How long does it take to move close to three thousand web pages?

As we've found out an incredibly long time, nearly two years in fact! Although we had no idea we'd amassed that much information to begin with, if we had perhaps we'd have realised it wasn't going to be quick.  It's been a long, long process but finally it's here - a new countryside-jobs.com website.

In 2017 we started discussing updates to the website. 

Unfortunately the software we used was no longer being updated or supported which meant looking for something new before we could even think about changing the website.  We had short trials of many different software products and CMS services, nothing quite worked but we finally decided on one and it was decided that 2018 would be the year, Kerryn booked a block of time (the whole of March) out of the day-to-day office work to get to grips with the software and write the new website. But nothing is ever simple. 2018 was a bit of a medical (and veterinary too) disaster in the CJS Office with both Kerryn and Amy taking significant amounts of time out of the office and until late summer working part time and some quite odd hours! There was no way a website was going to happen in house so we reached out to our regular web support, Jack Barber, who has designed sections of the website in the past and had just finished building C3 from the ground up and asked if he was up for a challenge and would like to tackle the whole project.  He said, sure he'd be delighted - but I don't think he quite realised what a monster task it was, in June this year he said: "I’m ready to admit I’m no longer able to hold all of this project in my brain at any one time (as if I ever was)!".  The CJS Team set to looking at things on websites we liked, designs we hated and gimmicks that we found really annoying; then we put all your suggestions together and worked through them one by one, deciding what could be achieved, what would work, which was contrary to another request.  By August we had a brief for Jack and rough designs of how we'd like it to appear to keep the familiar CJS feel.  We sat around the table with laptops and mountains of paper and talked it all through. Off he went with timescale of a launch in December 2018 so we could iron out all the bumps and be familiar with the new system before the mad January rush.

Well, as you know that didn't happen!

We called a halt to development in mid December and started again in March this year moving what we've decided is actually five separate sites bound together under one CJS heading.  With more than two and a half thousand pages to update and transfer from old software onto new dynamic cloud based system it has been a labour of love over hundreds, if not thousands, of hours. Time doesn't stand still so by the time we were getting to the end some of the early transfers needed updating!

 

 

But at last.

We've done it and a sparkling new, dynamic, colourful website full of pictures which is, we hope, easier to navigate is at long, long last here.

Have a wander round, see what's new, we hope you like it and want to read all your feedback - the good, the bad and the indifferent. 

Apologies for any broken links, please let us know if you find any: where you were and which link you clicked and we'll get right on with linking it back together.

If you have any bookmarks to the site please update those but if you're using any of our short links (c-js.co.uk or c-js.uk) and find those don't work any longer please let us know which ones and we'll do some behind the scenes mapwork to get them active again.

We'd love to get your feedback, let us know what you think, and we're already taking suggestions for next minor - we hope - upgrade so send us those too, anything to make it even easier to use, new features you'd like to see, new areas for CJS to consider we're open to all your ideas.