I have finally emerged from 10 weeks of total frustration to now having created a new platform for my websites. Back in February out of the blue my then IT consultant announced that he was leaving the UK to live overseas. Also the main tech I dealt for 7 years left the company at the same time. This meant I would need to find a new way to run and host my 13 sites! The timing of this was dreadful as I was in the middle of a series of international workshops and I was already at full stretch time wise. However it has proved to be an invaluable learning experience.
The first challenge was to get all the material from the existing sites to begin to rebuilt the new ones. This proved not to be a simple process and it look almost 4 weeks to get the information for the main site, www.nickkemp.com! After many attempts to transfer this online I asked for the data to be mailed on a data stick. This is a very old school solution but meant would could finally progress matters and it took just 24 hours to receive the data!
Fortunately I know a number of very talented people who work in IT and all of them recommended moving everything into the Word Press format. Initially I was reluctant as I knew Word Press from years ago when it was a very basic format for blogs, BUT in recent years it has evolved beyond recognition. Now not only is WP crucially mobile friendly (none of the previous sites were) but there are a vast range of options for changing appearance and thousands of developers have created additional features for WP. I was also mindful that a good friend and colleague had placed a massive site into WP which made me curious about going down this route.
Previously I would send copy to the IT and wait for the new material to be uploaded to the site. This of course creates understandable delays and also can crank up significant annually. The argument 6 years ago was that WP did not have enough flexibility to make a site look really excellent and impactful. This is no longer the case. One of my new tech support guys did such a good job in cloning the design of the older music sites that in the first draft I couldn’t tell the difference between the original and the new WP one! The old company especially in early years did a good job, but in recent times were really reinventing the wheel designing plugins that are readily available and free in the WP format. Not only are the WP ones free, but there is far more choice and these are universally acceptable. When you use bespoke technology created by an IT concern often if you change supplier you have to start again from ground zero. I had to do just this and even with superb assistance from new parties it has cost a crazy amount of time to resolve this situation.
I now advise all clients to look at the WP solution for websites. I suspect the days of webmasters charging by the hour for work that you can easily do yourself with a small amount of training are long over. Previously I had referred countless clients to webmasters and in one case one IT company’s portfolio was mostly from my personal recommendations! That may have been ok at the time, but now I am advising people to take control of their own online presence instead. In the last ten years on two occasions I have had nightmare scenarios where essentially one man bands or small companies have (although being well intentioned) given me a total migraine in relation to maintaining my online presence. One of the key problems is that I don’t have control over what is essentially “my shop window” out into the world. That is now 100% rectified and my business is much more secure for this change in direction.
That having said its still essential to seek advice from experts in this medium in the first instance and of course to pay attention to writing good copy and using the best possible photos. I have hired a new award winning photographer Karen Turner who has proved invaluable to my music and business promotions. In one photo shoot she produced 230 photos of an amazing quality which are being used in a number of promotions.
Special thanks to Anne, Alan, Adam, Erik and Karen all of whom have assisted in changing a nightmare situation to a far better online solution for all my business concerns. The feedback from people looking at the 5 revised sites is that they are far easier to navigate and a great improvement on previous versions. This has also been an invaluable lesson in learning to edit content making sure that all websites look as good as possible.