Blog 68 Websites, New Blog using HTML5 code, well it was modern for then, for NERDs amazing to know what went before

KeefH Web Designs
Nov 14, 2021
3 min read

Updated: May 23

By keef and annie hellinger, Mar 27 2014 04:16PM New Blog using HTML5 code

The VAN

Just unpacked the motorhome for 2014. Ran between the showers and have had to dry the breathable cover off in the garage but amazingly after 6 months it started 1st time, shows the trickle feed to the engine 1 hour a day has worked. Taking it off for a try out over the weekend.

New Blog using HTML5 code - Dive into the story behind rebuilding the Motorhome Travels blog with modern HTML5 code after years on Moonfruit. This post reveals the challenges of migrating 158 blogs, fixing broken SEO history, battling platform issues, and keeping a decade of motorhome adventures alive. A must‑read for anyone searching website rebuild tips, HTML5 upgrades, Wix migration, and long‑term blog preservation.

HISTORY OF DEVELOPMENT OF THIS BLOG AND CODE USED

history trail of our motorhome-travels.net blogs development from a techy stand point

Before March 2014, Moonfruit sites—including your early Motorhome Travels blogs—were not coded in HTML5 at all. They were built on a proprietary system called Sitemaker, which generated pages using Adobe Flash (SWF) as the primary rendering layer. Instead of producing readable HTML, CSS and JavaScript, Moonfruit stored page structure, text, images and layout instructions inside a Flash‑based canvas. The result was a site that looked like a normal webpage but was actually a Flash application running in the browser.

Under the hood, Moonfruit used a mixture of Flash ActionScript, XML configuration files and a database‑driven content model. When you edited a page, you weren’t editing HTML—you were manipulating objects inside the Flash editor. These objects were then saved as structured data, which the Flash runtime interpreted when the site loaded. Because of this, the “code” behind a Moonfruit blog wasn’t human‑readable. It was a compiled SWF file plus metadata, not a traditional webpage.

This approach had major limitations. Search engines struggled to index Flash content, so SEO performance was weak unless Moonfruit generated a parallel HTML “shadow page”—and even those were often incomplete. Mobile support was poor because iPhones and iPads never supported Flash. Page load times were slow, and any browser update that affected Flash could break site functionality.

By 2013–2014, the web had moved decisively toward HTML5, CSS3 and JavaScript. Flash was already in decline, and Moonfruit began migrating its platform to HTML5 templates. For long‑running sites like yours, this meant rebuilding or re‑importing content because the old Flash‑based blogs couldn’t simply be converted. They had to be recreated in real HTML.

This is why your pre‑2014 blogs required so much manual work when KHWD rebuilt the site.

See Blog 146 for the end of Flash

NEW WEBSITES (2026)

Find the latest on DECADES OF TRAVEL or our TRAVEL VIDEO BLOG sites

Original Design (Blogs 1-67) Pre Jan 2014

TECHNICAL NOTE: As of 18/8/16 the old blog website entries have been also converted to HTML5 removing the need for flash and making them so much more portable to any device type running the blog UPDATE Nov 2021: both versions of the old Blog i.e. 1-67 (on motorhome-travels blog. net) and 68-158 (on motorhome-travels blog. co. uk) are now redundant and slowly, very slowly, being migrated to WIX from Moonfruit. As all Blogs are being dumped in this process I'm having to recreate them in the new editor , not surprisingly this is a long job with 158 blogs to do and nearly 10 years of them, images, comments etc etc Moonfruit helpdesk cannot answer any of my questions about URL, SEO recognition and consistency of accrued history value, Grrrr, hopeless, they were good once, no more and as for Yell, dont get me started!!!

Redundant comment Nov 2021:

There are however still far too many blogs to transfer them over so they are available via the INDEX page, where we used to have a link by year to each of the blogs in that year, the new WIX functionality means we now have a "category" for each Blog Year and with this new improved functionality you can just go straight to that year and see them all, wonderful. No real need to have the picture slideshows by year either as all available under that blog but I need think about the design for that page going forward, the jury is out to avoid duplication.

New Search Methods UPDATE 2nd May 2022

Completely replaced by Blog 179 Design History

2020 All now Responsive code 2021 Moonfruit is moving code lock stock & 2 smoking barrels to Wix, we will see if it works seamlessly (hope / fingers crossed)

Nov 2021 The bottom line is it is NOWHERE near seamless, loads of stressful work to get it into a sensible shape that mirrors what I used to have, Grrr