Today’s RSS recommendation involves some shameless self-promotion. It’s my site so I can do that, right?
I LOVE elephants. I don’t know why and it didn’t start when I was a child. I think it’s because of their intelligence and group empathy. Over 6 years ago I started an elephant website called Eleblog in which I gathered all elephant related news. The site now contains almost 4000 posts and I have edited out posts linking to news articles that no longer exist.
The site was in a subfolder of this domain and over Thanksgiving weekend I moved it to it’s own domain – eleblognews.com (I wanted eleblog.com but some electrical engineer has that for his ele blog, grr…) Moving the WordPress installation and database and well as implementing the 301 redirects was a bit of chore but everything went smoothly. (I’ll write about this process soon).
Of course, I’ve lost my PR rank and traffic but that should be sorted out by the next time google does new PR’s. I’m not to worried about it.
Although the site has existed for so long, it was lifeless. It’s a great repository for elephant related topic – for example, if you search on ivory, you will get pages of links to news articles on the topic going back 6 years, but there was no community. I’m working on changing that. I installed a new theme, although I’m planning on designing one of my own at the beginning of next year, added an affiliate store, and some ads. I’m thinking of adding a forum and have a couple of interesting interviews in the works. It gets a decent amount of traffic and has regular elephant loving visitors but I don’t really know them and I want to change that.
Anyway, I’m recommending my site, Eleblog, this week. If you’re curious, stop by and check it out. And, if you or anyone you know loves elephants, go ahead and subscribe.
Hi Kim,
I really love what you’ve done with the site. And I can’t wait to watch the eleblog community grow. :-)
You shouldn’t have lost traffic if you did perma rewrites (or 301s) to linked pages etc…they’ll simply forward. PR will follow in 3-4mths from my experience
@Jim – Thanks! I appreciate it. (sycophant – lol)
@David – Well, I emailed you, broke my site and now have the 301’s working properly. I don’t think I’ve lost traffic except according to Alexa I have. The PR of that site dropped too when this one did but not as drastically so I’m curious to see what happens when it gets ranked again.
Thanks for your help :-)
I’ll have to check it out. Elephants are cool. Also interested in reading your future post about the whole process of moving things over.
I’m considering upgrading and am a little hesitant. Did you upgrade as well or just move?
Tawnya´s last blog post – 10 For Tuesday
Kim, your revamped elephant blog looks great :) The very sight of majestic elephants itself is a treat to the eyes for elephant fans like you and me.
As I requested, please provide some pics, news about Asian-Indian elephants as well… somehow I am used to that looks :lol:
Good luck!
Ajith Edassery´s last blog post – Right Time to Start Your New Self-Hosted Professional Blog
whoa!! u bowled me over… Elephant blog!! wow!! To be frank, I dont know if I will be interested in it, but I would love to follow it, so that I can learn how you can manage such a niche and off-beat blog :)
Raju´s last blog post – Screedbot – Get Animated Typewriter Effect for Your Text
@Tawnya – I’m going to start working on the moving it over articles. I might break it into parts.
Are you talking about upgrading WordPress? I’m an upgrade nag ;-) It was upgraded before I moved it. I have an article about manually upgrading WordPress – http://www.kimwoodbridge.com/upgrading-wordpress-manually/
and there’s the Auto Upgrade Plugin, which a lot of people like.
@Ajith – Thanks! I’m so glad that we also have elephants in common. I’ve discussed your suggestions with you a little ;-)
@Raju – I am full of surprises ;-) What is unfortunate is that I’ve had this site for 6 years and haven’t tried to do more with it until now. I don’t know if I can really create a lot of growth from such a narrow niche but everyday I’m finding more people interested in elephants.
Is it true that elephant icons, ie little statues and such, are supposed to bring you luck? That’s what I’ve been told by my mother-in law who brought back some elephant trinkets on one of her trips.
Love your theme and it certainly loads really fast.
Sire´s last blog post – Does My Bum Look Big In This?
@Sire – To some they symbolize power, wisdom and good luck.
Thanks! It’s just a modified Neoclassical theme. I’m hoping to design my own at the beginning of next year. I’m glad it loaded fast – I’ve found it to be a little sluggish compared to this site.
Nope. I may have been lucky but it was almost instantaneous.
I just tried it again and it loaded in less than ten seconds.
Sire´s last blog post – Does My Bum Look Big In This?
@Sire – Thanks for checking again and for the feedback.