The Original Goddesschess Website: Status Update

Hola darlings!

As many of you may know, our dear webmaster and one of the founding partners of the Goddesschess Partnership, Don McLean, passed away unexpectedly on October 12, 2012. He had taken over the webmaster duties for the Goddesschess website in 2004.  I continued to research and write occasional articles through the ensuing years, as did Isis/Georgia (she would email text to me), and I would format things in an ancient edition of Microsoft's Front Page 2000 used to create "what you see is what you get" web pages (no html coding knowledge required), and then - in a way I no longer remember - would somehow get the material "published" to an unpublished page on the web host and give the file name to Don to go in and "fix it up" with his own webpage creator, Dream Weaver.  Somehow, it all worked.  LOL.

By 2012, however, while I was still managing to use my old Front Page program on a very old Windows XP desktop, I had pretty much forgotten how to use the program to do much of anything else.  To make a long story short, after Don's death, the website sat for two years, essentially, untouched.  Don had all of the Goddesschess site files on one of his Mac computers, and I did not have access to any of those computers, nor did I know passwords, etc. to either access his computer(s) to try and find the correct files if I'd arranged with Don's sister to get access to them, or know what to do with the files if I had them!  Our Goddesschess website seemed - doomed.

I'd always intended to do new stuff for the G-chess website, but somehow, it just didn't happen.  I'd lost a lot of heart after Don's death, and concentrated on this blog and a new one I'd started up that was totally unrelated to chess. We'd both suffered through a lot during that Summer of Hell in 2012, health wise, and I'd received a dooming prognosis of death within 3 years while Don was ultimately given a relatively clean bill of health after a procedure to correct diagnosed atrial fibrilation.  Sadly, Don did not live out 2012.  I did, although at the time all I wanted to do after his death was die, too. 

I survived.  Guess I'm just too damn stubborn to die. My own heart condition is stable, my lungs are good.  My health is much better now than it was that horrid summer of 2012.

Then, in the spring of 2014, Mircrosoft stop updating their venerable XP OS and users were warned NOT to use it.  My old Front Page program ONLY worked on my XP system, although I did try it on my Windows 7 laptop at the time (reading elsewhere that it should work) I could not get it to work.  Frustration, all around.  Even if I had wanted to use XP at that point to post new material to Goddesschess, I was AFRAID that something dreadful would happen if I used an unprotected OS to try and add that material to our website.  Prior to the loss of security support updates in 2014, however, I posted a note on the website I had downloaded indicating what the problems were and why we were having them.  That was the last time anything was added to the Goddesschess website.

I ended up using my old Front Page program prior to the expiration of Microsoft's XP service pack and security updates to download an older version of the entire Goddesschess website from the Internet Archive, and then uploaded it all via Front Page's FTP function to a new web host.  Goddesschess reappeared back online!

What I did not realize at the time was that the site I had downloaded was only current at that time through April, 2011. The note I did in 2014 is there - on the April, 2011 opening page for Goddesschess that showcases Don's "Random Round-up," that he created on a monthly basis to keep Goddesschess "fresh."  The website prior to Don experiencing technical issues with our then current web host and then his health problems had been updated monthly between April, 2011 through May, 2012, so a year's worth of Don's wonderful monthly "Random Round-up" work had been left off of www.Goddesschess.com. 

I didn't realize this until - get ready for it - YESTERDAY!

How could this have happened, you say.  Well - I would not have even realized it, except that at SOME point in time, I added a link to what I called the "original Goddesschess website" at this blog.  And guess what - that link takes me to a Goddesschess.com website that is updated through May, 2012!  The reason I even clicked on that old link yesterday is because ----

---- (does this remind you of Donald J. Trump's "....." lead-ins in his tweets at Twitter as read by Stephen Colbert on "The Late Show"?) after discovering several days ago that I was being charged more than TWICE the price for the identical service that my then web host was charging others, and spending hours on the telephone with them, they refused to reduce the price to less than around $35 more than what they were offering the same service for to other websites!  So I decided the only smart thing to do was (1) move the Goddesschess website to a new and far less expensive web host and (2) file a complaint against the former web host with the Better Business Bureau.  For the time being, I am not mentioning the rip-off artist web host.  The worst of it is, last year I paid the same amount that was more than twice as much as advertised and didn't question it, I just paid it, DUH. (The bill comes due around this time, yearly.)

You do NOT advertise a service for about $80 a year and then turn around and charge your customer $179.40 for the SAME SERVICE and then ARGUE ABOUT IT ON THE TELEPHONE.  Do you see the steam coming out of my ears?

I have a new web host, and the web host offers a free migration of files service which was ideal for me, since I had no clue how I would do it all, otherwise!  And thus, today, when I was notified that the files from the "old" host had been moved to the new host, and I was asked to look things over (it took me a couple of hours to figure out how to do THAT - please, do not get me started...) to see if everything was okay, I realized that a year's worth of more current files were missing from the Goddesschess website.

Argggggghhhhhhhh!

So, I emailed the new host and explained the problem as best I could in non-technical language, because I have no idea how to explain it in technical language, LOL.  For instance, I think it's silly to call moving a file or an entire website "migration" instead of just calling it "moving a file or an entire website." 

So - this isn't over yet, but I am hoping for as happy an ending as I can get at this stage in my non-website creating "career."  Hopefully, soon there will be a Goddesschess.com available online containing Don McLean's final year of work.  I'll figure out SOME way to get it done, one way or another.  Stay tuned!