Today, my IT expert, backed up biodiversity.com.au and transferred it to speciesdiversity.au, with the help of a digital expert from Melbourne IT, whom he phoned. The backup was successful, save for two vital functions which were missing. The Album main page was present, but clicking on any of the thumbnails, resulted in a blank screen with the text: Not a valid template. The species search function produced a text: This form is not secure. Autofill has been turned off. Everything else on the site had been transferred and worked properly. All the album images and texts existed on the admin site. I also paid Melbourne IT to host the site.
Every two years, Melbourne IT send me reminders about the renewal of my domain name on the 17th of May. When I phoned to renew the name this morning, I was told that biodiversity.com.au would expire on the renewal date because I no longer had an Australian Business Number, something my accountant confirmed when I phoned him shortly after. You can imagine how shattered I was, fearing that my website, evidence of my life-affirming activity for 27 years, would vanish into thin air, leaving me with a huge, impossible to fill, void. Then, I dug my heels in, determined to keep my online presence alive. I discussed domain names which didn’t require an ABN and asked if speciesdiversity.au was available. On 2.5.24, I bought the name.
A major update to the site was carried out over the preceding weekend, which has left two considerable problems and a minor problem to be fixed.
Before the site went live in early October, I kept track on its progress. On 1.9.18 I noted that the Gallery only had 42 pages instead of 72. By 19.9.18 there were 72 pages. However, having now curated the Gallery for the past three weeks, I discovered that some of the missing pages had got lost in translation, ie some of the pages were not successfully migrated from the old to the new site. A tell-tale sign was the 3 remnant night images; proof that 9 of the images which made up the page had been lost. To cover for this, a number of back end pages consisted entirely of birds, fungi and rainforest plants, as if they were mini album pages. Rectifying this was in itself, cumbersome additional work, to curating the entire Gallery in the manner adopted for the Albums. Thankfully the job is now done, though I tend to be consistently inconsistent in this project and I will need to check all the texts for missed typos.
Taking as little time off as possible to celebrate the festive season, such as putting in a full day’s work on Boxing Day (bliss), I have been working my way through the Albums. I have re-captured a few images on most pages so that each page now has the bigger enlargements, not just the first three or four pages. I have also updated and expanded the accompanying texts.
It took me a few days to restore a semblance of order to the albums after the November 10 debacle, during which time I realised that much of the curating was years old and tired. The re-launched site provided a unique opportunity to curate the contents of the albums. At the very least I hope to fill in gaps about species distribution and provide some facts and figures, although in many instances there is scant online information on a particular species. As important is grouping images to show variations within a species or provide greater detail. The work is demanding, trying to keep the writing fresh and positioning new and old images in the right place among several hundred in a given album.
I trust you are enjoying the site. There have been a few niggles which annoyingly, at times prevented me from uploading new images. On October 15, I emailed Jess that some of the thumbnails on the Moths album weren’t loading, which is not a good look. Also, the thumbnail for the Fungi album didn’t load, but one could still access the album. The matter was only rectified on November 10. However, in so doing, Jess’s wordpress guy somehow got rid of the ‘Sort gallery’ button. Even when it reappeared, it didn’t work properly and the newest images were on the last page. I had an ominous feeling that I had yet again entered a website world of pain. Fortunately, after some false starts, Jess seems to have restored order and banished chaos. Today, I have successfully uploaded new images and updated the sort order. Fingers crossed that this will continue unabated.
Pardon me for crowing, but the redeveloped website went live overnight. Thanks to the brilliance of its young developer, Jess Murphy of BeITsafe, here on the Gold Coast, the site now has more of a contemporary look with crucial concomitant features, such as being smart phone and tablet friendly.
The pages are wider which improves their look and makes the blog easier to read by allowing the use of a larger font. The videos are paginated and the total shown is automatically updated as new videos are added. Best of all is the long overdue species search function for images and videos, with which I am having a lot of fun.
The previous upgrade went live in August 2013, when the site was given its albums and blog categories. It also enabled me to upload posts and images for the first time. But its overall look remained true to its original appearance.
It’s three months since I last uploaded material to the site. This is the first cab off the rank, with quite a backlog of posts and images for me to work through. Can’t wait.