Sometimes it Really is That Easy
Sometimes we put off doing things for so long it almost seems easier not to do them at all. We make a list and then we delete the item off the to-do list with our fingers crossed behind our back.
I have been putting off doing a major website upgrade. First there was the update that needed to happen on WordPress. It should never really be a big deal to update WordPress but all too often it turns into a nightmare or a headache or both. Then I needed to update my theme which, if you use one of the freebie themes offered by WordPress is not a big deal at all.
Except I don’t do that. (You knew that already, right?) No, when I rebuilt the website last year I chose to use the intensely intricate but highly customizable and awesome Avada theme by Theme Fusion.
The people at Theme-Fusion are great at offering support for their theme. There are lots of knowledge base articles on how to do things and a forum where you can ask questions and get answers quickly. They roll out updates in a timely fashion. They let you know (when they can) what will likely break as a result and how best to fix it. They even help you with tweak your code to make your site uniquely yours. (Within reason.) As if that’s not enough support there’s a group of folks on Facebook who use the Avada theme who have formed a support group where we can all post questions and share answers.
So why was I dragging my feet to update?
The short answer? I have no idea.
The longer answer. Fear. I didn’t want to deal with broken things. My code brain was retired. I spent months building my site and getting it to look just the way I wanted it to. An archive of sorts. A hub where all my creative lives would intersect. Did I mention that the site has 117 pages? Something was gonna break. No doubt about it.
So I continued to drag my feet on the project. I spent a week reading the forum and everyone’s complaints about the last few upgrades because I hadn’t upgraded, well, in a long time. And you know, people don’t go to a forum to post about how great something is. They go over there to complain about things that are, well, broken.
I stuck my head in the sand. I wanted to do fun stuff like take photos and work on the novel and play with Zoey. I did not want to do the upgrade.
Then I saw the notice about a security vulnerability on one of the sliders I use and I knew that I had to do the upgrade not soon but NOW.
Gulp.
So I contacted my site host, the wonderful people at Winding Oak and asked them to run a backup. Then I backed some things up here at home. Then I took screen shots of a bunch of settings and copied a lot of custom CSS and then I took a deep breath (after warning my husband I was about to barrel straight ahead into crazy town) and I started the upgrade.
And in half an hour I was done.
One half of one hour. Thirty minutes. 1,800 seconds.
Sheesh!
Yes, there were some little things that broke. All the pages now had sidebars because they did away with the full page template. So I zipped through the pages that used to be full page and turned off the sidebar and it was no big deal. A few custom menus have gone missing but they won’t take long to put back in place. Everything works just fine and looks almost 99% like it used to.
Why do we, okay, why do I always make things so hard for myself? I borrow trouble where there is no trouble on the horizon.
Sometimes life IS hard. Sometimes books are rejected and the reviews of the ones that get published are rotten. Sometimes family members disappoint us or we disappoint them and sometimes the family pet will chew up that sentimental something you left too close within their reach.
But not always. Sometimes it really is that easy. Know what you want to do. Then do it.
Then carry on with the business of living.
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