Important Site Update: App Leaving
Effective the week ending 5/4/24, the app for The Holistic Goat will become unavailable, as will all social features and group access. Courses and community will be moving to our existing Skool community. Please keep reading for a longer explanation if you’d like to know the details.
Click here to view the Skool community.
In early 2023, I experienced a significant bug in the main software on the site. This software, like most parts of a WordPress website, is a separate plugin I purchased and it is responsible for the group functions, social features and, most importantly the ability to have the app we had.
The 2023 issue, while serious, was resolved, but I paused development then while trying to find a way to prevent issues like that in the future. Around the beginning of 2024, I hired someone to manage it and we carefully tested the website, finding that the previous issue–bulk sending thousands of email notifications on old posts despite no new email trigger–was resolved so we went full speed ahead on app and continued web/course development.
All went well, the app launched and had nearly 1,000 users in its first month. I also hired a full team and we have been working fervently to launch memberships on the site now that it was stable. We’ve been meeting weekly, making big plans and rolling out several courses. It has been so incredible – my vision coming to life and REAL value coming for our members!
Then, on 4/22/24, I received a notice from my web host about email issues. By the end of the day, he suspended hosting and we lost all access to email communications and some websites. It turned out our old nemesis the email bug–something reported to me in private to be a known issue for more than a year–had returned with a vengeance.
So we worked for 2 days to resolve it, thought it was solved, switched to a new email host to try to protect the websites and…got an email from the new email provider that they were suspending us.
It now seems as though the email issue spontaneously re-enabled itself with a software update.
As I write this on 4/28, everything is now resolved, but I have lost all trust in this software and have been doing some serious reflecting on where I want to be focusing my time.
Even in fairly “normal” operations, there is still a lot of time spent on managing a website like this and I find that despite hiring a team and having a huge amount of the workload shared, I’m still not being able to spend my time writing about goat care.
The helplessness of not being able to resolve the glitches and having websites and email shut down is not something I want to experience again.
And there’s no guarantee this software will stabilize in the near future.
So after exploring the options, I’ve decided that the best move is to stop using the software, remove user registration from the website and safeguard our future from potentially permanent host shutdowns by simplifying and focusing on being a content-only site.
Instead, all course and community content will move over to our Skool community and I will use THG web for blog content and the research repository. Skool runs lightning fast, is stable and, most importantly, fully responsible for its own tech issues, which frees me from a huge burden of doing it all in-house.
This decision was not easy. I love this website so much! I’ve invested many thousands of dollars in developing THG to what it is today and I’m grieving at the loss, but I feel that you will overall be better served with:
- a software platform that is stable
- no mass emails that are triggered with no logical pattern
- an app that is stable and fast, provided through Skool
- a Megan who has time to write the information you’re here to learn
So we will work to remove those features beginning today, 4/28/24, and the app will become unavailable as soon as this transition is complete.
The team has already migrated to our Skool community where we have over 100 members and course content on all goat care topics available inside. I hope to see you there!
~Megan
How do I get to the new app? I don’t even know what skool is
Skool is a teaching community platform with some high $$ level backers that contribute to its stability and ease of use, which is how I found out about it. You can see our community by tapping here.
Oh, well super I’m bummed the app is going away, I cannot afford a monthly subscription like that 😭
Guess I’ll stick with the FB group.
Thanks!
Sorry. :/ If the issues were guaranteed to be solved and/or didn’t run the risk of causing me to lose hosting permanently, I’d limp along because I sure love what we created here!
No worries! Thankfully there is the FG group option, and hopefully one of these days I’ll have the ability to join the one for the monthly fee 💗
Hi there! Im sorry the app is shutting down, but i understand. I was planning to print out your infographics today but i see they are gone now 😢 is there any way i could get the info graphics you had on here?
Still here, I just removed all links from the front page so app users would see the important announcement. You can go here to access them and they will continue to be available in the future, I’ll just need to redesign the site around its new limitations: https://theholisticgoat.com/groups/goat-care-101/albums/5/
Oh phew! Thank you so much.
It says page not found on link 404 whatever that means
Where are you trying to go that you’re getting a 404? There is a lot in flux this week while I work to rearrange the site without the core software we were using before.
So sorry to hear this but we understand. So much time and effort went into this. I feel for you big time. I loved the app option. Technology can be so great but cause so many stresses as well.
I’m totally open to considering it in the future after the software has had more time to work bugs out. I’d love to see this future for us, but it definitely seems like the time isn’t right right now.
I’m so sorry you’ve experienced this. Your hard work is seen. *hugs*
Thank you, Ashley! <3 I think the simplification will make things easier to follow too.
So just boom, everything is gone? No chance at all to see any of the forums before you ax the site? And why exactly didn’t I get any email about this sooner since it looks like people were posting here on April 28 and I didn’t get any email about anything until May 1. How do we know that you won’t do the same thing with skool, just one day up and decide to ax that too?
Forums are still here, just not in navigation yet while we work on getting things switched around. Let me give you an example of why it had to be sudden and drastic. The software was sending thousands of emails, thousands, with no new posts. We disabled all emails and, thinking it was resolved, signed up for a new email host. It reactivated itself with a software update and again began sending. In the online world, if you’re sending mass emails, you get shut down as a scammer. I could lose my entire business over this glitch. It’s not just a “oh no we can’t have groups anymore,” it’s more like “say goodbye to everything you’ve been building for the last 20 years” kind of thing and through no fault of my own, I now have two strikes against me because of this issue.
Example: after working on it and thinking it was resolved, I turned the ability to email followers when I make a new post back on. I had 31 followers on that account and 900 users on the site. The glitch in the software sent three THOUSAND emails in 2-3 minutes based off of that one post when it should have only sent 31.
So, I did what I thought was best to protect the site AND my ability to continue to offer all this information…info that I give away for free at enormous cost, btw. This site’s software expenditure in the past year was about $20k. So I’m sorry it distresses you. You can’t imagine how much it distressed me, all that time, energy and expense completely lost.
Skool, on the other hand, is tested, stable and–most importantly–has its own tech team and full responsibility for any issues its software creates. They stand to lose a lot if their software does what this one plugin did to my site, so I trust they will do what it takes to keep things moving. The plugin developer I paid for THG has nothing to lose, I’ve already paid, so there is no incentive to resolve what amounts to a long known issue that only affects some sites, so they have no incentive to make a fix.
So my entire team has spent the past week and a half scrambling to try to salvage this. And we’ll continue working on it. But in the meantime, site navigation will be inconsistent. I’ll send another email when it’s where it’s going to be, but if you’re anxious about seeing the forums right now, you can always go here.
The email I got from you today came out of the blue. I have not received any emails at all from the Holistic Goat until today. Zero, zip, zilch, nada. So I have no clue at all where “thousands of emails” to followers even went. For sure not to me. I’m a user and was not at all affected. Yes, technology issues are difficult and stressful.
I was under the impression that everything was gone and this landing page was it. Nothing else at all. The link that’s to I think management is broken. Wish you had just included the link to the forums that you included down below in the email. The email didn’t come across as having had thought and planning behind it. It came across as a sudden panicked reaction. I know of a similar type site to the old forums that is reliable, and also has the ability to integrate with Facebook, if you want that info. It’d be a similar deal as skool, since they have their own tech support but would be a way for the forums to continue. This was just me reaction to having the rug pulled out from under me when the forum was really the only thing I could make work, the subscription is just not at all workable for me.
I really had no idea it meant so much to you. We haven’t seen any interaction or activity from you ever on this site!
Did you know that we post a ton of great content already in Facebook in our group? I pay a full team to moderate and manage it. And as I mentioned in the email I sent, you’re welcome to go there to continue to receive free content. But as I also mentioned, the free groups/social content is not available here any longer in order to keep the site viable and safe. Good luck!
I can comment! (this is haley from my dummy acct)
Hello. I am still a bit confused as to how to access the remainder of my paid course. Can someone please help me with this? I did set up on Skool but do not see a place for this. Thank you.
Hi Holly! Your paid course should be accessible under My Courses still. If not, send us an email through the contact form at the top of the site and we’ll take care of you!