Perched on the rim of my soap pot

Hello My Lovlies and Happy Sunday!

I want to thank you all for your patience while I got the new websites up, running, moved and beta and alpha tested (Thnx Leslie-Ann!) on my new platform and host. When you own your own domain name, you have to have your old one totally down before you can actually release your new one. It went much smoother than I thought it would. I was doing double duty, as not only did I have to move to a new platform and totally rebuild my Retail website, I needed to make a Wholesale website, too. As one grows, so should one's tools to help facilitate the growth.

I hated leaving my old platform/host, but they no longer had what I needed. They had them before, but when they "upgraded" their website platforms in late 2014, they cut out some basic internal functionalities that webstores may need, and didn't seem to be in any hurry to add them back. And from what I hear, they're losing customers because of it. Since the last time I had to do this from complete scratch was 2008, I expected, based on my experiences then, to have a lot of teeth gritting and general anxiety during the process. From then until 2014, I'd done upgrades, conversions and freshening up on the same platform, which is easy because it's already the devil you know, so to speak. It's not the same as a total new EVERYTHING.

In 2008, It. Was. Not. Fun. Win XP & New Win 7, a wonky Internet Explorer, Firefox was okay-ish, and Chrome was an infant. Those were the days! Asprin, coffee and W3Schools were my best buds.

2016: Oh my. I love how Web 3.0 -which is zooming into Web 4.0 at such a lightspeed pace that it's almost bypassing it and warping straight into Web 5.0- has made designing, redesigns, transitions and moving content to new platforms/hosts headache free (okay, mostly). The native apps, their intuitive designs with almost AI interfaces and the big bonuses of SaaS (Software as a Service) has come a loooonng way from 2008's having to code 1/4 -1/2 of websites html's "special things" by hand. A Big Thank You to the IT Geeks!!

I researched my options during November and December, started Jan 3, set a schedule and had them both up and running on my target dates early February. BOO YAH!

By the way, I've taken the old blog down and put most of the old posts into a pdf file HERE (Warning: it's a honking long 153 pdf pages!) If you're new to me and Botanica Basics and wanting to read some of my old posts to learn a bit about my world, please go have a read. They're in newest to oldest order, just as on a blog. The new web platform has a blog option and I didn't feel like fighting with Wordpress anymore. It's just got too many constantly nagging security issues, even with the managed Wordpress I had and my job is a soapmaker and cosmetic formulator, a not Wordpress IT slave.

I've got some exciting news for you in a couple of days. We've starting a new product and it's going to be AWESOME!

Till then. XOXO