Tag: Dichroic Glass

The high price of ignorance – Google Jail

Posted on by Nancy Tang

Google Jail

Back in 2013 I used a free template to create a nice look on my website. The free template included stock clip art that was also listed on free clip art websites. I had fully intended to replace the clip art with my own photos but didn’t get around to replacing one of them. It was the photo of a woman’s face. Life got busy and I really let my website drift for about 5 years. Recently I’ve ported GlassOrchids over here to wordpress, whole new host, whole new website. In trying to gain placement in the search engines I discovered that way back in 2013 the owner of that photo reported dozens of web pages/sites, that also used that photo perhaps also in free templates, for copyright infringement.

In researching I’ve discovered that I’m now in Google jail and it’s a life sentence. There is no way to remove oneself from Google jail if, in fact, you actually did have the illegal image/content on your page at any time.

Some of my pages are indexed in Google but not my home page, which is where the photo was.  I’ve spent hours researching how to fix this. I can’t believe Google has no way of re-indexing a page, i.e. removing you from google jail, but they don’t. Apparently they used to, but creeps who intentionally use copyrighted material kept getting out of jail and then adding the copyrighted material right back to their pages. So once again, the jerks in the world are why we can’t have nice things.

I’ve had glassorchids.com for about 20 years or so. Now there is no way for me to have it re-indexed with Google so it will not come up in the search engines; most of my pages will but not the home page. That’s a high price to pay for ignorance.

I’m working on some workarounds and have registered GlassOrchidZ.com … well I do love zombies so I guess in a way this is the undead version of GlassOrchids.   It will take a lot of time as I’ll have to recreate the site from scratch…at least part of it, and figure out how to redirect a site/page. I’ll keep you posted on progress.

Let this be a lesson to all of you out there – beware of any free graphics/templates etc… the real price can be very high.

Live and learn,

~Nan

UPDATE: I think I’ve got a workaround and have implemented it. You won’t notice any difference in the site but I’ve used a 301 redirect to point the home page to a different page (basically a duplicate) with a unique name. Hopefully this will fix the issue but it will take a few weeks to see if it does as it takes time for the site to get crawled and re-indexed. I may not need GlassOrchidZ.com after all.

Never enough time

Never enough time

Posted on by Nancy Tang

Sure I said I’d be posting my SnapDragons(tm) on the site in a week; that was two weeks ago. There isn’t enough time in a day is there?  I’ve launched my art site NancyDaviesTang.com ,  moved and mocked up my supply website at UGotGlass.com, which is inactive at the moment because again.. there is just NO time. I’ve also launched a sit for my lavender & market garden farm WinterRose.farm.  I’ve entered two shows one with the Bangor Arts Society and the other with river arts. The former won 2nd place and the latter saw one piece featured in the local paper. Ye ha… I am moving along,  just not getting everything on the list done! Ah well, we do what we can…..

~Nan

Re-launch Code Name: Glass Orchids

Posted on by Nancy Tang

I’ve been working  hard to re-launch this website and finally got the shipping & shopping carts to work (I think). I’ve integrated this site with my Square account so you can pay for your orders and it all flows through one processor. This will make it much easier for me to manage customers, orders and finances.  Currently I’m working to make navigation easier for shopping, adding more products and trying to get ranked in the search engines again. Thanks for bearing with me these last two years as the site has been going through growing pains. Last year about this time I got hacked multiple times and decided to move to a new host and convert to a WordPress design. I haven’t had enough time to really get it up and running and there has been a big learning curve.

Over the next week or so I’ll be adding SnapDragons(tm) – Interchangeable dichroic glass pendants, bracelets & rings along with the Snaps, and many other new products.

Thanks again for all your support over the years,

~Nancy Davies Tang

 

It’s not all cake and wine! Relaunch of Glass Orchids!

Posted on by Nancy Tang
Banner image for relaunch of Glass Orchids.
Relaunch of Glass Orchids – dichroic glass jewelry made by Maine Glass Artist, Nancy Tang

 

The Relaunch of Glass Orchids 

….has been and ongoing task for about a year now, and I’m getting closer to really having GlassOrchids.Art up and running smoothly.  Recently I’ve noticed a lot of new subscribers to my website. So many that it seemed suspicious. That’s the world we live in now isn’t it? But you know what? I was right. Checked out several of them and they were known spammers. So I’ve disabled subscriptions on the site, deleted them all and removed 100 spam comments that were waiting for me to review.

It is no small task to relaunch Glass Orchids, I’ve had to back up and migrate the entire site to a new host and then deal with all the little glitches that occur when plugins think it’s the old site.  Having run GlassOrchids.com for over 20 years, I now have to try and regain search engine placement, and that’s a whole job unto itself! Learning all the SEO changes and how to  make that work in WordPress vs. an HTML site is another whole ball of wax too. I’ve learned a whole lot though, and I do enjoy working on the site.  I highly recommend a plug in called Wordfence. (and no I don’t get paid to say that, I just find the plugin really helpful.) Watching the live feed of website activity is both fascinating and terrifying; so many bots trying to login and take over!!

Now I can get back to working in the studio creating dichroic glass jewelry and art pieces. I’ve got a Bangor Art Society show coming up in a few weeks and need to make a fused glass wave artwork for it. I’ll post images when it’s complete!

Stay warm folks!
~Nancy

If you’ve arrived  here from outside the site, please visit my home page at: GlassOrchids.Art

It’s not all fun and games that’s for sure….

Posted on by Nancy Tang

I’ve been trying to find the time to port my website over from it’s existing host to this  new one for about a year. People think, oh you’re an artist, that must be so much fun! Well, yeah it is.. but honestly, it’s about 1/5th creating art and 4/5’s doing paperwork, marketing, ordering supplies, and trying to sell our work via FB, Etsy, Ebay, Shows, Shops and yes…. having a functioning website. So folks, bear with me. I’m hoping to have this puppy  up and running  over the next few months…. and now I have to figure out how to make the DNS point to this new place instead of my old site… sheesh.

Anywayyyyyyyyyyyy,

~Nan