What to do when your website host pulls the rug out from under your website
Today I discovered that my first two websites - Pastels and Pencils and my "hub" Making A Mark website - are no more. My Statcounter stats seem to suggest they disappeared sometime earlier this week.
On the plus side
I've had 15 years of free hosting from SiteKreator due to the fact that back when I was originally building these websites I recommended the web host - at the time - to very many artists who then adopted the host for their website and, as a result, I got upgraded to being a VIP customer. What I think they now call an "influencer".
Plus the websites worked well for many years.....
 |
| The page referencing my Portfolio website on my makingamark.co.uk website |
On the down side
Sadly in recent times SiteKreator has been a platform which was- VERY SLOW to gets its act together in relation to various online developments
- had some very suspect developments - in terms of odd pages which would appear on my domain - which really got me wound up.
No reminders - nothing more.
I'm NOT impressed.
 |
| an extract from my "website Options" page on my artbusinessinfo.com website |
How and where to move a website #1
Consequently I'm faced with either paying for new websites or letting the content go.
While neither website has been updated for some time (i.e. osteoarthritis makes making art difficult and I've still got a mega sort out job to do re. my resources info) I'm somewhat reluctant to let them go altogether
What I'm doing in the short term
Here's what I'm doing
- checking my own checklist (!) on Options for developing an Artist's website
- keeping both domain names going with my registrar ( Namecheap - recommended )
- archiving pages from the websites - using the Internet Archive / Wayback Machine - into Evernote (very easy and good practice for anyone with a website - and I find Evernote indispensable!)
- identifying options for potential future sites - which might include
- Weebly - currently used for Botanical Art and Artists and Art Business Info for Artists
- Wix - which lots of friends use
- SquareSpace - which I've lusted after forever - but is more expensive
- Google Sites - which have just reinvented themselves as from 1 November 2020
- SiteKreator - except I'm thinking they would have to pull out all the stops to interest me
- trying the free trials with any new host I'm interested in
- comparing KEY FACTORS for choosing a host (see OPTIONS above)
- storage
- bandwidth
- technical sophistication
- pricing
- (I'll do a blog post about this!)
- thinking about how to
- prune and edit existing content
- split the content between
- any new site(s) and
- existing new websites already in draft (on Weebly re techniques / genres / art materials)
No comments:
Post a Comment
COMMENTS HAVE BEEN CLOSED AGAIN because of too much spam.
My blog posts are always posted to my Making A Mark Facebook Page and you can comment there if you wish.
Note: only a member of this blog may post a comment.