Changing Directions

Photo by P.Lynne Designs (c) 2016

I just said goodbye to a blog.  I said goodbye to another blog 90 days ago.  Am I sad?  Of course, I am.  It is not easy to admit when things go south, and there is no room for recovery at all.

The first one, the one that has now been deleted for 90 days, was a specific topic.  It covered Walt Disney World, it’s attractions, and all things Disney.  I started out strong, because, after all, I was a Disney fan.  I loved the parks.  I have to come clean on this failure; I do not live near Disney World.  I do not live near Disneyland either.  I live in Ohio.  Ohio is a good 15 HOUR drive from Disney World and a 24 HOUR drive to Disneyland.   Forget about the plane fare. You can also forget the international parks too.  I cannot just show up every weekend.  Well, I could, but, I might as well move to Orlando.  So, how does one report on what is going on at the Disney parks without being a travel agent?  You rely on others.  I would read what was going on in the parks, write about it in a blog post.  I would do that after I would write on how I am planning my Disney trip.  That was how the blog started out to be. Traveling to the Mouse's House was the name of the blog.  Well, after letting it sit for a year, and no beginning to my family vacation, I decided to let it go (as Elsa sings).

The blog I let go as of a whole two hours ago was a home blog on all things family and household (and almost ended up being the home of Traveling to the Mouse's House).  The name of the blog was Simply Organized Crafts, and I have mentioned the blog several on this blog.  When I was not posting about writing on this blog, crafts on the P. Lynne Designs blog (now a WordPress blog), or my Longaberger business on Tricia’s Baskets (which is still active), I was writing about organizing your home with Simply Organized Crafts (SOC).  At least I got one thing right in my blogging (besides this one-My Ambiance Life).

The reason why I decided to let go of SOC was again I changed directions in my blogging.  That does not mean that I will not have an organizing, decorating, or family blog again.  In fact, I loved doing it.  What happened was more on the WordPress version of SOC.  Just like P. Lynne Designs, I switched it to the WordPress version (self-hosting) of the blog.  I was preparing to launch the site (publishing it to the public) when something terrible went wrong.  I could not log on the admin side of the account. (Back office).  Then I received a notice from HostGator and Life Lock that there was some malicious activity happening to my website, and they had to shut it down.  I was upset because I did not do it.  I know nothing about programming viruses into a program.  Heck, I barely learned HTML and WordPress, and what I learned was from an online course.  The funny thing about it all, is I am still paying for it ($11.00 for the baby account).  P. Lynne Designs is on HostGator too, but it is more protected against these things, and at $16 a month, it better be in stealth mode.  I was going to put SOC on the same protocols as P. Lynne Designs after I finish creating P. Lynne Designs.   In order to do that, I had to shut down SOC (Blogger).  OK, I know, it is complicated.

So, is this the end of Traveling to the Mouse's House? Yes, I am publishing an e-book on Disney travel planning, hopefully for Amazon Publishing.  I am in month 6, and I am just taking my time.  It is a mixture of me planning for this trip (yes, I am still planning) for people in my family, ages 1-78, and the information I gather on my experiences with Disney and researching.  This is not the end of Simply Organized Crafts either.  It is getting a new name, a new domain name, and a total re-design of it.  It will not be returning to Blogger.  It will be a Wordpress blog from the very beginning under Weebly or Hostgator (the same smaller plan that it started out with).  Hopefully, someone will not do what they did to the Simply Organized Crafts blog. 

So, what does this mean for you?  For the beginner blogger (someone who is just starting out), research, research, research.  I do not think that I made bad choices, but I should have found better choices.  I still think that Hostgator is one of the better choices for hosting a WordPress blog out there if you do not want a Blogger or Tumblr blog.  I do have a Tumblr blog, but for the moment, it is just piggy-backing my blog posts from this blog (making a copy), so it does not have an official name. 

For the more experienced blogger, always watch your back.  You never know when you have to change hosting sites for whatever reason.  Make sure that when you change your blog (name change, content change, or delete it), you are ready to move on, and you are comfortable with that decision.  Always backup your site. I am in search of a 5 TB External Hard Drive (yes, my example from the last post), and I have 5 clouds. I knew one day I would close these two blogs, and even when I changed P. Lynne Designs from Blogger to a WordPress format.  I just had to make sure I was ready for that change.   I had not blogged in any of them for a while, even though P. Lynne Designs the Blogger version is still active, and ready to receive my next post.  I now use it for updating the new blog, which still has the “Coming Soon” page on it. (I promise it will launch before the holiday season).

Just be prepared for anything when blogging and know that nothing is ever permanent.