Many Columbus Audubon members know Toni Stahl as a certified Habitat Ambassador, 20-year publisher of the Nature Scoop newsletter, and long-time provider of the Backyard Habitat website. This past summer, Toni received a rude surprise when the August issue of the newsletter was blocked for well over a hundred readers. Unable to determine what was going on, and with queries to multiple sources yielding no results, Toni was stressing out! To make matters worse, the volunteer who had maintained the website was moving on, which would require finding a new hosting service for the site as well as the technical expertise to move it. Feeling desperate, Toni turned to her friends at Columbus Audubon, where long-time volunteer Bill Heck investigated the issues, found some website space, and then called on our friends at SiteInSight.
When Columbus Audubon was able to provide some unused website hosting space, SiteInSight was so thrilled to have a solution that they volunteered to move the website for her to its new destination at no cost. However, SiteInSight CEO Alice Foeller didn’t have the heart to just move the old-style website: it was not mobile friendly and had most of its invaluable educational information stored as PDFs instead of displayed on web pages that are easily searched and easily displayed on different sized screens. So, the company decided to redesign the site for Toni as a donation. (Alice is an influential player in the native plant space, having gone up against Blendon Township and prevailed [so far] against their HOA-style rules for native landscaping.) SiteInSight also supported Toni in creating a new email account so she could email her newsletter from her business domain, backyardhabitat.info. (This is now required, since bulk email companies such as MailChimp will no longer allow people to send email newsletters from free email accounts such as AOL, Gmail or RoadRunner.) SiteInSight met with Toni to change her domain settings to make the new email secure and effective. They didn’t stop until the email issues affecting Nature Scoop were solved and the brand-new Backyard Habitat website was fully functional! Here’s what Toni has to say: “I was so relieved that I actually cried. Alice and SiteInSight were there for me through all the technical problems. During the website transition, I had to get ownership of the site from a former volunteer, and in the process the volunteer accidentally deleted the entire 2005 website. I thought Nature Scoop was finished, but SiteInSight found a way to put the website back together. They even embedded my subscription sign-up on my website so that readers are able to subscribe without any problem. My email now matches my website: [email protected]. And all of my readers now receive Nature Scoop without any problems. I’m forever grateful to Bill Heck and Columbus Audubon https://columbusaudubon.org/ and Alice Foeller and SiteInSight for their expert help. To anyone who needs website design or email marketing assistance, be sure to consider SiteInSight https://SiteInSight.com/.”