The New England|Ecology Site is Live!

I’ve had a website hosted on WordPress for more than 15 years now. While that platform has a lot of flexibility, I’ve been wanting to update a few things on the site and was getting tired of the very visually-noisy WordPress dashboard and the plugins that are constantly sending you alerts and wanting money for their programmers (and conflicting with other plugins!). I’ve developed sites for others in Squarespace, and while it isn’t perfect (no platform is), I’ve found it much easier to work with. As it was getting near renewal time for my WordPress annual contract, I decided to change things up. You are reading this on the new England|Ecology site powered by Squarespace! What does this mean for the future of the site? What does this mean for content that was on the original site that wasn’t ported over? Find out below the kiskadee.

A Great Kiskadee with lunch it just caught along the Rio Grande, Texas. Taken in January 2025 by Marcus C. England.

What About the Old Blog Posts?

All of the old blog posts will be archived on my computer. Selected ones may make an appearance on this new blog in the future.

What About the Wildlife of the Mt. Washington Area?

I may or may not reconstitute that, either here or on a different site as part of another project.

Will I Still Receive Emails About Site Updates?

To my knowledge, Squarespace doesn’t automatically send out emails notifying of new blog posts as WordPress does. While I have yet to plan out the specifics, I will be sending out an email to site subscribers, likely in the form of a monthly newsletter. While I haven’t done it yet, I will port over whatever email subscriber information WordPress makes available to me.

Where Does the England|Ecology Site Go From Here?

The answer to that question will require a bit more brainstorming and business planning that I intend to do in the near future. As the things I do in my personal time aren’t all that different from what I do for work as a biological consultant (absent my wife, of course), this site has—historically—combined my consulting business with other aspects of me, such as birding and general naturalist things, wildlife photography, and wildlife artwork. I am considering splitting some or all of the visual stuff off into a separate business, with its own site, so that this site can focus on my consulting work and digital services I want to add. England|Ecology (the idea and the dba, not the LLC) is not just a consulting business, however. It is me, my ideas, and the photos and art I produce. So, it very well may be better off here in one package. I just need a bit of time to think that out. Stay tuned.