The Last Step Before Our Move
We’re moving.
No, I’m serious; this is the real deal. We’re moving this week. On February 4, as a matter of fact. Our new domain is ready to launch, and we’re pretty excited.
We’ve spent two months redesigning and overhauling our blog image, and it’s ready to launch. We’ve got a new theme and layout, we have a new look and brand (one that fits us better, I think), and we have all the quirks worked out so everything runs smoothly.
It’s been quite the ride. If you’re thinking of moving your blog, I suggest the following:
Do not stress over deadlines. Harry and I set a personal deadline of January 1st for the launch. As you can see, we’ve blown that badly. The big day was looming up, we weren’t ready, and we had a freak-out moment before realizing that, hey, it’s okay. So we’re not ready. We’ll get there when we get there.
Do not make promises you can’t keep. We could avoid stressing over deadlines for one reason: We hadn’t told anyone our launch date. We knew that we had a lot of work on our plate and weren’t sure we could keep our word on what day the site would go live. Our readers knew we were moving – they just didn’t know when.
Get help. There were many moments of me deciding I wanted something and Harry desperately trying to make me happy. I’d get frustrated when he couldn’t achieve what I wanted, stress would make us snappy, and we’d shut down the IM in a virtual version of the silent treatment. Enter Brian Gardner, who reminded us that asking someone else to help with our struggles is better than having a fight.
Think every step over. Twice. On this blog, we tend to try different things to see the effect. A poll? Why not. Entrecard? Okay, sure. Hm. How about a widget here? No, wait, move that widget… ahhh. On the new blog, every little thing we tried was carefully considered and tested. We refused to leap onto new fads, and we made sure that the hype or the benefit of a feature was worth it.
Don’t fix what ain’t broke. We stressed over losing the wealth of content we have here at JCME. We wanted to import all the posts over to the new site, but that would create a whole bunch of new trackbacks popping up under a new domain name in blogs that we’ve linked out to. Messy. So this blog will stay. It won’t have new posts going up anymore, but people can still visit, read, comment, and we’ll answer.
Don’t renovate, rebuild. We didn’t want to lose our PR 4 rating (even though rank isn’t our priority, it’s still a nice milestone we’re proud of) but it seemed we didn’t have a choice. Moving to a new domain means starting over from ground zero. But when you start over, you begin on a more solid foundation built for better success. Our old blog couldn’t support more growth and the test of time – renovating it was wasted money and effort. This new home of ours is built strong and it’s here for the long haul.
Our biggest question is – when should we release the new URL? Do we need to give readers a chance to update their feeds? Should we do a launch blitz and email everyone? Do we wait until Moving Day and launch it then? Should we give everyone a sneak peak…?
20 Responses to “The Last Step Before Our Move”
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Is this, perhaps, the sneak peek of the theme? If so, very nice indeed – good work, gentlemen! If not, well, still very nice.
Not even close, Brad
But yes, this is a nicer theme, isn’t it? I think I’m going to tell Harry to just change the banner and leave it like this.
Oooh! How exciting. I can hardly wait.
Sneak peak.
That’s my vote.
Looking forward to it guys.
Whoa! Have fun guys. What a mess. Does look like moving day with all the boxes scattered around. Do you want me to help haul a box to your new place? E
You guys *are* keeping this blog up even after you move to the other one, right? It would be a shame to lose the incoming links …
@Brett: This was the closest available theme I had on hand. Another of Brian Gardner’s. After I put it up, I thought, “Hmmm, this doesn’t look half bad…betcha James wants to keep it…”
@Sharon/Jay: Only a few more days, no sneak peaks!
@Ellen: Yeah, grab that box over there and make sure the oven’s turned off on your way out, would you? Thanks.
@Dave: After much deliberation, we have decided to keep this blog open. There’s a few things we don’t want to lose and the incoming links are one of them
Besides, I have a series to finish.
Is there a way to redirect your feed so that it routes to the new blog? That way your current subscribers could simply receive your new posts (since you won’t be blogging at this site).
@ Dave – That’s a very good question, and I don’t know the answer. Anyone? Is that possible?
If you go into feedburner and replace your old feed URL with the new one (and change the feed’s title text), that would do it … but you’d have to leave your feedburner URL (http://feeds.feedburner.com/jcme) the same. I think that’s reasonable, since the acronym doesn’t reveal a conflicting brand.
In other words, if I went to your new blog but saw the feed URL was http://feeds.feedburner.com/WebContentWriterTips, it would look conflicty, but JCME is vague enough to be passable.
Make sense?
That makes very much sense. I didn’t even think of that. Consider it done.
But wait… Are you saying we’re vague?
@Harry: ah, that explains it then (his work is very sharp, in my non-expert opinion)
I am looking forward to the rest of that series, by the way – very good so far.
I am ready for the sneak peek! You guys are SUCH teasers!
Tsk, tsk, tsk… patience, patience… Good things come to those who wait
@Brett: Brian’s work is sharp, no doubt about it.
@Melissa: I was just about to suggest throwing some flattery in James’ direction to get a sneak peek, but the King has spoken. Guess you’ll have to spend the weekend on the edge of your seat.
Whoa! Big news…still keeping the JCME name?
We do have to keep the JCME name, because that’s the registered name of the business – however, we won’t be publicizing that too much. The domain name is changing completely and we’ll be running under a new name as a division of JCME.
A much better name
Ha! Vague?! With all these boxes around? There’s nothing definitive! I’ve got the meatloaf and will help you unpack (no, it’s not a funeral), well, maybe it is…but, Harry has some series?
@ Ellen – Harry does series, yup. He tends to have better focus for that, and his series did really well. The latest is the way of writing, and he isn’t quite finished it.
The last was the 7 deadly fears of writing, which was very cool because he explored his own fears in each of the eight posts.
Can I pass on the meatloaf? Do we have pasta? And some Coke, maybe?