Deirdre (EC) on 12/26/2018
Apologies for the glitches you are experiencing lately. If, when you visit EC, pages are overly slow to load or you get a message that the server lost it's connection, can you please either send us a post or an email ([email protected]) with the words:
Please Reboot the Server!
When a lot of people start searching on the site, it ties up connections between databases and things can go south. Hopefully we won't have this constant issue with the new site. Rebooting the server takes the site offline a few minutes but speeds everything up.
Now for news on the new site...
We finally figured out how display all your amazing posts by creating sub-pages for them on the new site. Once we create a sub-page for every remedy listed on an ailment page, we then have to gather all the posts with the same title (ie, "apple cider vinegar") and move them onto the new sub-page. Well over 100,000 posts are being moved, a few at a time. Because it's very easy to make a mistake and lose posts with just one click, I am the one moving most posts. I have managed to finish about 10 ailment and remedy pages so far since Sunday. That may not seem like a lot, but a total of several hundred sub-pages have been created and over 5,000 posts have been moved! A daunting job but it keeps moving forward.
Our plan is to go live with the new site as soon as we can and then keep moving posts onto the new sub-pages. Otherwise you guys will be waiting a few months for me to finish moving all the posts onto their own special new pages.
Thanks for all your positive vibes. Wishing you a very happy holiday week!
Replied By Wendy (Columbus, Oh) on 12/27/2018
Thank you SO MUCH for the awesome work you all at EC are doing on the site! I have a question: Will there eventually be an expanded search feature, e.g., to allow one to search for their own posts (maybe search by that person's EC UserName)? I can't remember if your original notification re the upgrade included all the benefits of the upgraded site. Would you, or someone at EC, be able to list the benefits of the upgrade?
Many thanks again!
Replied By Mmsg (Somewhere, Europe) on 12/27/2018
Replied By Deirdre (EC) on 12/28/2018
Thanks for your email. Yes, search will improve... however we have to find the right plugin for that and will probably be using google search to begin with as we have tested the one that comes with Wordpress and it doesn't do a very good job. We're solving one giant problem after another one at a time!
A few immediate benefits:
Pages will load much faster on desktop and mobile.
Design will look significantly more fresh and modern.
After a week or two once we go live:
Member accounts will be migrated and connected to posts. Once they are migrated you will be able to click on user name and see their posts (I think).
Note: People will still always be able to send in a post without logging in as before.
After a couple of months:
All reader posts will be separated by remedy name into their own pages.
Lovely photos will be added to all pages/sections (half have been added at this point).
Everything happens quite slowly on a shoestring budget. But the good news about that is that fewer mistakes are made!
We're hoping the giant phase 1 move happens in the next few days. Of course, I've said that before so we'll see! Will update right before that as there may be a number of hours when the site will be offline. Have a great weekend!
Replied By Deirdre (Los Angeles) on 12/30/2018
Unless something happens where we have to retrace our steps, we will be moving over to the new platform this morning (Dec 31) so Earth Clinic may not be accessible for a few hours or more today. Sorry about that!
As I have mentioned previously, please be patient with us while we get up to speed in the next couple of weeks. We will have to deal with thousands of error messages from pages that have been renamed all over the site and other issues that will come up once we move over that will have to be addressed first.
To begin with, the site will be simplified. You will only have a REPLY button under each post. We will start adding components to comments one by one. But every time we add a new feature, we slow down the site, so we need to be very cautious about adding new components and do a lot of testing first. Also, you will not be able to login on the new site until after we have migrated user accounts in January.
Additionally, the latest posts page has to be created on the new site and we're not sure when that will be done. It's a programming issue.
Approved posts from November 2018 until now will NOT have been uploaded to the new site. No worries, we'll get them uploaded soon. However, every post from the main site from 1999 - November 2018 is uploaded.
Ted's site and our Q&A site will stay the same until we create new websites for those two sites. This means any questions from either of those two sites will not flow through the new EC site as they are no longer going to be connected. More problems for us to solve in the coming months.
Thanks for your patience while we get up to speed. If you are not on our mailing list, please send us an email at [email protected] and request to be added to it. We will probably communicate through email to our community with announcements.
See you very soon on the new site.
Wishing you a very happy and healthy New Year With MUCH LOVE.
Deirdre
P.S. We will most likely have a Latest Posts page set up for new comments as soon as we go live... woo hoo!
Replied By Wendy (Columbus, Oh) on 12/31/2018
EC: Hi, no not to begin with. As mentioned above, we will just have the Reply button and will add other components one at a time.