A New Chapter: From an Old Site to a New Site
My purpose in telling this short story is to encourage you in your endeavor and to give you some perspective on the transfer process.
About nine years ago, I started my first website called pastortae.org. And TODAY, March 3, 2015, it expired from GoDaddy. I chose not to renew the name and hosting package as I am building new sites here at WA. The old site (.org) has now become a new site www.pastortae.com
This is a new chapter for me as the main vestiges of the old ways are officially gone and the new ways are here.
I typed the old site www.pastortae.org and it is no longer there! That's a very strange feeling. It was the one constant for nine years.....containing over 30 years of teaching, writing, sermons, workshops, services, counseling, consulting, events......it's all gone.
Reflecting back, it really was the good ole days of not knowing anything. I mean that literally. All I knew was how to add content and add images. And there it stayed in cyberspace for nine years. They say that ignorance is bliss. And it was definitely true for me as I knew nothing about keywords, and the pursuit of ranking or sitemaps or anything that WA has taught me. And so, I was blissfully happy with my site.
But here's my point, I STILL got so much traffic and opportunities and got a lot of remuneration for the services I provided via the site. I have so many stories of people finding my site and finding help for their spiritual lives. I even have dramatic stories of deleted files still floating around cyberspace and being found by desperate people who found help.
And now, as I turn the page and start a new chapter at WA and with all things expired from the past, I am even more hopeful. This is an a-fortiori proposal that IF I was able to benefit so much from a site that I did nothing but write content, THEN HOW MUCH MORE should I benefit from the new sites with the applied WA training!
I am hopeful that this new chapter will bring a greater blessing with even more opportunities and more people being helped and a total win-win situation (others being blessed and I benefit as well.)
I hope that this short anecdote will encourage you to continue in your work with hope and anticipation that what we learned here at WA will bring a win-win situation, bringing solutions to visitors and bringing benefits back to you.
There are others here at WA who have built sites somewhere else and have now moved here with great anticipation. That's great. I am here to say that it was the right thing to do.
And for me, I made the right decision. And so, pastortae.org is officially gone. But www.pastortae.com is now here to stay and becoming the central organizing hub of all my other sites.
Thanks for reading and I hope you are encouraged to press on.
With great anticipation
Pastor Tae
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UPDATE: HelenpDolye (below) asked a great question about how people following the old site would be able to find and follow the new site. This is a great question that I answered briefly to her, but I want to outline the steps here in case any of you might consider a similar transition in the future. In my case, it was a general plan I had for the past 3 years though I did not know about WA at that time. I was planning to make a transition out of a .org site into a .com site since .com is better and since .org is more for a non profit organization and I was just an individual. I also planned to transition out of Dreamweaver and into WordPress. And so, here is a simple outline of what I did.
1. About 3 years ago I purchased the .com and connected it to the .org site. At this point, the .org domain name is set as the primary name connected to the website. And so, the .com is simply attached and pointed.
2. I asked GoDaddy to display the .com as the web address. So, those old followers for 9 years were slowly becoming familiar with the .com name. My plan was to wean the people away from the .org. And honestly, it wasn't that hard because the people were already typing in the .com even before I purchased it....hence the power of .com. And so, I had 2 domain names pointing to the same website with the .com being displayed.
3. Then 3 months ago, I separated the two names. I kept the old site with the .org name and started building a NEW site with the .com name here at WA. Back then, I wrote about the prospect of moving in a January blog. In that blog, I also documented the technical things I had to do. Click: I'm Moving
4. Then I put announcements on both sites announcing the transition that was to happen in March.
5. I took to social media months ago and continued to make announcements about the move. But by this time it wasn't a big deal.
6. When the expiration date came, it was an easy process of letting the old one expire and the new one continue on.
7. And so, this blog was really just the final step in confirming what was already happening over a 3 year period.
* I hope that gives you insight into the transition process in case you choose a similar path.
* to see the overall inter-relationship of all the websites, click: http://pastortae.com/sponsor
www.oppositeparentingstyles.com
LIKE the green button. Thanks
Recent Comments
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Congratulations on your new internet real estate and another wonderful new beginning! I really like the images! God's continued Blessings on all your endeavors!
That is always an option! Do you remember the children's song Bullfrogs and Butterflies?
Hi everyone, HellenpDolye (below) asked a great question to which I answered briefly to her. But her question inspired me to include a step by step process of what I did, in case you might be thinking of a transition in the future. I hope it helps.
I have a question for you. How do the followers of your old site now transer to your new site?
The .org and .com were together on for 3 years and over that period of time I weaned the people away from the old domain name by pointing it to the new name. And in the past 3 months I made announcements on the old site about the change. and all the while I was building the new site. And if the people came to the new site, there were announcements explaining the construction taking place. I also used social media too. Great question. Otherwise the people would be left out.
* in fact, I placed a more thorough step by step process in the blog to explain what I did.
Thanks, Helen for the great question
Thanks Brian. I like how simple yet powerful the images are in capturing the change from old to new
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FYI - You might consider an image map for that picture of a book that shows all the site names. Seems like a pretty natural use of one.
I find I want to click on them, but I cannot :-) An image map (it's an HTML thing) would make it so I could :-)
You like to study, Right?! :-D
I thought of that but I don't know how...
If you have any tips on how to do that let me know. Thanks
I love w3schools for stuff like this. They have 'to the point' tutorials. Of course, you want to have a basic understanding of HTML probably, but I'm betting you do. Try this:
http://www.w3schools.com/tags/tag_map.asp
You might pull the picture down to your computer and play with this in an HTML file on your desktop before adding it to your page. That way, people don't see your testing efforts :-)
Hope that helps! Ping me, if not.
Thanks, Eddie. I don't have any background in coding or anthing html. I just know what I've learned here at WA. I'll take a look at the link and then pull down the pic as you suggest to play around with it. I'll let you know. Thanks
Here's a site that will help you come up with the coordinates. You may be able to pull it off with the w3schools link and the link below. Give it a shot. If not, just ping me.
http://www.maschek.hu/imagemap/imgmap
I got home late tonight and the chickens were out of food, so I had to run to the feed store. Lost a lot of a night that I thought I was going to spend working on WA stuff.
I guess God had other plans, huh? :-)
You might also just try this!
https://wordpress.org/plugins/imagemapper/
Says it's compatible with WordPress 4.1.1. I have not tested it, but I bet it's easier than editing HTML :-)
Chickens? Anyway thanks. I'll be in touch
Great. Thanks. It'll be a few days before I get to this
We have 6 so far. Nothing like fresh eggs :-)
We live outside of town. My commute is 45-minutes to an hour each way, but I enjoy it. We had to be that far out to get acreage at a decent price :-)
Nice. What state? What kind of work?
Oklahoma. I'm a self-employed software developer, but - in my case - what that means is I'm a hired gun. I'm working a contract in Tulsa right now. Best client I've ever had.
Very cool. I'm in CA
I wish I was in CA right now! You guys have the best weather. We have been yo-yo-ing between icy cold and pretty danged warm (70s in some cases!)
I was in San Diego last June to start a contract with some folks out there. Loved the weather!
Yeah its really nice out here. But every state has pros and cons. I'm sure there are great things about being there
Yeah, I can own guns easier :-) I'm not a gun freak or anything, but I like being able to freely exercise my civil liberties! :-)
Nice. When I go speak at men's retreats everyone brings their guns to shoot at the range...targets and clay pigeons
I was living in Missouri for about 10 years - came back to Oklahoma (born there) about a year ago. I really liked that MO had shotgun ranges where you could go, take a target thrower and targets and shoot to your heart's content. FREE. It was awesome!
HEHE! I remember having to school some kids one day. My wife was scared I might get shot :-) They were just walking down range without saying anything! The second time they did it, I screamed out - at the top of my lungs - "DOWN RANGE! DOWN RANGE!"
The other knowledgeable people looked at me thankfully, because all of were scared to death we'd shoot those poor, stupid kids. They just held fire and kind of looked around like, "Don't these kids know what they're doing?!"
As they came back up, I yelled over at them, "You need to yell out down range when you're going onto the range and yell clear when you get back. Otherwise, you might get shot by accident, and nobody wants that."
LOL ... to be young and stupid again :-) It's amazing we lived to see adult-hood! ... well, I'm speaking for me. You probably had a proper, docile childhood :-)
Nothing proper nor docile. Only the grace of God who rescued me. Nice story. I wish I had guns and a chance to shoot at ranges - maybe in the next chapter of life