The Wheeling It Blog Has MOVED!!!!
The big day is finally here. It’s been coming for a loooong time although I’ve been keeping it pretty quiet. You see for many months I’ve been getting too big….too big for the free wordpress.com platform. I never really imagined this happening when I first started my little old blog 4 years ago, but I guess it’s a compliment to all you blog readers that follow me. It came to the point that I could no longer “cover my ears and lalalala” away the problem. But moving the blog to a self-hosted/paying platform was daunting, so much so that I became paralyzed with fear even thinking about it. How to move over 670 posts, 5,000 pictures and 1,500 subscribers without screwing up???
Well, it’s finally happened….I think. It was NOT easy. My blog was so big it varnished the cache and required “Guru Mediation” something the tech support assured me was not a spiritual transcendence. This required several techs scrambling around for many days doing a gazillion things I have no understanding of to even transfer the bleeding thing followed by several more days by yours truly panicking to fix the stupid format. In the process I even popped out a theme child (not altogether painless, mind you) and coded some CSS……aaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhh!
But it’s done…hopefully, I think….and here is the new link:
If you’re a blog follower and want to keep up with new posts I’d like to ask you to do the following:
1/ RSS Followers -> If you’re getting my blog through RSS feed (e.g. Feedly or equivalent) please update your feed to www.wheelingit.us/feed
2/ E-Mail Followers -> If you’re getting my blog through e-mails your e-mail should already be transferred to the new blog feed (in fact, I’m kinda hoping you get this e-mail from the new link). However I’m not 100% sure of this. This was one of the “iffy” parts of the transfer. So, if you don’t get a new blog post from me in the next few days please go to the new site www.wheelingit.us and re-sign onto the e-mail subscription (top right)
3/ Linkers -> If you’ve got my blog linked to your site somewhere, please update the link to www.wheelingit.us.
This new platform is now a paying platform. Nothing much I can do about that given my “beastly” blog size, but I’m hoping to keep things classy. I’ve been playing around with some Amazon affiliate links to see how I could support the thing and based on the couple of experiments I did in the past month on the old blog it looks like it’s a “go”!! I want to THANK all of you who used my links and I’ll be using them in the new spot to (hopefully) support it going forward. So, share the love when you get a chance 🙂
DO have a look at the new blog and let me know what you think and/or if you find any errors. I’m happily open to suggestions & improvements. I like the new, fresher look but want to make sure you like it too. With any luck all new posts will be on the new platform. Up, up and away…..!
Got the email and changed my links. Good luck going forward!
Thanks for checking in!
Smooth as butter on this end! Congrats on the upgrade and Happy Holidays!
Cool! Thanks for checking in!
Nina
I got it via E-Mail…… Whew I would be bummed if ya lost us… LoL
Me too!!! I’ve been terrified of losing my e-mail followers with this switch. Glad to know you all got the new mail.
Nina
Good for you! It seems to work – I got your email OK, on a day after Yahoo seems to have changed to become even more unfriendly (long story; like Google they seem to be getting too big and bossy…) and me locked out, causing me to panic, surf the net and find someone’s useful tip on how to ‘get back in’ to one’s Yahoo emails, painstakingly copied and pasted them all into a huge Word Doc as a back-up, then scrabbled to set up a new email address (via a spare Domain belonging to Kim). But today on finding I could get my Yahoo emails OK, I chickened out of changing… for now!
As Rick said, it was inevitable your wonderful domain needed its own home! Keep up the good work!
PS Just one thing – I notice all these comments have a time stamp 8 hours ahead of Pacific Time! Is the glitch at your end, or mine?!
Good catch! I think (I think) I’ve corrected that one. Had the wrong time-stamp on my blog.
Nina
You got it! You’ve now replied 5 hours before I posted! Damn.you’re fast! 😉
Looking good….received like normal via email. I’ve looked into changing over myself, but figured childbirth would be preferable….LOL. The thought alone is overwhelming. Glad you made it through the process unscathed 🙂
Me too…!! It was a stressful few days!
Nina
Looks great! You must have done it right!
Thanks! Thanks for checking in too!
Nina
Nice job, the new site looks great!
Glad ya like it!
Nina
See…you can do ANYTHING if you put your mind to it! lol Good job…love the new look!
I wasn’t sure I could manage this one. It’s taken me months to get to this stage. Sure am happy the biggest portion is over.
Nina
Love your new blog site. Your style shines through.
Thanks. I wanted to try and keep a “warm” format to the whole thing while freshening it up a little. Glad I managed to balance it right.
Nina
Congrats on the switch Nina. I think you’ll like the new freedom and flexibility. There’s sure to be glitches but you’ll get them ironed out over time. Now you can really make it your own. Good luck!
Thanks Ray! I’ve got to update my blog roll too and add you in 🙂
Nina
Easy changes on this end. Best wishes on the new platform. So far it looks great from this end of the kaleidoscope.
Bottom band reads “unknown twitter error.” but this may be because you didn’t have a fresh tweet to feed it.
Yeah I saw that wierd error message from twitter. Hoping it gets replaced when I send a new tweet. Actually I’ll go do that now.
Nina
The blog looks great! My only comment is I’m not crazy about the calligraphy? style headline font. I like simple easy to read, plus item numbers and such really jumble together….or maybe it is just my eyes.
I’m not fixed on the headline calligraphy yet…still thinking about that one. I wanted something a little different, but agree it’s not the easiest to read. Thanks for the feedback.
Nina
This came through this morning just fine. Looks like everything is here. Good job! I see you are not very warm in the desert. It’s 34 at 11:00 am in Sacramento. Thinking about heading south soon! Thanks for all you do in this blog. It’s so helpful to me. Your blog and Chris and Cherie’s blog are my go to sources. We met Chris and Cherie while they were in Sacramento. Someday our hope our paths cross too. Happy Holidays!
Rochelle
Thanks for checking in (and the lovely comment too!). Temps are actually not too bad right now…hovering around 70 for the afternoon. I see ALOT of cold weather up north tho! Hope you get south and warm soon.
Nina
I like the clean post blurb format, but looks like the new comments got dropped. Are you still using WordPress? I think it’s a carryover from the old site, but the dental posts on Los Algodones aren’t in the health care section?
Yes, still using WordPress just on a self-hosted platform. THANKS for the check-in and info on the dental posts. I’ll update that now.
New comments are still there although I need to re-approve everyone, so your comment may not show up until I do. However the comment counter got dropped on some of the older posts during transfer (no idea why)….issues, issues….
Nina
I just posted twice above because there’s a *huge* delay – like 10 seconds before it responds here at 2:50 pm EST. That’s even on a very good T1/T3 connection here at work. I couldn’t even see the first post, so I hit Post Comment again, and it told me I had already posted that comment. Then when I tried to refresh the page with an F5 and my comment wasn’t there, so I posted a third time and then it and the first comment both showed up. Thought you might like to know. Looks like it’s not requiring me to log in like the previous site with Facebook/Twitter account – I just supplied my email.
This ended up being a delay of 31 seconds on my end when submitting the third reply. Not sure why. All other sites seem responsive.
Hmmm….OK. I didn’t have to approve this one, so that’s happening independent of my side. I’ll keep watching this.
Nina
Looking good here. This is what happens….when you’re so darn good at what you do!
Haha…thanks Ralph. I’d like to think I was “good” at this, but it’s taken me waaaay longer than it should. Still alot of grunt-work to do before I get it exactly the way I like it, but at least the “basics” are there now.
Nina
Very snazzy looking. Love the new headline font!
Thanks. The headline took me a while to figure out. Finally got it to something I like 🙂
Nina
New site is looking good.
Speaking of the previous posts on the old site for the embeded Amazon links, well I really appreciate those. You incorporated them into the blog itself to support the products you were reviewing at the time. To me that is valuable experience about products that you are passing on to others, and I for one will continue to use them. So keep them coming, especially if they serve that dual purpose.
Another point that I am curious about.
I see a lot of people turning revenue via the YouTube Partners program. I have often thought that would be a great fit for you to expand to, while growing your revenue and subscriber base. And most of all, us subscribers would love to see your video creations. Seems like it would be right up your alley, given your photography experience.
Happy trails,
Steve
I’m real happy the links have been useful. I try to be very careful about what I recommend…only stuff I’ve personally looked at myself & researched. Glad it’s helpful for others too!!
I’ll look into that video thing. Not sure I’m much of a videotographer (is that a real word?), but who knows about the future 🙂
Nina
I like the new clean format! Still following yall!
Safe Travels.
AJ
Cool! Happy to have ya along for the ride!
Nina
I got your email. Your new site looks great. Good job, Nina!
Grace (in Tucson)
Thanks Grace! Nina
Looks nice to me, Nina. Congrats on your success and the need to upgrade. I look forward to enjoying your future successes as you continue to share your journeys with so many of us.
Yeah, I guess I should look at this as a success. Getting too “big” is good in this case, right? 🙂
Nina
Great new look! Received the email! It’s all good! Well done.
Glad ya like it! Nina
Looking forward to the new design and format. We love reading your blog, seeing your beautiful pix and dreaming about the days in the near future when we join the full-time folks!
Glad to have ya along for the ride!
Nina
Nice header! I like the palm tree in silhouette. Congratulations on enough traffic to require guru mediation. I love that phrase.
Thanks! Took me FOREVER to design a header I liked. The design I settled on will allow me to change the pic every now and then which I really enjoy.
Nina
Congratulations, it looks great!!
Thanks Leigh!! Nina
Congrats on the move! Hopefully a mobile version of the site comes out soon! I keep up with tour blog while I’m in the air.
OK. I “think” I just managed to activate a mobile version of the blog. Have a look. Hopefully it works for you!!
Nina
I just checked the new site on my iPhone and definitely seems to be a mobile version. Nice job, thanks.
Cool! Glad to know it’s working!
Nina
Great job, not sure if I would ever be able to do without mucho help, get via e-mail.
I must admit I’m so super-stubborn when it comes to these things. I persisted in doing it myself (with tech support at my hosting platform, thank goodness) which of course made it much more painful than it should have been. Still, I feel rather proud that I made it through mostly unscathed.
Nina
Nina ~
Your new site looks fantastic – I love it! I receive your posts via email and it came through just fine. Looks like things are working well. Thanks for all your wonderful information. It’s very entertaining and helpful. We will be spending the winter in southeast Arizona and I will refer back to where you went last year to give us some ideas. Thanks much. Paula
Cool! Thanks for checking in and have fun this winter in AZ. We may well cross paths there!
Nina
Looks good! Congratulations! –Linda
Thanks Linda! Glad you like the new format.
Nina
Been quietly following for quite some time now. Love the new site. My wife,Dolly and I are heading out to your neck of the woods soon after Christmas, if we can get out. Will be our first two month RV experience.
Cooool! Have a fun trip! Hope the weather stays warm out here for you. We’re having a bit of a “chill” right now, but no snow thank goodness.
Nina
Concur with all, wonderful redo. In the prior website I did like using the beautiful link to Paul’s Investing For a Living, but I’ll just get onto his e-mail subscription.
Thanks so much inspiring the exploring life!
Yeah, I’m working on him to let me add it back in 🙂
Nina
Everything good on this end EXCEPT: When I click on RV Park Reviews and get the drop down I cannot go to the bottom of the list. Thought you should know.
Yup, I see the problem. I’m able to get to the bottom of the links only when I scroll down. Not sure I can fix it since that is something that’s predetermined by my theme choice, but I’ll add it to my list of things to look at.
Nina
Nina, your new site looks great! Congratulations!
Thanks Sheila!
Nina
You are brave – Congrats! It looks good and for sure you needed your own URL.
It’s been a loooong time coming. Hope this platform works out.
Nina
First time poster, long time follower. Have so appreciated your blog, and the new site is terrific. Looking forward to the posts to come.
Thanks Norm! Nina
Hi Nina,
First off… WELL DONE!
I’m a fellow RV fulltimer and WordPress expert. Feel free to reach out if you need any free help. I know sometimes all those tech things the techies do to your site don’t getting clearly explained in English… I probably owe you a lot more as I’ve been reading your blog for awhile. Here to help if you need it. Again great job and thanks 🙂
Cheers Brent
Oh wow…thanks so much Brent! I may well take you up on that offer as I work through some of my glitches. This has been a massive process.
Nina
No problem. Feel free to connect. Cheers Brent
Nina,
Good job, it looks very nice. I went to your blog through the link in an email as usual.
Also, I really like the info you gave us on health and health insurance. Your hard work is appreciated!
Larry
Glad the health stuff has been helpful. I’ve got another post planned on how ACA will affect us (and specifically our choice of domicile), but that will be down the line…
Nina
Got it and it looks great–what happened to Paul’s “button”??
You are very perceptive Janna! Paul is not sure about blogging anymore (sadly he gets a bunch of nasty comments…I think it’s a common problem in finance-related blogs) so he asked me to leave it off. I’ll work on him though 🙂
Nina
Keep up the great work 🙂
Thanks for the encouragement 🙂
Nina
I also got the email and will change my links accordingly. Whew! I knew you were big in the blog world, but no idea just how big! Now I get to say with authority…”I have spoken in PERSON to the famous Nina, of blogland fame, owner of a HUGE blog”. Of course….just because you are the best around I would still be happy to say I know you. Big or not. and YOU are not big, just your blog. I hate how words come out stupid in comments. Love the new site, it looks great and seems to work well.
LOL…I like to say I’m a big(ish) fish in a small pond. We’re an intimate group us RVers. I’m sure happy to be part of this life!
Nina
Looking good at the new location. It’s a lot of work moving a blog, took me 3 months of anguish and mentor help.
Yup…I totally relate to the 3 months of anguish. Would you believe I actually bought the domain and started paying for hosting in September! It’s taken me until now to finally get everything “live”. Phew!
Nina
Nina,
RSS works great, but I miss the little favicon of you and Paul. There should be an option to set it under Appearance…Theme Options in your WP Dashboard. Got questions on WP, more than happy to help.
Mike
Soon to be working FT on the road
from a 2006 Gulf Stream Tour Master
Oh thanks for that tip! I was trying to figure that one out. I will go do that today.
Nina
OK. I think I managed to change it!! Hope it works now.
Nina
Great job! Thanks for the reminder to change link to your site on our own blog, never thought about that part of it until I read it. Dave (GoingRvWay.com)
Thanks for updating my link!
Nina
I may be your first comment on your last post on your old platform. HA! That’s the only way I’d ever get to be first. But let me repeat myself……Nothing succeeds like success. Congratulations!!
I think………..:-)) Looks great to me!
No worries! Glad you got the comment in.
Nina
GOOD LUCK! Im looking forward to continue to receive you posts-all of them are very helpful and informative.
Regards, Ann and Ken who have an 18 Casita Travel Trailor and do some “Wanderings”
Thanks for following along!
Nina
Smooth as butter! The new site even told me I was already subscribed when I entered my email address 🙂
Yup, that happened to me too. Seems the transfer of the subscribers went through OK which I’m really happy to hear!!
Nina
Checking in…..looks good.
Thanks for checking in!
Nina
Man, I feel for you! As the owner of a couple of eCommerce websites myself (only one, now), I remember feeling like I was flying by the seat of my pants. HTML is easy, but CSS…is not, really. I can fake it and modify someone else’s code, but NOTHING teaches you how to code better than absolute necessity, huh?
I buy A TON of stuff on Amazon every month, and I’ve changed my Amz bookmark to your home page so I make sure to use your search box. You have already given me so much valuable information in such a short time.
Love your campground/boondock site reviews; please keep ’em coming!
I SO agree on the CSS. Not as easy as HTML at all. I am still learning a TON about it, and am nowhere near close to being any kind of expert, but at least i can “fake” my way through now haha.
And thanks for shopping my links. Sure do appreciate it!
Nina
I received via e-mail just as normal….Everything looks great Nina
Excellent! Glad to hear it.
Nina
It came to me through email, no problem. Congrats on the new blog and your blogging “celebrity”!
Thanks Marcia 🙂 Not sure I’m really a celebrity, but it sure is fun to have the lovely following that I have and be able to share all our adventures.
Nina
You’re either growing or dying. Glad to see you choose correctly. Looking forward to the next chapter of Wheeling It, and your next post.
Nice quote…I like it!
Nina
Great job! It is a little overwhelming, even when your tech savvy. Looks good,
It sure was overwhelming. I’m not exactly techy when it comes to coding and stuff, but I’m a good (albeit slow) learner.
Nina
Wow! Congratulations, Nina. Your new digs looks great.
670 posts! that is quite an accomplishment. I sense your excitement and it reminded me of my past life. This is like the day of a “go-live” project implementation. A sigh of relief and joy when things work as expected after burning lots of midnight oil and anguish.
Yeah, it’s been a loooong couple of days. I’m glad it’s finally “live” even though I still have a bunch of details and behind-the-scenes grunt work left to do. Phew!
Nina
From the sounds of it, it might have been easier to pop out a kid. *thinks* OK, maybe not.
Plus, then you have to raise the kid and all.
Haha….I almost thought the same thing myself. That child was NOT an easy birth.
Nina
It must be the season. A good friend just went live last week with a new format, a new host, and a new URL (http://bethwoolsey.com/). It apparently took a bunch of custom programming for her to move comments, etc. Yours looks very nice.
Yeah, mine was not easy either. Thankfully I had alot of tech help from the guys at Dreampress (my new hosting platform) and there’s still a bunch of small things that didn’t really work out (for example, comments got moved but for alot of posts the comment counter didn’t update correctly). It’s minor stuff tho and I can live with it…
Nina
I know the feeling about “oh crud, where did it all go to” 🙂
Your blog loaded without any issues. Actually do like the format, seems easier and quicker to browse through. Guess that is the difference between the free and not free. Thanks for all your posts, really good information. We know you put lots of time into your blog, and am sure the both you are appreciated more than you know. If your ever in the Mesa, AZ area, feel free to stop by. regards….Roman and Kathy C.
The blog is loading faster for me too. I think it’s the condensed version of the posts which is easier to load. I’m hoping the faster loading is a permanent thing.
Nina
Congrats on the new web digs! Now that you’ve done all this work, contact the Italians—the domain wheeling.it is still available 🙂
Oh how funny! I didn’t even think of looking at Italian domain names! Wheelingit.com was gone of course, so I had to improvise. I figured wheelingit.us gave the feel of “us” being on the road. The things ya have to think of when you move blogs, eh?
Nina
You can still grab wheeling.it from GoDaddy or numerous other registrars (at a cost of $28/yr) and then simply have them set it to point to your wheelingit.us domain as a web shortcut. No other work involved. Google “.it domains” for details.
Woah…$28/year. Not sure I want to shell that out just to have another domain address. Still, it’s a interesting little thought.
NIna
Good work, Nina. I’ve had a few blogs since 2000 and went with b2 in 2001, which evolved into WordPress. It’s turned into a great blog platform and well worth the time to learn the basic coding.
We (DW, DD[dear dog] and myself) only recently jumped into RVing, buying a class A and selling the S&B in the past few months. Your blog has been very inspiring and I especially like the dog related information.
Best wishes and godspeed.
Congrats on the RV & hope you enjoy it as much as we do!
Nina
Very impressive I am so glad you got to be this big that everyone can appreciate all that you do and all that you write…for me all I had to do was put this url in my bookmark favorites and get rid of the old one…very techie for me:)…and it worked…
If it works, it works 🙂 Hope to see ya in a couple of months.
Nina
I got your email and like your new look. You are a brave woman to tackle such an undertaking. Glad you got everything moved over.
Me too! Hope they aren’t working you too hard over at Amazon. When I got my packages this last week I couldn’t help thinking of you and wondering if they went through your hands somewhere.
Nina
This is great. Was most enjoyable to stop in for a few minutes. Got back here and remembered a ton of questions. Hope to see you guys somewhere down the road.
Looks great! You are a rock star!
Gary
Cheers Gary!
Nina
Hi,
Lucky thing I checked my Spam folder before deleting it, and found your email.
Congrats!
Roger
Glad you “caught” me!
Nina
Congrats on the new locale! As a long time follower and fellow self-hoster, I selfishly hope there will be a WordPress “How to” post or two to come one day, as I have barely learned much beyond “Publish.” You seem to have mastered it quite well! Very nice!
Goodness…this was such a long process I’m not sure I’ll do a “how to” post, but I can certainly give you some pointers. Besides choosing a good hosting service (we went with Dreampress) & buying a domain name, the next step is transferring your blog. This the best (and simplest) tutorial I found:
How to Properly Move Your Blog from WordPress.com to WordPress.org
Now, given that I had alot of problems. My import didn’t work properly, so I had to work-around that w/ the tech guys. Then my links were all messed up, so I had to use a “search and replace” plugin to correct them. Then my format got warped so I had to fix that. Then I realized I needed to do some custom coding to get the thing looking right so I created a CSS child and spent days learning basic CSS coding….PHEW!
But for most people the regular import should hopefully work fine 🙂
Nina
Thanks, Nina,I am already self-hosted, but I just can’t figure out any of the fancy little widgets and gadgets. I tried a “follow me” plug-in once, and blew up my whole site. LOL! But I will keep listening and learning.
Indeed…all the widgets and plugins are not obvious. I’m still playing around with most of them.
Nina
Sure happy for you. Got your notice and happy to follow your blog. You are one of the better ones I follow. We were in Oregon last year (’12) at valley of the Rogue SP and Tou velle SP. We applied to Humbug SP but couldn’t get our schedule clear, on the months they had open.
Look forward to your new adventures.
Just lOVE all the Oregon State Parks. Haven’t been to a bad one yet. Thanks for following along on our journey!
Nina
Hooray!! Congrats on finally varnishing that cache with some high powered guru mediation 😉
Looking great.. and hope it’s smoother sailing from here. BTW, you’ll never be done tweaking things out. Never.
Hugs to you guys!
Thanks Cherie. I thought of you guys a lot when I was doing this, and I can already foresee you’re right about the tweaking. There is no way I will ever be done….!
Nina
Nina: We are using WordPress for our BLOG, as you use to…ours is
freewheelin.me A question? Is there any way that we can “save” or “print off” our blog contents to a storage disk for future reference or is all of the contents the property of Word Press and there is now legal way to do that?
Maynard Correll
Actually there are several services where you can print out your blog. You can even make it a yearly thing and save them as a “book”. For example these guys:
http://blog2print.sharedbook.com/blogworld/printmyblog/index.html
It’s certainly also possible to save your blog files electronically. I actually use a back-up plugin (WordPress Backup to Dropbox) which saves my blog files every week to an external service:
http://wordpress.org/plugins/wordpress-backup-to-dropbox/
I’m sure there are lots more other options out there, but these are the 2 main ones I know about.
Nina