Mitsugirly had a JOYful cruise

[mitsugirly]

COSTA MAYA day is now live and available for viewing. Enjoy

[Saint Greg]

2 hours ago, mitsugirly said:

 

Yea, it would definitely be a big hassle to move an entire site over to another provider. How do you get your google ads to pay for the site? Enlighten me what you do to make that much. 

 

How do you back up your website? I thought the host automatically does this for you but how do you keep it yourself?

 

All my pictures are on my computer and saved but I'm not sure how I would put pictures on a hosting site and then be able to use them within the review? To put a picture into my reviews, you have to download them onto the site. When you say you host it somewhere and then put a link, that would mean everyone would be clicking the link and going somewhere else to see the picture. I need the picture to be within the website and flow with the "story" if that makes sense. Your way wouldn't work for me right?

 

 

The google ads thing is tough. A couple years ago I was making pennies a day. Now it's dollars. I credit that to pages I created that people constantly come back to. Like my menus pages, comedy schedule, cruise director schedule, piano bar schedule, etc. At first I think it was people sharing the pages. I could tell every time someone shared one of my links on facebook. I would get a huge bump in views from facebook. Then I started to move near the top of search engines for those things. That was the huge breakthrough. Now it's not even close. My #1 referrer is search engines. A distant #2 is facebook and a very distant #3 is Cruise Critic.

 

 

 

 

 

I don't know if the hosting sites backup all of our data or not. I would've guessed not since there are so many backup services out there. I use a plugin called updraft. There's a paid version of that but the free one has worked for me. If I did want to move to a new host I'm guessing I would just download my backup from updraft and upload it to the new host somewhere. But it's not something I really want to deal with.

 

 

There should be a way to add pictures without uploading them to your website. Let me show you how I do it. I'll just take one of your pictures and put it on my website....without actually uploading it to my website.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[mitsugirly]

 

COZUMEL DAY IS UP NOW 🙂

[c-leg5]

On 5/10/2023 at 11:13 AM, mitsugirly said:

COSTA MAYA day is now live and available for viewing. Enjoy

Thanks for your review. I was hoping you were going to review Blue Reef since we haven’t been there. It seems popular but hasn’t appealed to us when we have passed. 

 

FYI, if you return, Malecon21 has been one of our favorites although we were disappointed in service on our last visit. I am not sure we like the same type of places but just wanted to let you know Malecon has different packages, minimum is $30 pp towards food and drink but that us only if you require a lounger. You can sit at the tables and PAYG. It might have saved you the long walk to Blue Kay. Sorry Blue Kay has changed so much - I know you were excited when you first found it but I had heard it had gone downhill. Prices seemed high?

 

It is no secret I am very disappointed in Costa Maya since cruising resumed. I have a very uneasy feeling about business ethics there at the moment.  
 

It has been 9 months since we were there but I was very confused about your taxi photos - I couldn’t recognize the pick-up or drop-off location from your photos. Are they not picking up AND dropping off within the port gates any more?

[mitsugirly]

Our last sea day and going home pages are now completed. The review is done. 

 

I wanted to get everything completed because I have a 4 day 12 hour shift work week coming up starting tomorrow and didn't want to leave everyone hanging. I'm tired and need to shower and get in bed. 5:15am comes early in the morning. 

 

I will be back when I can to respond and answer any future questions. 

 

I hope everyone enjoyed the review. Happy cruising everyone!

[evanskl4]

20 hours ago, mitsugirly said:

Our last sea day and going home pages are now completed. The review is done. 

Thanks so much for taking the time to do such a detailed review! We are planning to go to Chankanaab with our kids this fall and it was really helpful to hear about your experience there!

[TravelGirlinDallas]

The photo of you and Sakari at the very end is just beautiful. I'm so glad you are back cruising again! Really enjoyed the review.

[AKR2011]

Thank you for another amazing review! I recommend Ebay for finding the ship ornament. I did that for one of my missing ones. Or find an upcoming role call and ask someone to look for you. I did that once too. Do you have any future travel plans? Your blog is incredible and I really appreciate everything you do to help others plan. 

[SenatorsFan]

Thanks for another great read, Kim! 🥰 It's nice to see you back on a cruise.

[mitsugirly]

On 5/10/2023 at 3:48 PM, Saint Greg said:

 

The google ads thing is tough. A couple years ago I was making pennies a day. Now it's dollars. I credit that to pages I created that people constantly come back to. Like my menus pages, comedy schedule, cruise director schedule, piano bar schedule, etc. At first I think it was people sharing the pages. I could tell every time someone shared one of my links on facebook. I would get a huge bump in views from facebook. Then I started to move near the top of search engines for those things. That was the huge breakthrough. Now it's not even close. My #1 referrer is search engines. A distant #2 is facebook and a very distant #3 is Cruise Critic.

 

 

 

 

 

I don't know if the hosting sites backup all of our data or not. I would've guessed not since there are so many backup services out there. I use a plugin called updraft. There's a paid version of that but the free one has worked for me. If I did want to move to a new host I'm guessing I would just download my backup from updraft and upload it to the new host somewhere. But it's not something I really want to deal with.

 

 

There should be a way to add pictures without uploading them to your website. Let me show you how I do it. I'll just take one of your pictures and put it on my website....without actually uploading it to my website.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Do you have a fb account just for your cruise blog? Or do you use your personal and share it? I've been debating setting one up.  I think one of my issues with finding my pages on a google search is that I have A LOT of pages that are hidden from my menu. This is because it sticks them at the top bar across my page and I only want the main topics to be up there. So, I don't think a lot of it shows up when searching for it. I've tried looking into the SEO suggestions that Wix gives me and correcting a few. But I think it told me I have some crazy amount of pages...like over 6000 or something off the chart. 

 

I did look up updraft and it looks like it works with Wordpress. So that counts me out I believe. Wix makes sure that you are screwed when using them I guess. When I ask this question on Wix, this is what they have to say:

 

Currently, it is not possible to back up your site externally. Wix is committed to ensuring the safety of your site, and we have created the Site History feature, which automatically creates site revisions every time you save or publish. This means that you can go back to a previous version of your site any time you want. 

You can also duplicate your site at any time to create a manual backup in your Wix account. Be aware that the duplicated site is not automatically updated when your update your original site.

 

 

I tried to upload a picture like you did to my website and it was a LOT of work and then it didn't turn out right. It copied everything together and has a scroll bar on the side of the picture.

 

Also, here are my stats for the last month as well

 

 

 

[mitsugirly]

On 5/13/2023 at 8:07 PM, c-leg5 said:

Thanks for your review. I was hoping you were going to review Blue Reef since we haven’t been there. It seems popular but hasn’t appealed to us when we have passed. 

 

FYI, if you return, Malecon21 has been one of our favorites although we were disappointed in service on our last visit. I am not sure we like the same type of places but just wanted to let you know Malecon has different packages, minimum is $30 pp towards food and drink but that us only if you require a lounger. You can sit at the tables and PAYG. It might have saved you the long walk to Blue Kay. Sorry Blue Kay has changed so much - I know you were excited when you first found it but I had heard it had gone downhill. Prices seemed high?

 

It is no secret I am very disappointed in Costa Maya since cruising resumed. I have a very uneasy feeling about business ethics there at the moment.  
 

It has been 9 months since we were there but I was very confused about your taxi photos - I couldn’t recognize the pick-up or drop-off location from your photos. Are they not picking up AND dropping off within the port gates any more?

 

 

I thought Malecon21 looked amazing and one of the nicer looking places we seen there. I think if we go back, we might end up going there for the day. Blue Kay is not what it used to be and looks so different and "cluttered" IMO. So sad. 

 

Taxi's were right out front after you get out of the port. They are where the trolley cars were. We didn't have to walk down the road like you used to do. 

 

They were lined up on the street and I'm not sure why our driver didn't take us all the way in. I'm honestly not sure where the gates are but no one stopped us to ask for our ship card or anything to go in. We just walked down the sidewalk and in. I thought it was strange there was only a three taxi's parked (backed in) at the turn around area. The only other thing that was there were golf carts in and out. (Picture below)

 

 

 

On 5/14/2023 at 5:54 PM, evanskl4 said:

Thanks so much for taking the time to do such a detailed review! We are planning to go to Chankanaab with our kids this fall and it was really helpful to hear about your experience there!

 

You are very welcome and have fun at Chankanaab. 

 

On 5/15/2023 at 9:43 AM, TravelGirlinDallas said:

The photo of you and Sakari at the very end is just beautiful. I'm so glad you are back cruising again! Really enjoyed the review.

 

Thank you and I love that photo. The hubby took it at the 80's party and is now his screensaver on his phone. 🙂  We are glad to be back cruising as well. It kinda feels different now though with Sakari being an actual teen now. 

 

Glad you enjoyed the review. I appreciate it. 

 

On 5/15/2023 at 1:14 PM, AKR2011 said:

Thank you for another amazing review! I recommend Ebay for finding the ship ornament. I did that for one of my missing ones. Or find an upcoming role call and ask someone to look for you. I did that once too. Do you have any future travel plans? Your blog is incredible and I really appreciate everything you do to help others plan. 

 

Aww thanks so much! I'm glad you enjoyed it. 

 

I tried ebay and amazon and there were none. 😞 I've ask on roll calls before (well, someone ask me actually and I got them what they needed). I may have to try that. I really need one to go with our collection. UGH!

 

Nothing planned yet, but I will be deciding on something for this summer.

 

I appreciate that you like the blog. I work really hard on it. It seems like it's never ending with trying to update and improve things. I love helping others and always here for any questions. 

 

On 5/15/2023 at 1:27 PM, SenatorsFan said:

Thanks for another great read, Kim! 🥰 It's nice to see you back on a cruise.

 

Thanks so much! We've definitely missed it and glad you enjoyed it. 

 

Edited May 17, 2023 by mitsugirly

[Saint Greg]

53 minutes ago, mitsugirly said:

 

 

Do you have a fb account just for your cruise blog? Or do you use your personal and share it? I've been debating setting one up.  I think one of my issues with finding my pages on a google search is that I have A LOT of pages that are hidden from my menu. This is because it sticks them at the top bar across my page and I only want the main topics to be up there. So, I don't think a lot of it shows up when searching for it. I've tried looking into the SEO suggestions that Wix gives me and correcting a few. But I think it told me I have some crazy amount of pages...like over 6000 or something off the chart. 

 

I did look up updraft and it looks like it works with Wordpress. So that counts me out I believe. Wix makes sure that you are screwed when using them I guess. When I ask this question on Wix, this is what they have to say:

 

Currently, it is not possible to back up your site externally. Wix is committed to ensuring the safety of your site, and we have created the Site History feature, which automatically creates site revisions every time you save or publish. This means that you can go back to a previous version of your site any time you want. 

You can also duplicate your site at any time to create a manual backup in your Wix account. Be aware that the duplicated site is not automatically updated when your update your original site.

 

 

I tried to upload a picture like you did to my website and it was a LOT of work and then it didn't turn out right. It copied everything together and has a scroll bar on the side of the picture.

 

Also, here are my stats for the last month as well

 

 

 

 

I don't have a facebook account. My exposure there has been from other people sharing my pages. I think the more people have shared and gotten my pages clicked on, the higher those pages have gone in the search ratings.

 

Wow. I thought all of the hosting sites pretty much used wordpress.

 

It looks like that saved a picture of my entire page not just a picture. Instead of doing it on that main page I would click on an article and try one of those pictures.

 

This is the link to that main picture in the first article. Try just that.

 

https://i0.wp.com/www.saintgregtravel.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/03/MagicDebarkationLido.jpeg

 

For stats I have an app on my phone I use. Since you don't have wordpress you probably can't use it. It used to be a wordpress app but now Jetpack has taken it over. Very nice. I can look at my numbers by day, week, month, or year. Then it's broken down by what views per page. Then it's broken day by where they were referred from. 
 

This is cool too. I can also see what search terms people used to get my site.

 

 

 

 

 

Edited May 17, 2023 by Saint Greg

[mitsugirly]

On 5/17/2023 at 5:03 PM, Saint Greg said:

 

I don't have a facebook account. My exposure there has been from other people sharing my pages. I think the more people have shared and gotten my pages clicked on, the higher those pages have gone in the search ratings.

 

Wow. I thought all of the hosting sites pretty much used wordpress.

 

It looks like that saved a picture of my entire page not just a picture. Instead of doing it on that main page I would click on an article and try one of those pictures.

 

This is the link to that main picture in the first article. Try just that.

 

https://i0.wp.com/www.saintgregtravel.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/03/MagicDebarkationLido.jpeg

 

For stats I have an app on my phone I use. Since you don't have wordpress you probably can't use it. It used to be a wordpress app but now Jetpack has taken it over. Very nice. I can look at my numbers by day, week, month, or year. Then it's broken down by what views per page. Then it's broken day by where they were referred from. 
 

This is cool too. I can also see what search terms people used to get my site.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Thanks for all the information! Wix ended up having a 50% off sale, so I jumped on it just to be able to continue my review. I hated the thought of having to figure out another website and how to transfer everything over and make things work right in the middle of doing my review. I'm going to keep all these things in the back of my mind because I know some day I WILL run out again. 😞  I appreciate all the help and advice and will keep all this in mind for the future.