Happy Halloween!! That doesn’t have anything to do with the website, just looked at the calendar this morning and noticed the date as I was posting.
The new website is almost ready. We have been having some back and forth over the last month with technical challenges. To be honest, I had a disagreement with my original developer and he was not able to complete the job. (I may do another post about the labor crisis we are having now). But, trying to find another developer to come in and troubleshoot issues has been difficult. Nobody wants to come in to try to figure out custom code or what the original guy was doing (or had left undone) — they all want to just blow it away and start from scratch with their own way.
In the meantime, as I have been trying to figure out how to describe what I wanted to various developers, I have been learning a lot of development myself. And often, I would just go in and do it myself. Sometimes “fixing it myself” would go in an break different things. Shame on me for not backing up more often. This usually meant a few hours of troubleshooting and eventually just going back to the last backup from a few days prior. Resulting in a lot of re-work or re-re-re-work. That is OK, I consider it part of the learning process and each time I got more efficient at making the changes and learning to code.
The website is built on WordPress with a DIVI theme. There is a DIVI child theme, which I am trying to understand if it is necessary. Then, we have Advanced Custom Fields (ACF), Divi Engine Machine, and Custom Post Types. There are a number of other plugins that I am still trying to figure out if they are used or no longer needed. That will be part of the optimization process. One of the biggest hassles has to do with dealing with various support organizations and determining whos responsible. The hosting company, WordPress, DIVI, or all of the various plugins. They all then to blame each other and say it works fine for them. Sometimes, it is easier to just restore from backup and have another go.
The website is functionally where I want it, but there are a dozen or so cosmetic issues that we are grinding away on. I am trying not to let perfect be the enemy of good enough. Most of what is left has to do with the way that pages look on the desktop vs tablet vs mobile. The page loads slow (about 8 -10 seconds), most contractors want to tackle this first — but I have been more interested in functionality. I will go back and learn about image optimization shortly.
More later, thanks for reading!