The transfer was a success! The site actually didn’t go down during the transfer. What you are seeing is the new site. Yes, it looks very similar because I designed it that way but there are definitely some differences. Take some time to look around, especially in the menu bar.
Dead Links: You will probably notice some dead links within posts that are linked together. Some of these will never be fixed because I can’t physically go through the over 1,500 posts that on this site and fix all of the links.
I have tried to fix what is on the homepage and if I find critical links that aren’t working I will fix them over time.
If you see anything critical that should be fixed please contact me by using the contact button at the top of the page on the toolbar. Please do not email me about links within posts because I know about them and will get to them as I have time.
One thing you will notice is that now there are no pictures in new posts or on the homepage in the post summaries. I had to put pictures in the posts before because of the Blogger template I chose. Now I don’t and it is a huge timesaver not having to put them in. The posts won’t be as pretty but maybe I can post more sweepstakes instead.
Leaving Comments: It’s very easy to leave a comment now. Just put whatever name you want and your email address (which will be hidden) and then your comment. No more Anonymous postings!
It’s a big chore moving a site from Blogger to WordPress because of the linking structure and how different it is. If you start a blog you should consider where you will want it for the long term. And, you should consider that Google can and will delete your blog if they want, or if their automated robot feels you are not complying with their policies.
On a side note, the blog they deleted was my daily digest site. I have recreated it from scratch at www.sweetiessweepstakes.net for those who are interested. A big portion of the people who were using it before have found it. It looks almost the same but now I am posting each sweepstakes in an individual post instead of all one post per day. More work for me and inconvenient for you but the way I was posting them is why my site got deleted. It was seen as spam because too many links were going out of one individual post. If you like to see everything that is posted in one day just sign up for the email because you will get them sent to you daily.
Original Post from 2/14/10:
I wanted to give you a heads up. Since I had one of my other blogs deleted by Blogger last week and I have this site on Blogger I decided it was time to move it to my own hosting and use WordPress. I almost have it ready to move over and hope to do that tonight. I didn’t want to move it but I found that Blogger (owned by Google) can and will delete your blog and you have no recourse to get it back. My other blog is still gone and I had to recreate it from scratch. I am not willing to do that for this site so it was either move it or take my chances with Blogger.
When the move takes place the site will be down for awhile. I can’t tell you how long. It could be 15 minutes or it could be 24 hours. Please be patient.
Hopefully all will go well and everything will still be in the same place. If it is not please DO NOT panic. I will fix things as needed and answer questions if you email. I have tried to take into account how it is setup now and make it look exactly the same, when possible.
You will still go to www.sweetiessweeps.com to access the site. That will not change.
When the site comes back up it will look almost the same as it does now. There will be slight differences in the navigation menus at the top. WordPress and Blogger work very different in navigation so I was not able to keep it perfectly the same. It will still be easy to find things on the site, you will have the latest posts on the homepage (minus pretty thumbnail pictures), and not much else will be different.
Thanks for reading and for your patience during the crossover.
Wendy,
Thanks so much for all your HARD work! I love your sites, and you are a huge reason I began sweeping as a hobby. Your sites and helps and chatroom are instrumental in why I keep going too. Thank you, thank you, thank you!
Thanks for all you do! Change is good and necessary sometimes. Congrats on the smooth move. You rock!!!!
Wendy, thanks so much for all you do. I appreciate all of the work that you put in to keep this site up and running!
dear wendy, for some reason i am not getting the new website emails. i got sweeties digest though. i signed up again and it said i am already a member. help, please, i love your site and i don’t want to miss anything. you are a wonderful person for creating these sites.
Elizabeth, I made one slight change to see if something needed to be update to get the emails to go out. Please let me know tomorrow if you don’t get the email from the site. There is nothing I can do about emails that went out today. Thanks, Wendy
Thank you for all your sites, I look forward to all you do each day.