ElleFagan.com is 20 TODAY Feb 2, 2022
My aide-de-camp, Cookie - along with others of the usual humankind, we do! Thank you Cookie! Best meetings ever!
Happy Birthday ElleFagan..com , this is your life: Since February 2, 2002,
I was Snapped suddenly out of my path one day at Y2K when a spinal injury demanded immobility - NOTHING in my life but the dead stop.
My grown son in California found out and flew in and visited my Connecticut home -
He strode in and pronounced "My Mom's not going down from this." Blessed is the widow with a son like that, but glad he is married now and I just call the law if something happens. He taught me website construction and set me up. He was world -class IT, and his Dad and I both science and tech and arts-friendly- and I did my first data processing for stockbrokers when he was an infant. Smiling to see the result.
The site gave me new pathways for life and work, just when I thought it was all over for me.
Laughing to be unstuck from the trauma of my disability, I was doing a thing again, at my own son’s tutelage, and then he had to return to his west coast job.
Unlike many disabled, my active ways meant that the doctors did not feel I needed to be medicated…I was focused and fine.
Instead, I was safe, resting , taking therapies and up in the quiet , all night sometimes, with an Apple G3 PowerBook and Angelfire.com free website templates that helped me master basic coding.
Soon, hooked on code - I was coding a new life online and a venue for my honored work and life goals !
Soon I had readiness for the option to take the training wheels off and “just do it” - on February 2, in 2002, ellefagan.com was born.
Thanks to the easy power to self-direct in my new online work, frightening pressures and fears from my accident and its traumas “Just disappeared” Exhilarating and inspiring!
The website and online life, while I was still in braces under my clothes let me participate as Connecticut Artisan for the 2007 White House Easter Egg Display. And a fine collection of “Antiques Roadshow-type” restorations immediately afterward, for both my church and country were quite successful - I had fine training in the processes and research. YES , yes and more.
However, when the web host sold to new people, they accidentally hacked my site in the mess of changeover in 2014. ouch! Hey- that’s my website you just destroyed ! Worse, the new owners felt it okay . with the site out of commission, to use MY domain name to advert THEIR business ! It is very illegal to distress someone’s domain as they did mine.
Worst of all, the new owners, no matter my pleas, would not give me the backup copy of my site. I had to manually rescue copies of EACH INDIVIDUAL file - a few hundred of them, and I had 72 hours to do it. My aging iMac fried! Heavy sighhhhh.
I reported it to legal people and the attorney got the naughty new host to pay for the new site for a year…and they also stopped the hacking, but online regulations somehow injured me more: the badguy’s action meant ellefagan.com had virtual crime scene tape on it and the domain would be frozen, till domain renewal time and then I’d need to buy it again, and path to a new host with it , if it was available.
The iMac was NOT fixable. After quite fancy footwork, I was lucky to rescue the files to backups I had and work on my iPad till the new desktop components let me get on with things. I will always be amazed at the job that iPad did ! SuperTrooper Prize - all was running better than ever! I almost stopped crying.
NEXT: new Webhost, "Squarespace" - purchased a new - interim- domain that could work, while ellefagan.com stayed at my call, waiting for reactivation, done on Feb. 2, 2014
I began the task of redoing my ten-year-old site at a new location, sifting through the pile of files from the old site. A LOT of work and only part of the legal compensation I should have enjoyed. I made no sales at this time, but did the site work.
YES , I did "Sow in tears! " and…
YES…..reaped in laughter.
Squarespace, the new host is amazing - arts friendly and they have helped me update and upgrade with skill and I no longer need to do all my own code. This has given me time to handle other aspects of things with ease. If only they would find COOL IRIS…and add that to their amazing repertoire of arts software…ohhhhhh!
It is years later and I still cry for COOL IRIS - it let me install a thing that looked exactly like a stroll down a gallery wall. One enjoyed an overview of all the artworks, very quickly and then the controls let the visitors home in on each or any of the individual images whose size increased for easy viewing - click on the image yuo chose and the image page opens with all the details and options to buy and links to chat the details.
Well that's the story, so far, of ellefagan.com !
It’s time to shine it up and perfect some things and then compete for a prize or two soon.
A real Adventure-girl of a tale for the Third Millennium! May the story inspire others to the journey as well !
Happy Birthday, ElleFagan.com !
ONE THING REMAINS - the worst of the damage of the site hacking was that my 1700 visitors/ month just disappeared…..
New promotional help has won the rebirth and it may be fine again soon. I am honored and prizewinning in my work and am enjoying a modest rebirth! ONNNN I go. Wish us luck!
