When we first established Clinicality Press, we were fairly clueless about things like web design, and if we’re honest, we didn’t know much about publishing either. By much, we mean anything at all. But since 2007 we’ve managed to fumble our way through to achieve the level of slickness that’s come to define this operation.

In setting up the website, we went with Microsoft’s Office Live Small Business because it was inexpensive and easy to use, and we were a (very) small business. This was a good thing, as it meant we could keep everything in-house and control the look of the site (to the best of our limited technical abilities) and besides, we didn’t have the funds to pay someone else to do it.

Some time ago, Microsoft announced it was discontinuing Office Live Small Business, and replacing it with Office Live 365 with effect from 30th April 2012. Unsurprisingly, the new version actually has less of the functionality of its predecessor (for instance, we find the real-time reports and attendant details extremely useful) and costs more. Instead of offering up to 25 emails per domain, domains are charged per email account, and each email address costs more than the old OLSB domain.

The ‘easy’ ‘migration’ from the old OLSB to Office 365 proved to be anything but, and rather than simply upgrade an existing account, users are required to rebuild their pages from scratch.

Then there was the whole deal of having to reassign the domain name. We didn’t have the foggiest about DSN and this code and the other, and spent a lot of time trying to figure it out. Perhaps we slipped up somewhere, or perhaps we didn’t, but having decided, perhaps against our better judgement, to take advantage of Microsoft’s generous offer of a six-month free trial of the new platform in order to give us time to decide what to do next. Unfortunately, thanks to Microsoft (or their needlessly complex and technical ‘migration’ process), we’ve found ourselves without a domain host sooner than anticipated. This morning we discovered that Clinicalitypress.co.uk had disappeared. We’re not entirely sure what happened. Clinicalitypress.co.uk is no more.

We’ve lost a lot of pages. Having just published our latest title – and we only put out 2 or 3 a year – the timing couldn’t have been much worse. The plan had been to transfer to Office 365, reassign the domain name and keep the transition as smooth as possible, using it as an opportunity to tweak the site design along the way.

In the event, it wasn’t to be. We decided to cut our losses and move the whole operation to WordPress, and having acquired Clinicalitypress.com (the annual hosting costs less than the monthly hosting for maintaining the .co.uk domain through Microsoft), we are now in the process of rebuilding the entire site. We do still have the text for the Clinical, Brutal interview series, and will be reinstating them and everything else as is humanly possible.

There’s a lot of work to do. If we’re slow to reply to any messages, that’s because we’re busy. Thankfully, we can still access our domain-specific emails. But please, do message us. And do buy our books. The titles already out there are still available through most channels, and we’ll have our own on-line store back up and running as soon as possible.

Meanwhile, keep it brutal.