Autisticglobetrotting moves to Autisable

February 17, 2021February 17, 2021 Joel Manzer

Several weeks ago I was going through my Facebook newsfeed and saw an announcement from Margalit that she was going to shut down her website Autisticglobetrotting.com.

For those that don’t know who she is or what her website was about, allow me to elaborate.

Autisticglobetrotting was a site that I often referred families to who needed some tips on traveling with an autistic loved one. Her blog posts highlighted travel tips to anywhere from Europe, Middle-east, Cruise lines…. well, you name it, Margalit and her family may have provided some tips and travel insights on her journey. I’ve always considered her the Rick Steves of the Autism Community. Constantly sharing with us so much solid information with a personal touch.

As people shared their comments with her about keeping her website up and around, as a sort of archive, I discovered a major challenge and the reason as to why she made this difficult decision.

I won’t dive into personal reasons as to why someone may make this decision, I’ll leave that to Margalit. I will share, however, the technical side of Autisticglobetrotting and how we are helping to keep her and her site online for the years to come.

Now it isn’t always easy to keep the site up for archive purposes, as there are associated costs for a site as popular and large as to keep Autisticglobetrotting going. The site was utilizing WordPress and had a variety of select plugins as part of its design.

Most websites that are set-up like this need to be upgraded on a regular basis for site security. Over time sites not being upgraded can be hacked. This is often the hidden time and expense of keeping a website up that doesn’t get talked about much. Redesigning a website costs even more time, money, and effort to bring it up to date. Let’s just say, no matter what direction Margalit would have to go, there would be an extensive amount of work involved.

Now, Margalit had written well over 600 articles of her family travels that many of us in the community refer to on a regular basis. Her connections to cruise lines as well as Disney and other hotel companies have proven invaluable to the autism community. I could not let those articles disappear, as I personally viewed them as too valuable to the autism community.

It is because of this I reached out to her to do something unprecedented in our history. We wanted to save her content and invite her to Autisable. This would allow her to still share her journey and insight, at her own pace, as well as to be able to answer questions – and maybe even share more stories down the road. In short, we wanted to provide Autisticglobetrotting a new home where Margalit wouldn’t have to worry about all her articles, as well as a way for the autism community can find her and her content when her site is shut down.

We worked with Margalit and her team in migrating her content to her own Autisable account. This is well over 600 articles, including images, from Autisticglobetrotting, that is now a part of her Autisable account.

We are still working with her team to address any redirects from her old domain, as well as addressing internal linking between her blog posts after the migration to Autisable.

As with any submitted content here on Autisable, the content is still hers, it’s just at a new home.

Welcome home, Margalit, welcome to Autisable.

For full disclosure:
Autisable is free and available for anyone to join and submit articles to our editors. Members can also use Autisable to journal, and network with others in the autism community as well.
The migration of content from another site isn’t something we normally do, but we felt it necessary to preserve her work and ensure she still has a home to do more as she is available.
Margalit is using Autisable as a member and is making herself available here to answer questions relating to her travel expertise. You can use Autisable as a member, too!