The website began as a simple HTML page in 1998. Then around 2007, I taught myself CSS and upgraded the site to html/css. In 2017, I gave the site a major design overhaul, which I've retained through the present day, also making it more mobile-responsive. This was all made possible with Adobe Dreamweaver—a WYSIWYG and html editor tool that was once an industry standard. Since then, I continued to use Dreamweaver to update manage the website.
As I mentioned in a post earlier this year, I began weaning myself from the Adobe Suite of graphics and design applications, and have already successfully migrated away from Photoshop, Illustrator and InDesign. However, finding a replacement and alternative for Dreamweaver was surprisingly difficult—they just don’t seem to exist. Though I thought I found an acceptable if somewhat clunky alternative in a product called BlueGriffon and even purchased it (fortunately, it wasn't very expensive), it turns out it was discontinued in 2019 and, more significantly, would not work if and when I finally upgraded my Mac OS, which was the primary reason I’ve been migrating away from Adobe. The only viable alternatives appeared to be pure coding editors or applications that only created proprietary website files—applications that would not allow me to simply open or edit my existing html/css files, so I’d have to re-create the site from scratch.
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wcgcomics.com in December 2009 |
Over the years, I played with WordPress, but always found it daunting and impenetrable. (I’m self-taught and rely on documentation—e.g., Google and YouTube—when I get stuck or need to learn how to do something.) However, finally faced with a real need to move away from Dreamweaver and html/css completely, I leaned more heavily into learning and understanding WordPress.
In recent years, I had already taken baby steps in this direction, first creating an account at wordpress.org to "play" in. More recently, when I became a bit more determined, I asked my webhost company to create a subdomain "sandbox" within my website where they installed WordPress, which allowed me to experiment and play more with the system within my account.
After a few breakthrough moments this past week, I finally cracked WordPress. (It sounds simple, but one of the keys was understanding the difference between blog postings and web pages—WordPress was initially created as a blogging tool and remains its default setting).
Once I overcame these humps and cracked the code in my mind, I became proficient enough to begin duplicating my existing website with the help of a template theme that met my needs. After I figured out how to expand WordPress's features with plug-ins and themed templates, I was off and running. Being able to recreate my home page and my webstore—complete with PayPal purchase buttons that worked correctly—was my priority. If I could make those pages functional, the rest was gravy.
So I’m now in the process of building out the rest of the site—being able to cut and paste from the old site to the new, maintaining many of the links and coding in the process—has made it almost a breeze.
As such, I’m now on track to migrate the entire site shortly. It’s way overdue and I’m glad I can finally upgrade to a more up-to-date web-based CMS system that will no longer require me to maintain individual files on my desktop computer.
UPDATE (7/8/22):
As of July 8, 2022, the new WordPress site became active! While it turned out to be a relatively smooth process, there were nevertheless some bumps along the way...
As I began building out the WordPress site in a subdomain, I spoke with a support person at my webhost service who initially assured me that the company would be able to transfer the new site into my main domain. However, a week later, when I contacted the webhoster again, I was informed that such work was beyond their scope of service(!). They initially provided a link with instructions that were too technical for my skill level. When I subsequently told them that this was beyond my skill level and comfort zone, and confirmed again that they could not do the work, they suggested using a plug-in application made exactly for such migrations called Duplicator that was widely used.
All things considering, the process and the application were relatively fast and simple—fortunately, I found a couple of YouTube videos that walked me through the process that I followed literally step by step. Indeed, to be sure I understood the process, I first deployed the migration into another subdomain that I created specifically for the purpose of testing the installation. I figured that if it was successful, I would then install the main site.
The test was indeed a success so I then proceeded with the installation that would overwrite the existing main domain. However, after I did so, I was unable to read the file to initialize the install of the new files(!). In a panic, I restored the original html files and found the site still worked with the old files. However, after consulting YouTube again, I found a small trick that allowed me to correctly launch the installation—with this adjustment, everything went perfectly smoothly like the earlier test. The new WordPress-powered site was now live—whew!
Below are screenshots of the wcgcomics.com website over the years—courtesy of the Wayback Machine!
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October 2000 |
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February 2005 |
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January 2012 – around the time I introduced use of the sliding images |
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December 2016 |
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April 2017 – this is the layout design I still use for the new WordPress site. |
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