The Curious Migration of WindyCityParrot.com to Woocommerce Ep1

Robt drawing on transparent panel

Update 6/1/2021 ~ When I asked developers quoting me $2500 and 2 weeks, how they would be doing this procedurally, they always deferred.

In that (9) migrations never took more than 6 hours 2, weeks was a red flag. Two competent developers I use, would’t touch it.

This non~coder is going it alone.

Anyone can migrate a WordPress site, including me – this ain’t your mother’s migration.

We think telling stories is more fun than asking for “migration quotes” while building our content creation library.

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Why Open Source Is An Experts Choice For Ecommerce Vs Hosted Platforms

open source globe on hand

If I were a cockatiel my crown would stand up straight when reading articles comparing web hosting sites like Shopify to WordPress.

cockatiel with crown up

 

There are other examples but to start because it appears that many people don’t understand the cord differences.

 

Shopify is a hosted platform.

 

You rent their servers, use their templates and are beholden to their support.

 

I think Shopify has about 600,000 stores right now.

 

WordPress is open source – it’s free, anyone can start a WordPress site although they will lead a host with the server to mount it on.

 

There are about 77,000,000 WordPress sites globally – about 1/3 of all internet sites.

 

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eCommerce Migration From Server Box To The AWS Cloud

Infinity And Beyond

In 2004 having taken the reins of IT duties for Windy City Parrot, I moved the website from a desktop server under Catherine’s desk to a server somewhere that I forget, but within a few months enough web hosts pissed me off until I ended up on a Wolfpaw server in Tenafly, New Jersey.

We’ve been in the cloud for 15 years.

In 2005 when our Milwaukee Street (Chicago) facility burned to the ground.

Had our website been on Catherine’s desktop server with all the local backup we would have lost the entire website and would’ve had to start from scratch.

With the site on a remote server we just needed new computers so we could talk to the Internet once again.

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Why You Don’t Know Jack About WordPress Migrations

Computer specialist working in a bright office

We are migrating our WordPress blog to a new host.

We will add the Woocommerce plugin and then migrate all the data from our current zen cart ecommerce store to the new woocommerce store

 

my short list is

 

https://getflywheel.com/pricing/

https://pressable.com/pricing/

https://www.greengeeks.com

https://www.dreamhost.com/website-builder

https://www.a2hosting.com/solutions

https://www.inmotionhosting.com/wordpress-hosting-promo?

https://www.siteground.com/speed

 

I didn’t see pricing on hyve.com

 

I may go with 2 hosts because we have 4 

‘hobby” sites that are really small but our current site gets 100,000 page views/mo and I like dedicated servers.

 

Flywheel is cool (I thought) because you can build your dev site on your desktop for free and when you’re ready to go live you can just push it to their servers  – no muss no fuss,

 

They also have something called “Blueprint” which maps out any number plug-ins that you use on a regular basis.

 

They (the plug-ins) can be added to any new site with a single click

 

Stay tuned

 

I’m old enough to have a Medicare card

 

Yet I Lord also over a dozen websites on three hosting platforms.

 

I make my living in have done so from e-commerce for 15 years.

 

Have 400,000 social media followers because of my expertise in captive bird husbandry.

 

I still have a thirst to learn something new every day.

 

My day gig is WindyCityParrot.com, which has been around since New Year’s Eve 2002 when my wife Catherine launched it.

 

Since then I’ve built dozens, maybe a hundred or more websites.

 

You get the picture. I know e-commerce.

 

3 WordPress hosts – reviewed 

For a convoluted set of reasons, our current eCommerce platform is a hybrid WordPress/Zen Cart.

 

This combination is not working on a number of levels especially for SEO.

 

There are many reasons for it but I’ve suspected several which I’ve recently confirmed.

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Why the Yoast SEO readability score is a bunch of cow dung.

man typing on PC with the WordPress logo on the screen

Update: (9/1/20)

In March of 2017 I emailed Yoast support that their readability score “is a bunch of cow dung”.

Today 3-1/2 years later  I got this response from Yoast.

“Hi Mitch,   

Thank you for your continued patience. You contacted us regarding a bug where Readability shows orange when gibberish text is used in a table. This email is to inform you the bug has been fixed so please make sure that you’ve updated your Yoast SEO plugin to the latest version v14.8.1.

Let us know if there’s anything else we can assist you with; we’re happy to help.

I’m now using RankMath (pro) on all our sites.

It’s a much better value than Yoast.

Why the Yoast SEO readability score is a bunch of cow dung.

Here’s how I know.

I’ve been blogging for 10 years (building sites for 18).

I’m no Ernest Hemingway but I’m reasonably articulate and have several hundred thousand social media followers.

When I started seeing poor readability scores I began to test.

Continue reading “Why the Yoast SEO readability score is a bunch of cow dung.”