A Brand New Day at Divinely Gluten Free

We lost our website about two weeks ago. It’s an insane story that should never have happened, but it has made us look at things and evaluate everything and so, it has become a brand new day here at Divinely Gluten Free. None of it has been particularly easy or comfortable, but most growth is not either of those things.

A Brand New Day – Going Gluten Free

The origins of our company is simple. When we got diagnosed with Celiacs and tasted gluten free food (now that was really a brand new day) that was available, we knew (somehow) we could make gluten free food taste better.

We wanted to make products that are not rice centric, and would actually bring more fiber and nutrients than most processed food. The taste really was pretty important.

We went full steam ahead and before we were ready to launch, we were convinced to bring three products to market. In a six week period, we went from three recipes to a launched label (kind of) and no idea what we were doing. We came up with packaging, and paid for it (dearly, I might add). Attended a Specialty Food Show in NYC. And then faltered a little.

We found the packaging came out of date more quickly than we realized. BUMMER! We also found that given I slammed everything together, that not the best I am accustomed to happened anywhere. So, when I got horribly sick in November, and took my eyes off everything for too long, what wasn’t working before, got really out of whack, and boom. We have to start everything over again.

New Website, New Logo

We planned for a new logo. We knew that was going to happen, but our host convinced us (because of space issues) that we could rely on their backups of our website. That was a pretty horrible thing to do, since when we lost our website (another long story about what should never happen), all the backups were corrupted. Every single one, for literally months.

Sure It Was Planned! Of Course It Was

So, if you are coming to our site again, it looks all sparkling and new. That is because it is as generic as it is because we just wanted to get up and running. We got our logo finalized the day before we lost our site. So it looks very planned. However, I am clear that this was not planned. We were busy working on new packaging, new logo, new mixes.

We were able to find some of our stuff out there online in cached pages. We found five articles, about twenty recipes and some of our product pages. So why am I sharing so much of this information? Well because nothing really works right now.

When you change your structure, your links no longer work. We will have to create redirects of the old page names. Your shares from facebook and your pins from pinterest might no longer work. We will try to get them going as soon as possible, but for right now, for today. It is simply a mess.

When Will It All Work?

When will it get all online and operational again? Well, it will happen only as quickly as I can do it. I am a team of one when it comes to the website. It unfortunately is all mine to do, and with a kitchen remodel, a change in our packers, logo and packaging changes, well, it is in stiff competition for things that need to get done.

We will get our ordering back in the next week. We will implement a new wholesale section later in the year. We can still take orders for wholesale & retail by phone.

Most importantly, we lost our email list. We lost all of you who have signed up for the last 18 months. That is the saddest thing out of all this. We lost you. So, we will be eliciting for emails again.

Better Host, Different Philosophy, More Stable Website

We selected a pretty secure website host. We decided years ago to use WordPress as our Database. Not because I like WordPress. But I felt it is a pretty robust little package to base a website on. However, without constant attention, it is easily hackable. When we began Divinely Gluten Free two years ago, we were on a host that swore it was the best. I knew within three days I had made a huge mistake, but we stayed there. We have now payed the price for that mistake.

The Good News!

The good news is:  after two weeks on our new Host, I KNOW we are in the right place. The customer service department is impeccable. Their setup up is beyond professional, and practically guarantees I cannot mess it up. As a matter of fact, everything is finally really chugging along.

The Team is oh so happy with our logo. We are loving the changes to the packaging as we face the beginning of a seven week remodel. Nothing is easy, but everything feels great!

Change is Good. Swear it!

Now, if you have been through a great deal of change in a short period of time, that is not normally how it feels, but every brushstroke, every tile, all the coding and graphic changes feel better.

So, thank you for listening to our brand new day story. Please look around if you so desire. We should be up and running and able to take orders in the next week.

Thank you for your patience, your patronage, and for helping to make Divinely Gluten Free a household name.