The owner of Harry's Hut website got an email from Vicnet stating that the free hosting of websites was going to cease. It was decided to move Harry's Hut to hosting with Rinet IT.
A new look for 2017
A big advantage of WordPress is how easy it is to change the look of a website. For a change I used the Twenty Seventeen theme that comes with the installation of WordPress plus a featured image that gives a much better view of Harry's hut.
Migrating Light n Easy
I was hoping to move the entire site over to the new hosting and domain name but Light n Easy just refused to stop referring to the old site at Vicnet.
WordPress to the Rescue
After some frustration trying to get Light n Easy to work I talked the client into using WordPress. It was easy to convert the old site to the new, as the old one was still online. After a few minutes of copying and pasting the pages were regenerated.
Next came the gallery. With WordPress it's just a matter of dropping the images onto the upload page and it's done! The only manual part was redoing the captions; once again copying and pasting from the old to the new site.
Twenty Thirteen Template
To set the site up I simple used the excellent Twenty Thirteen template that came with the new install of WordPress.
Very few changes were made to the template. The header background was changed and the text comes from the site's name and tagline, both set in the back end.
The site is now fully responsive and it's easy to use both on desktop computers right down to mobile phones. And with the database removed from the public_html folder the site is more secure.
Vicnet Update
For quite a while the Coburg Historical Society's website was still working from Vicnet. On Vicnet's home page it says the services are now closed, and it appears that the Coburg Historical Society was being hosted on borrowed time!
There was a paragraph much further on that stated "Services to Historical Societies and Victorian Libraries will continue. There is no need for these organisations to change anything".
Around 2015 Vicnet finally closed its doors and all users had to to elsewhere.
Harry's Hut can be reached by going to www.harryshut.net.