Wednesday’s Video: The Website Got a Facelift!

This week’s video is about the new look and organization of my website — a project that was approximately four years in the making. It’s also about why I hate the words, “Why don’t you just …”

After you watch the video, go ahead and take the new website out for a spin! My right-hand woman Eryn, developer Avanti, and I think things are working pretty well, but we’re still hunting down a few post-launch bugs. One glitch will be apparent right away if you’re using Poodle‘s Chrome browser. Chrome claims my site is “not secure,” when my site, in truth, has great self-esteem. Clearly, it is Poodle that is still hurt about our big fight 10 years ago and has resorted to lashing out at me through its Chrome browser rather than eating its feelings like the rest of us do.

The more technical explanation is that my site has always had a basic SSL certificate for encryption because I have never collected sensitive financial information. When I first launched in 2006 — back when my company was named Gigi Caron — everyone argued with me about using PayPal for transactions. Experts kept telling me, “Ugh, no one is going to want to use PayPal. Customers want to do everything directly on your site.” Meanwhile, I was a tiny little company and PayPal was already bringing in over a billion dollars in yearly revenues for its then-parent company, eBay. I was like, “Who has more money to invest in security for important information? Let PayPal do it, and anyone who doesn’t want to use PayPal can give me credit-card information over the phone.” After all, unlike the online giants of e-commerce, Wendy Brandes Jewelry employs an actual human being named Wendy Brandes who loves to talk to customers!

Now, however, Poodle is demanding an upgraded SSL certificate to protect all the information that I don’t collect. I figured I’d “just” take a few minutes today to buy the cert. I probably should have known that the transaction would take more than one day and involve three different companies, one of which sent me a dozen emails saying that it couldn’t find my records at one of the other companies until I sent them a screen shot of said records. I’ll get it straightened out soon! Until then, if you want to purchase something you can (a) use another browser to avoid getting that message; (b) use the Chrome browser and be confident that you’ll never enter any credit-card information directly onto my site/server; or (c) email me at info at wendybrandes dot com to set up another payment method.

If you want to go through the site, I happen to be testing my first discount code: FOWtest. (FOW = Friend of Wendy, of course!) If you have any problems with the discount code or notice anything else malfunctioning on the site, I’d be most appreciative if you gave me a holla via info at wendybrandes dot com so I can fix it ASAP. Thanks in advance, my peeps!

UPDATE: More hilarity ensued the day after I posted this.