We DID it! GNN 4.0

Wow, it has been a long, winding road to get to the point where you can read this blog post from the new Good News Network website, version 4.0.

You’re looking at the fourth iteration of the website, which has evolved over nearly two decades. The first version I built alone in our spare room using Adobe software and a little html code that I taught myself from a book.

In 2012, version 3.0 started breaking down in numerous ways. Processes that had been automatic suddenly need daily updates by hand. So I started looking for developers who could update the software. Thousands were spent on hiring people in Minnesota, and then India, who were incapable of doing such a job. By last November, I felt so weary of the whole process because it was so daunting: We had 14,000 articles to migrate, along with 18,505 registered users, 4786 comments and thousands of photos to migrate to the new site.

With a persistence that I am known for, and a lot of faith, I started another round of interviews and by January I had assembled an amazingly competent team that would work together from four different parts of the globe: First and foremost, a Joomla expert in the UK, Robert Went, would work with a WordPress team in Dallas, Creative Cat Media, and a local freelancer, Anna Fischer who would handle my subscription tables, working with a husband-wife team of developers in Philadelphia who had the new membership plugin I needed.

I didn’t have the money to pay for all the hours of work that were needed. Thank GOODNESS my fans answered the call for donations which helped raise the last round of funding.

As I write this, I can hardly believe the day is finally here when we don’t have to do registrations manually and update subscription payments by hand.

It’s actually going to be FUN again, posting stories, multiplying the good, instead of being bogged down in frustrating IT dilemmas!

This site looks so great on a mobile phone that I expect we will be able to double our traffic by the end of a year.

Thanks for hanging in there, putting up with blank emails coming to your inbox, and all the other messed up processes that revealed the age of my web software, some of which was launched six years ago.

Let’s hope that major good fortune showers down upon our creative efforts at the Good News Network so in another six years I will be able to hire a project manager and not even worry about the Hows and Whys of software updates.

Always remember, in the words of Tim Berners-Lee, the inventor of the World Wide Web, “You affect the world by what you browse.”

P.S. Leave us some feedback about the new site down below in the Comments. It is a work in progress.