Well folks, sorry for that interruption. The host that manages the eWillys domain failed to renew the name. My attempts to manually and auto renew it this past week failed. It took support to finally get it to work this morning. Since then, I’ve been exchanging emails with the host to explain that their technology is flawed. While they sent emails that included their apologies, they have no good explanation as to why their system didn’t auto renew the domain name. So, there will be another interruption after the holidays when I move the domain name to another host.
The Joys of Technology
November 28, 2017 • CATEGORIES: News This site contains affiliate links for which I may be compensated.
Thanks for all the BS work you do to keep this site running!
Yes…..thanks for all the headaches it takes to keep this running……my morning coffee would never be the same without it !!!
Allan
Couldnt have said these better myself. We might need to take out a life insurance policy on you Dave. And, please ask first before doing anything hazardous.
Seriously, I would support a subscription to eWillys to help support it and your efforts and I doubt Im alone.
X2 Lew!
This same thing happened before a couple years ago didn’t it?
Best news is that it was technology versus something that was of a personal nature. Your readership cares about yiu.
Thank you, again! Those before me said it all very well.
FYI: it’s never a good practice to have the registrant’s email address be in the same domain. When a registrar knocks a domain offline for non-payment, you lose the ability to receive email from the registrar. If you’re concerned with people spamming you, you can buy a privacy setting from your registrar that hides your email and other personal information and forces people attempting to contact you to go through an anonymizing email proxy.
Hat tip to Dave.
This is the first site I check everyday with coffee at the ready. Thank you Dave for keeping this up and running. I think it’s safe to say there everyone here really enjoys eWillys.
If you could check in with Lew prior to any strenuous work, exercise or finger nail clipping, that would make all of us feel a little better.
Thanks Dave!
Thanks guys.
Craig: I keep my Domain name separate from my content host. But, after this year’s problem, I will switch the domain to a new host.
Bob: One year was my fault. I forgot to renew the domain. That’s why I setup auto renew on the domain name. But, that didn’t work this year.
Lew: I’ve thought about a subscription service or offering a premium subscription service over the years, but I just don’t see that it will generate all that much annual revenue. Based on what I’ve read, the real money on the web, generally, is in product placement. But, the vintage jeep market is an end-of-lifecycle type product that doesn’t generate the kinds of growth revenues that new industries generate. So, its marketing value (ads and product placement) is comparatively poorer.
I set out with eWillys to give back to the community. I never expected it to make me a living or retire off of it (see my book Finding Virginia for more on this). What it has done is opened doors to unique experiences, especially travel, in ways I hadn’t expected. Now that I’ve recently secured free flight benefits, I’m hoping to satisfy some international travel. I’ve been invited to visit folks all over Europe, in South Africa and Namibia, and in South America. I’m hoping to reach one or more of these locals. The adventure is worth my work.
In the meantime, my greatest challenge is figure out how best to preserve the content I’ve shared and created. What will the web look like in a decade and how do I preserve and present the information herein so that folks still chasing the hobby can use it and learn from it. Fortunately, someone has finally created a plugin that creates static versions of wordpress pages (https://wordpress.org/plugins/simply-static/). This will go a long way towards making it possible to easily save a complex, huge site like eWillys.
Dave, you deserve more praise than we can give you for your efforts to keep us Jeep nuts informed and up to date. Thanks until you are better paid!
Like those comments earlier stated. I start my mornings with caffeine and ewillys.com.
this morning was a CF. Couldn’t find ewillys and called my support people thinking it was on my end. SO glad to know everything worked out. Only problem is that now I feel like day is just starting. And it is quitting time here. Glad your back and look forward to many morning visits
Dave,
I’ve had excellent service with GoDaddy for the WillysReunion.com, Bantamt3c.com, Midwestwillys.com pages as well as http://norris-banonis.com/ before I transferred their site directly to them for years.
Might be worth checking into
I was just now PANICKING. After clearing website data and history on my phone a couple of times and it still not working I cleared data and history AGAIN and thought to do a hard reset on my iPhone. Now my links are working properly!!!
WHEW