Day # 149 in lockdown in Mumbai, India hotel..Issues with out new site…Will be resolved soon…

It’s been frustrating over the past several days. With the sorrowful loss of my dear sister Susan and the new site posed to go “live” on Monday, encountering some unforeseen obstacles, I’ve been beside myself.
Hundreds of readers sent email messages inquiring as to where we’ve been. With only a few occasions over the past eight years, five months, without communication from us, our readers have been shocked to see that not only were there no new posts but our web address couldn’t be accessed online.

When typing www.worldwidewaftage.com into any search browser, all that has been popping up in the past three days has been an error message. Here’s how this situation has transpired.
We were all set to go “live” on Monday after I’d signed up for a hosting site where we’d house our site and all future posts for years to come. Since we chose to no longer use Blogger for our posts with frequent errors, issues with line spacing, and challenges when posting, it was time to switch from Blogger to WordPress. 
WordPress is a popular platform for blogs, informational and retail websites throughout the world wide web. Over the years, I thought of switching to WordPress but feared doing so for the very reason what has now occurred: I am unable to post daily, as usual.

The reason this happened was simple. The hosting company I’d selected could not handle the size of our historical posts (almost 3000), which is unusual for any website’s historical data. The cost to upgrade for more data was outrageous at thousands of dollars per year. This was not noted when I signed up for the service and paid for a three-year contract.
The meager income generated from our advertisers isn’t sufficient to warrant such a considerable expense. As a result, on Monday, it became necessary to cancel the service I’d selected, search for another company offering unlimited data, set up and pay for an account, inform our web developer with the information, and then wait.

All of this transpired yesterday, Tuesday. I requested the web developer to put Blogger back in place to post in the interim until the new site is ready with this change. 
This request was made yesterday at 10:00 am India time. It takes at least 24 hours for the old Blogger to come back up, so by the time you read this, it will be back up again, while we’ll wait for the new site to become “live,” which is another 24-hour process.

So confusing. So frustrating. I don’t blame our web developer. In reality, I suppose it was my lack of understanding of how much data our huge site would require, especially when the first hosting company didn’t mention any limits on data or bandwidth.

Now, with the new company and my account in place as of yesterday morning, here’s a timeline of what I expect will transpire over the coming days:
1. August 19, 2020:  The old Blogger file will return, allowing me to continue to post
2. August 21, 2020: The new WordPress site will commence the process of going “live,” resulting in a two to three day period with no recent posts
3. August 23, 2020: Our new WordPress site will become available online.

Result: We’ll have only been able to post a few times during this one week from Monday to Monday.
Isn’t it ironic how easy it is to “buy” something, yet it is impossible to cancel? Last night at 10:00 pm (considering the time difference in the US), it took 35 minutes on a chat module with the original hosting company to cancel the account. Hmm…

We apologize for this inconvenience and look forward to “seeing you” online with us in the days to come. We’ll be fine-tuning the new site while it’s “live” without interruptions.

Have a safe and productive day.

Photo from one year ago today, August 19, 2019:

There were so many tourists inside the Peter and Paul Cathedral. It was challenging to take photos without including them. (I am unable to access archives to post the link from one year ago).

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