On the 18th, we started moving the blog to the new server. We only got a test run look at it and it wasn’t right. Some of you might have noticed there were some mumbo-jumbo characters on some of the pages.

We told them no…that had to be fixed. They thought it was fixed so they moved the blog. All during this time, I wasn’t supposed to really do much on the blog. I focused my time on some other things like getting a couple of Youtube videos posted, my taxes, and answering emails. My foster dogs took up a lot of time too.

It was hard for me as I typically keep about 25 blog posts written in advance and every day that went by, I had fewer and fewer posts written. I know several of you were wondering what happened when last week there was no “What I’ve been working on” post. It’s because I wasn’t allowed to be on the blog to write it.

The blog ended up getting transferred about mid-week. BUT…There were a few things wrong. Kayla was working with them to get it figured out. By the time Thursday night rolled around, I thought they were fixed. I went on the blog and started working. I wrote my cross-stitch update. I wrote the story about the two foster pups, Olive and Twiggy and I wrote a recipe post that I planned to publish in early April.

The cross stitch and puppy post went live on Friday. Many of you saw them. Saturday morning I woke up and they were gone.

DRAT! When the server went through and fixed the old problems, my two blog posts basically got “left at the old store”.

I’ve talked with Kayla and she hopes to “go back and get them”. She doesn’t know if she’ll be able to but she’s hopeful.

Moving forward we will still have a glitch here or there as there are old posts that were in drafts that might have a hiccup here or there. Those would be Community Quilt posts and What I’ve been reading posts…and possibly a review post. Hopefully, in a few weeks, those will clear and we’ll be back in business full-time at the new storefront.

You will still always go to the same blog…nothing really changes for you at all except you should have faster speed when navigating the blog.

What we hope for me will change is a smoother experience on the back side writing the posts…and it will cost more but that’s a price that I’ll make work.

I had a few blog readers write to me and express concern for me that this was all too stressful and that maybe I should just step back. They suggested not blogging as often. I’ve said this before and it bears repeating. I make an income from the blog. Anyone who is writing a blog where you see advertisements is making an income off their writing. I need the income. It’s how I support myself. If I write half as many posts, I make half as much money. Everyone who works goes through stressful periods at their job. This is just mine and mine has to be upfront and in the public because I missed blog posts in this move and things didn’t go super smoothly. I appreciate your concern so much.

It’s okay. I’m okay. The blog is okay. I’m not going anywhere. I love blogging. It’s good for my soul. It’s a job I love and enjoy. There are so many people who have come into my life because of the blog. By far, the enjoyment of it far outweighs the bleeps and troubles we’ve had over the past month. My hope is that things might have a couple of hiccups this week and then after that, we have smooth sailing.

Thanks so much for understanding and still hanging out with me even though it’s been a bit of a bumpy ride. I appreciate it so much!!

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