19 October 1956 “The New Site”

These past months I have been trying to redesign our website. As you may have noticed there has been no new content or updates, except my blog, for quite some time. My hope is to redesign it to be a single page, rather than frames as it is currently. I also began to realize that the amount of information IN my blog posts should BE the website. Thus, I have been trying to rethink how the site would work.

It is difficult trying to learn web design and layout. I have been teaching myself all along this year. I must say tackling sewing and cooking, even learning more about gardening can be easier as it deals with the physical world. When one gets frustrated with the digital world, you cannot merely, ‘lift the hood and tinker about a bit’. There is no ‘re-cutting the dress or bringing in a seam’ with websites!  I still get rather stuck and frustrated and my current predicament is just getting a reliable way to search the site. So that anyone of you could simply type in ‘Recipes’ or ‘two egg cake’ and immediately find the information. I have found a Google version, but when I test it, it seems to only search our forum. I am not sure why this is. My hope is that if I lay out each page in a thorough fashion, if the search does not work, finding things should still be easy enough.

I have finally decided that perfection it shall not be. Many people hire outside companies with offices full of people whose full time paid career is site building a maintenance. I am but a simple little homemaker with a very strict schedule, so though I may now try to give daily attention to it, it will not be as amazing as a professional site.  So, with that in mind, later today I hope to simply launch it in its very naked state. It will have the new layout and design and the pages should hopefully load. My plan is, though they are now rather blank, to be enlivened each week by my going tediously through all my old posts starting 1 January 1955 and placing their relevance into the site. This way all the research and info I have done will be available as an entire system, rather than merely lost after a week of posting.

So, I ask you bear with me while this is happening. In a way I am hoping its evolution will be, in part, a growing aspect of my next coming project year. I will hopefully, with the new layout, be able to post my blog and then immediately plug it in to the relevant pages of the site. Previously I had tried to make all new content for pages forgetting that all my old posts were, in fact, riddled with content that I had worked hard to research and write and then all but ignored.

You will also notice that I have Google ads as well as some of my Amazon store ads. I hope, with the new apps, to actually make the items I am always placing in the store, more relevant and available per specific page. And, if it seems viable for any small businesses that do a vintage business, to want to advertise on my site, I shall make it very affordable, as I want to help support and get the word out for individuals trying to make it in a vary meek small business climate.

I am also toying with an Etsy site, but not sure if that should become to much more work. I will include it as an idea now, with a few vintage items, and see if it is of interest. It will really be like a tag or estate sale of things available to you. It will mostly be vintage items, such as old patterns, or items I have bought and no longer need or perhaps bought with you in mind. If it is of interest, I might choose one day, say Saturday, to put up new items and ship items purchased. One must try and be organized, that is the main thing I have constantly learned and re-learned these past two years.

My reasoning for all of this is to hopefully make a bit of pin money. My days now, along with the schedule of being a homemaker, includes a good allotment of time seven days a week to work on my blog. With that comes the subsequent research, scanning and editing of photos and content, reading, and even testing recipes, so in a way it is a job within my career of homemaking. I hope these ads will not be seen as grabbing or offensive. One makes pennies on them anyway, but I feel if I am to move forward with the site, that a few pennies here and there from them and Amazon will surely help a bit. In a way I see it as my making pin money as I would knitting antimacassars for a jumble sale or selling cakes to the local bakery to make extra money. I hope you too shall see it that way.

I hope the site to become even more a place for we vintage minded people to meet (on the growing forum for example). And also a repository for all the items and knowledge and history that I have thus far found and hope to continue to research about the vintage world. I think in some ways the vintage community now is, though not a bad thing, mainly based on fashion and interior. I love both of these and think there are some wonderful sites out there doing a great job. In some ways, were I more specialized, I might even find this task easier, but this site/blog is much like myself with varied interest.

I cannot, it seems, ever just zoom into one aspect of a subject. So, when I began my 1955 year I wanted to know it ALL. The fashion and Interiors of course and the food, but also :what we were thinking, what politics were happening, what we were listening to, watching on tv and at the pictures? What art we were looking at and why fiction was as it was and so on. I still want to find more of the puzzle pieces that are really beginning, for me, to take shape into the picture of my American Past. In this, and the coming new year, I will also try and bring the 1950’s into context by letting the 1930’s and 1940’s color the experience as well. I think the more the thing is fleshed out, the better we shall enjoy it. And, as I have found, make our own modern world make more sense. We might begin to understand why we do what we do or even consider changing our current ways for the better.

So, again, bear with me today and this week. I shall be uploading pages today and try to get the new ‘look’ up. And hopefully explain how the layout will work. My blogging schedule, as well, will be trying to blog daily, as I have been trying to do. On Fridays I will dedicate that computer time to updating and adding to the site for the upcoming week. And Sunday’s I might now dedicate to answering some of the many email questions I receive, which might be a fun exercise.

Thank you for your patience with this and I hope you will like the new layout and plan for the future. Have a great day and I might be posting again or adding an addendum to this in the comments on today’s progress.

Happy Homemaking.