UPDATE, JANUARY 18: Phew! It took two weeks, but we rebuilt the site. The design is a bit simpler and cleaner, but everything that matters is right where you’d expect it to be. Time to get back to business!
ORIGINAL POST, JANUARY 3: When any business runs a web site, there are certain things in the background that need to be updated. We were forced to update our version of PHP, which is the programming language that our web servers use. Unfortunately, this update broke our site’s theme (the set of instructions that generated all of our pages for display on your screen).
The only way to save the site was to abandon the previous theme and start from scratch. We are not happy about this, since it’s bad for a web-based business to have its pants down in public. But there are a couple of silver linings:
1 – All our stock listings are still intact– we just have to figure out how to make them reappear.
2 – None of this affects our previous sales records, since all Ontplates.com purchases are processed manually without incorporating them into our site design.
Suffice it to say that we’re more concerned with getting our site running properly again than selling plates. Fortunately, it’s January: The paint shop was already shut for the winter, and we hardly sell any plates at this time of year, anyway. So if you’re looking for a set of plates for your classic vehicle, we’re closed for now. Check back in a few days. As we bail the proverbial water out of the proverbial basement, more of the site’s features will become available. And hopefully, we can make it look as cool as last time.