This article was written for Annabel & Grace, which is now part of Rest Less.
You may have noticed that the CountryWives went a bit quiet last week. Sorry about that, but we were working all hours on this new website. Do hope you like it and are having fun navigating around.
You can now see five blogs instead of one – simply click on an arrow to see the selection. This works on the recipes too – giving you much more choice from one page. Just click on any post that takes your fancy and you’ll be whizzed through to the full details. I say whizz, because hopefully you are finding CountryWives much faster than it used to be.
Not sure how many of you have ever been involved in developing a website but it has been a pretty interesting experience for us what with one thing and another. When we started CountryWives four years ago, we had a simple blog. And, considering that none of us had the first clue about anything to do with the Internet in those days, that was a very good thing. Simple was all we could cope with. (By the way, I would definitely encourage any of you who have been thinking of starting a blog to use WordPress like we did – it is so easy and super quick to set up). However, over time we have morphed from being three women chatting in cyberspace to needing a professional website.
As none of us have the mysterious skills required to develop a new, all singing, all dancing website, we went developer hunting. It was like looking for a needle in a haystack and then pricking our fingers once we’d found it. Computer nerds are in a league of their own when it comes to working with them. Normal rules of business just don’t seem to apply.
Tekkies, as we got to calling them, live in a world of their own – mostly a small room packed to the rafters with computer equipment. In order to communicate with them, you have to learn TechSpeak, a new language for me. Back End, Fold, Breadcrumbs and Cache once meant bottom, bend, a tasty topping and coins…but not any more! Now I have a whole new vocabulary tripping off my tongue.I have found it an exciting, frustrating and educational journey – delving with them into the depths of a brand new world where mysterious codes, Google spiders and trojans rule.
Two steps forward and one step back was the norm – I’ve spent too many nights lying awake worrying about missing links, web hosting and widgets. Too many nail biting hours waiting for a call from the God of Geek, to let you know he has fixed a problem (or found a new one). The site starts to look good and then you discover a major problem – like all your photographs have disappeared. And then, finally, the dawn begins to break. Everything suddenly comes together as briefed all those stressful weeks before.
Was all the effort worth it? Oh yes. We just hope you agree. Annabel, Ellie and I would love to have your feedback – complimentary, helpfully critical or otherwise – on the ‘new’ CountryWives – don’t be shy!
Thanks for reading, Grace x