This past holiday season I made it a point to UNplug so that I could concentrate on Re branding and move Jael Custom Designs to JenOni Dot Com. I also had a few client projects to complete and made sure to finish designing business cards, a logo and website in addition to starting social media pages and creating the headers for all of my clients social media pages. I had a deadline and stuck to it for the most part. Completing my clients project was a priority which pushed mine back a few days. I also encountered some unforeseen technical issues that I had to troubleshoot but, it all ended the way it should have! Even though I was six days behind schedule, because I wanted to launch on New Years Day… I am glad to say that I successfully migrated my blog to a new domain and gave it a face lift. I also created JenOni.me a separate website to market my services to small businesses and brands. This transition has been a long time coming. I just needed the right motivation to get me started and I got that in December when I had a meeting of the minds with some amazing women that I am blessed to know. I started blogging in June of 2009 and really had no clue what I was doing. I wanted to chronicle my journey of becoming an entrepreneur. That quickly turned into “Mommy Blogger” Content because I had just had my youngest son and everything was about social media, product reviews and the baby!
I always wanted to start my own graphic design & stationery business and that soon turned into me wanting to do marketing and PR along with branding for small businesses. I love to Network and have a Marketing background so it comes second nature to me. I have been blessed on this blogging journey to be in the right place at the right time to meet the right people! I also have had brands reach out to me via social media to work with them. I’ve also gotten amazing referrals. I say that to say this… Jael Custom Designs was my baby but, I had way too much going on in one place. I was too lazy to separate my business from my blog. I’m sure it confused people because I really didn’t talk about graphic design or web design on my blog. I just offered those services and I had a “services”, “hire me” and “portfolio” page linked to my blog. My content was about current events, arts & entertainment, product reviews and family life. In order to grow and really focus on a few things I had to really streamline my blog starting with the name. JenOni is a part of my first name and middle name, it’s ME! I am still planning on covering fashion, style, current events, food, product reviews travel and tech. I can now market my blog separately from my business. I JUST started pitching companies that I want to work with and I feel more confident with this major change.
My moment of bliss was when I had FINALLY completed my WordPress database and domain transfer. I won’t even lie… I tried to take the short cuts and use plug ins like WordPress Duplicator, WordPress Clone and even the WordPress Import/Export Features and NONE of them worked! My files were just too large and I had content dating back to 2009, that’s what I’m assuming anyway because it was three big fat FAILS! I knew at that point I was going to either have to hire someone or learn the proper steps to do it manually on my host in my C-Panel and transfer my WordPress website to a new domain. I did reach out to a couple of people but, I was being impatient and I was already behind schedule so I set out to look for a tutorial so I could do it myself. I was somewhat successful finding a tutorial but, it was a bit outdated so I had the figure certain things out with the current state of technology. You know we’re always evolving! So, after forty eight hours of no sleep and working on transferring my files via FTP and migrating my WordPress database I was successful! I also redirected my old domain to point to the new domain so people don’t miss a beat! My page-views and SEO (Search Engine Optimization) shouldn’t be affected. I also updated my website information in Google webmaster tools. This was a HUGE step for me but, I see nothing but progress moving forward. Welcome to JenOni.com…