Sunday, September 02, 2018

My Website Horror of Horrors!

Some of you may have noticed that my main website, peacockcards.com, has disappeared. I can't even tell you how upsetting it is to me! I had used a private party host (big mistake!) for the past several years without problems. Oh, once in a great while the site would go down, but I'd contact him and he'd have it up and running soon afterward. No complaints. He had uploaded everything for me from my prior host and so I had no backup of all my html files, my ecards, my graphics, etc.
Well, one day he simply disappeared. My site was down, my email gone, couldn't get into the CPanel, everything just...gone. I tried to contact him many times, I could see he's on Messenger, but he just totally ignored my reaching out to him. I'm not sure why, but I have my ideas which I will not get into for his personal privacy.  But the fact is, my website and everything I had worked at for years was wiped out in an instant. I take some blame for trusting this one person hosting site, also for not having a good backup plan. Most I will never recover.
The e-cards are gone forever. That one alone makes me sad as Peacock Cards was founded on e-cards. I had spent a lot of time... hours, days, weeks, months even perhaps years making the e-cards, and was rather proud that I had self taught myself to use Flash animation, Poser, and Bryce as well as Paint Shop Pro to create them. I had a Flash animation introduction on many of the Flash e-cards that I was especially proud of...peacock related of course! I had wallpapers, recipes, all kinds of fun things on my site, and of course, a lot of pages with my products from  Zazzle and Cafe Press. But it's all gone, and I can only move on.
I am happy to say my email at sales @peacockcards.com is working once again. I have lost all my previous emails and folders of emails which is disturbing as I had some really important emails saved there! But at least customers can now email me using my business email address again and I can respond to their inquiries. So that's a step in the right direction.
Other than that, I am happy to say I have also hired someone from Etsy to build me a new website and logo! I have never had an official logo before, so that's really exciting to me. She's a great designer and I love the logos she showed me, one in particular caught my attention and I'm happy to say I now have a logo, which will be debuted on my website once it's up! Hint..it has to do with peacocks!
I look forward to seeing what she comes up with for the website itself. It will be quite simple and streamlined in comparison to my original site, but I'm sure also more aesthetically pleasing to the eye. I had built my original site with a purchased template and very basic knowledge of html, so it was cluttered and not very professional looking ,but it did the job. This new site I believe will be everything I need and not cluttered looking. I hope it will be mobile device friendly which I admit my previous website was not. She has been a joy to work with thus far, helpful and professional, and in looking at her profile of websites she has built, I have every confidence it will look spectacular!
Please bear with me as I go through this transition. I have lost a lot of time, money, and also something that was dear to my heart. I have lost emails, graphics, wallpapers, e-cards, and hopefully not too many sales from customers who could not reach me or who thought my business had entirely folded up (due to no website).  Many of my stores, especially on Cafe Press, are a mess. They were beautiful stores that I had a very talented designer make for me, but again, because I lost everything hosted on that server, I lost those beautiful storefronts as well, and right now I admit they don't look very nice. The stores are there,but they are bare bones and missing graphics and just not the prettiest to look at!
So in a nutshell, Peacock Cards is a mess right now yes. Some stores are not pretty, my website gone, my email now back again thankfully, and my website should be up and running soon. But I'm open, my products were never affected as they are on the Zazzle, Cafe Press, and RedBubble server. My blog has been there all along, my Facebook page, twitter pages, Instagram, Pinterest, etc. still there.
I will keep you posted as to when my new website is up and running!
Here's a graphic I did find in my files from my Peacock Cards Cafe Press storefront that someone had built for me. I absolutely LOVED this storefront. I will miss this beauty!


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