Working on a New Website

In the near future, I will need to move my website, Autism Games, (not this blog).  Google, my generous and appreciated host, is not planning to support Page Creator, which is where I have my website now.  They will move my website for me, at some point, but the links will not all work and I will need to go in to the new host location, Google Sites, and fix it up.  In preparation for this, I have been working long hours on moving Autism Games Website myself to Google Sites so that there will not be a lot of down time for the site.  

So this has been my life--at least my weekend and after work life for weeks.  I take page after page and move it--often changing things that I don't like and adding things that occur to me now.  I am using lots of original photography, which is fun.  I am even getting new video clips of games that I have wanted to add.  I am including some blog posts into web pages since I think it will be easier to find games on the website than it is on the blog.  Even I get lost trying to find video clips of game that I put into blog posts a year or more ago.



Here is the good news.  My new website will probably be better. I really hope it will be better. When I created Autism Games, I did not know anything about making a website.  Nothing.  Nor did I have a plan.  At least not a plan beyond putting some of my games online so that the families of children that I see in my practice could watch them at home and review or, in the case of some parents who did not come to therapy sessions, see what the games looked like.  I also wanted to provide information to my daughter, who is a special education teacher and who had a four year old student with autism in her school.  She was teaching in Europe and I am in the United States.  So, my website was a response to these two specific communication challenges.  I never imagined it would attract so many visitors.  Nor did I imagine that I would put so much information online.  So, now that I know who will be looking at the site and more of what I will put on the site, I can organize it more effectively.



Here is the bad news.  It takes a long time to re-create a website that is this big.   Google Sites is very simple (thank goodness because I still don't know much about website design) but it does offer more options so I spend a lot of time trying things out. Mmmm, maybe this color font would look nice.  Gee, what would happen if I use three columns.  Oops! Where did everything go?  I am not going to be finished recreating my site for several more weeks at this rate.


If anyone out there wants to preview the new site before I put it online for the world to see, send me an email and I will send you a link to get on.  I would love to have some feedback and recommendations.  Meanwhile, stay tuned because there will soon be a New and Improved Autism Games Website!