Wow, weâre nearly there: the long journey to migrate our sites off AWS and on to a new box.
We began hosting there in 2012 but the serverâwhich appears to have had a single major update in 2016âwas getting very old. In 2018 we began searching for someone who knew about migrations.
A second instance for Lucire Rouge was fired up in September 2020, thanks to a wonderful developer in the US. A New Zealand expert moved Medingeâs website on to there subsequently.
The work hadnât been finished but both gentlemen wound up getting very occupied in their regular gigs, and it was another year before a good friend said he knew how to do it.
From that point, it was about finding a few hours here and there that worked with both our time zones.
I am deeply grateful to him because I know just how busy he got, both professionally and privately.
The sites are now all on to a new box, and not on AWS.
We were only on there to begin with because in 2012, we chose to host with a friendâs company. AWS was familiar turf for him, but I never understood it. Itâs a mess of a website, with an incomprehensible interface. No wonder people have to do courses on it. You really need a professional computing qualification to understand it.
Whomever said computers would become easier to use in the future was dead wrong, as I have never seen such a maze of technobabble offered to consumers before. Itâs not even that presentable.
My hosting friend soon was head-hunted and I was left to deal with AWS.
The fact is if AWS was even remotely comprehensible I might have been able to do the migration myself. I estimate that if it were anything like normal, each of the sites would have taken me about five hours to do. It would have all been over in a month in 2018. If I had a week off to just do this, I probably could have done itâif server software was how it was in 2005.
Itâs little wonder, given the convoluted confusion that AWS is, that it took three years to find someone match-fit to tackle it. And even then it took several months.
A week in 2005, three years in 2022. I donât call that progress.
I approached half a dozen techs who had experience in web hosting and serving environments, some of them with very major organizations. A few of them were even given the keys to SSH into the server. I think three of them were never heard from again. I can only surmise that they saw a Japanese girl with long hair in front of her face crawl out of a well when they Telnetted into the box.
Once my latest friend had set up the basics, I was even able to do a few migrations myself, and handled the static sites. I even got a couple of Wordpress ones done. He did the lionâs share, beginning with the most complex (Lucire and Autocade, plus the advertising server).
Tonight, he did the last two sites from the second AWS instance.
The first instance has been stopped. The second is still running in case DNS hasnât updated for the last two sites. The database has also been stopped.
You probably wouldn’t ever hire me or this firm to deal with AWS and, as it turns out, there are quite a few techs out there, who do this as their full-time job, who also don’t know it.
I plan to terminate the instances and the database by mid-week and close my AWS account. Amazon can figure out what to do with the S3 boxes, VPC, Cloudwatch, Cloudfront, and all the other stuff which I have no idea about.
Itâs going to be a good day, provided they havenât made account closures as contemptible a process. Because it’s not the only thing contemptible about Amazon.
Speaking of technology, it looks like I’ll be sticking with Opera GX going forward. The bugs in Vivaldi persist, despite another bug-fixing update last week. Five years with one browser isn’t too bad, and probably one of the longer periods I’ve stuck with a single brand.
All galleries can be seen through the ‘Gallery’ link in the header, or click here (especially if you’re on a mobile device). I append to this entry through the month.
When I talked about Nicholas Ind’s book, Meaning at Work, a few weeks ago, I said there were two titles that I wanted to mention.
The second is by my friend Stefan Engeseth, who has followed up some very innovative titlesâDetective Marketing, One and The Fall of PR and the Rise of Advertisingâwith Sharkonomics.
The premise is simple: how have sharks survived millions of years, and can we learn any lessons from them for business?
I’ve been involved with Sharkonomics since Stefan pitched the idea, and I’ve had word of him heading down to South Africa to dive with the beasts.
I’ve dived with them, too, many years ago, except mine weren’t as treacherous as the ones he confronted.
A few of us, in endorsing his book, couldn’t help but use a bunch of shark puns. Don’t let them put you off.
He wants to get further word out and the first 100 people to do so will get the book for free (details here). You can read a brief summary about it here. It’s published by Marshall Cavendish, the people who published One. Also head to Sharkonomicsâ Facebook pageâthere’ll be more information on the upcoming launches and some of the great ideas Stefan has planned for them.
A leaked GM memo revealed: âWeâd ask that whether youâre talking to a dealer, reviewing dealer advertising, or speaking with friends and family, that you communicate our brand as Chevrolet moving forward.
âWhen you look at the most recognised brands throughout the world, such as Coke or Apple for instance, one of the things they all focus on is the consistency of their branding. Why is this consistency so important? The more consistent a brand becomes, the more prominent and recognizable it is with the consumer.â
The document was signed by Alan Batey, vice president for Chevrolet sales and service, and Jim Campbell, the GM divisionâs vice president for marketing.
Bad example there, Alan and Jim.
Coke is to Chevy as Coca-Cola is to Chevrolet.
And no one ever complains of Coke being inconsistent.
This is the sort of daft thinking that makes any of us brand professional shudder: total amateurs talking about brandingâout of their rear ends.
Itâs this lack of awareness of what branding is, inter alia, that started GM down its slippery pathâwith only a brief reprieve when Bob Lutz, aware of what GMâs brands stood for, was around.
By demanding that Chevrolet people not refer to the brand as Chevy does the exact opposite to what brand experts and marketers recommend today: to be one with the consumer.
I can understand if Chevy was a very negative word, but it isnât. Itâs an endearing word and it does not create inconsistency with the full Chevrolet word. It complements it, connects the brand to the audience, and, perhaps most importantly for GM, builds on the brandâs heritage.
After all, Chevrolet itself has encouraged the use of the Chevy name for decades in its own advertisingâincluding during its heyday. Omitting the use of Chevy instantly cuts many Chevrolet connections to its stronger past. And thatâs a past that can be used for internal brand-building and loyalty.
There was even, formally, a Chevy model in the 1960sâthe line that later became the Nova. The Chevy II nameplate even continued in GM in Argentina in the 1970s.
The Chevy diminutive is used in many countries where the brand is sold, including South Africa, where it was once as local as braaivleis, rugby and sunny skies.
Maybe GM canât afford the same branding advice it used toâin which case it might be better to shut up than issue memoranda that can be ridiculed so easily. Or get Bob Lutz back again. One month after retirement, and the natives have lost direction again, Bob.
PS.:From Robin Capper on Twitter, who sums this blog post up in 140 characters or fewer: âPoor Don McLean: âDrove my Chevrolet to the levee, but the levee was dryâ just doesn’t workâ.âJY
When I talked about 
