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 is Elementor Not Suited for Woocommerce Shop Designs?

keyboard-enter key saya shopping cart with red X over it

Spoiler alert – The two “nails in the coffin” with respect to Elementor not being compatible with Woocommerce are:

 

Why you can’t use Elementor to create Woocommerce categories

 

From Elementor support

 

What the other support teams were saying is essentially right.

The plugin (Elementor pro) won’t recognize it as an endpoint because it isn’t actually an archive page generated by WooCommerce (or WordPress for blog posts).

The plugin searches for archive and single pages (whether blog or product) and adds them to the breadcrumbs.

Standalone pages aren’t added since that’s not a part of what the plugin looks for.

In order for this to be recognized, you’ll have to create actual categories in WooCommerce (since you’re working with products) and create a template to display these within Elementor and that will ensure that the pages get picked up but look the way you want them to at the same time.

 

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How We Repaired A WordPress Database Crash After Site Migration

Database rendition

HI Jim,

 

Hope your weekend is going well

 

When trying to add a new post in WordPress, the site times out.

 

I drilled down and it looks like a really quick fix – please provide a fix at your earliest convenience. (see SG support response below)

 

Hello Mitch,

 

Thank you for contacting our Help Desk center!

 

I checked your website and I noticed that upon creating a new post the page is loading with 404 page not found.

 

This is why I checked the setup of the website I noticed that there are two URLs applied for it:

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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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Easy Hack For Getting Your Finances Under Control $20 At A Time

caliper measurement holding coins on top of financial journal with calculator on foreground

I wrote the following post in 2013 but never published it.

Six years later we are under the same precept.

Recently, we took it up farther than we ever should.

We moved our home and Windy City Parrot operations from the geographical center of Chicago to Lowell, Indiana a town of about 10,000 people surrounded by corn farms.

There’s only 5 stops light from one end of the main street (which we are on) to another.

We now have one lease instead of 2 and 4 fewer utility bills while eliminating 2 buildings to maintain.

Our State Farm vehicle insurance and business insurance dropped 50%.

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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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How many developers and partners does it take to build a Zen Cart/WordPress hybrid website?

2 men working on a tablet and smart phone

I read these mind numbing posts on LinkedIn groups.

“18 steps to better digital marketing” “the five things you must do to launch a website”

Really? When Rick Fisher of BookwormComputers and I had our fateful discussion Christmas week 2015 little did I know that it would take eight months to deploy the new website. The problem was I had moved the site six times and continued to apply digital duct tape with each move.

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