Category: Blogging

Categories
Blogging

Why I No Longer Self Host WordPress

Well I finally did it. Cancelled my hosting account. This post you are reading was written on WordPress.com and not in my Self Hosting WordPress instance. MediaTemple had a good run, but I just didn’t need it anymore.

Looking at things a little deeper.. When I started blogging back in 2004 (it’s been over 10 years already?!?) I started on blogger, there weren’t a ton of choices. Then, a couple of years later I moved to my self-hosted WordPress. I wanted more control. Many things that you might have wanted to do, you could only do if you hosted it yourself. I moved that between hosting companies, hosted it myself on VM’s, windows, Linux, back to managed hosting, etc.. and now my blog (all 1000+ posts and 2000+ comments) are in WordPress.com

How times have changed… many of the features and functionality that at one time you had to meticulously edit PHP files to get working or find a supported plugin (and then watch it go unsupported), are now baked into the platform. Software as  a Service FTW.

I also had a good run with Google Adsense. While I particularly didn’t like running ads, it basically paid for the hosting. The “long tail” on my blog still gets enough hits that I could make $15-20 a month and cover MediaTemples cost. With MediaTemple, I got more than one site I could host (100 actually), but I was only using a handful, and I realized that most if not all of them could go.

With twin boys looming, coming any day now and at most within a couple of weeks, it is one less thing I have to worry about – hosting a site (oh, and one less bill monthly – I guess that can go towards diapers.. or beer)

So what did I have to do to get this going? Not a whole lot.

First, I looked at my self hosted instance, and the plugins. Which could I turn off, live without, do I care anymore, etc. Which are handled by WordPress.com now? etc. Pretty much if not all I was ok with (obviously, I moved my site).

Feedburner? It’s dead. Mobile theme? Built in. JetPack features – built-in. Backup, etc – built-in.

But, I had ads, you can’t do that in WordPress.com – no need, wasn’t making $1000’s of dollars a month.

So I ran a Tools->Export. And then in WordPress.com, Tools->Import. The beautiful thing here as well is that all the media (post images, etc) got pulled in.

I signed up for a custom domain redirect in WordPress.com ($13 a year) and changed my DNS.

Chose a new theme and done.

We will see how things go as time goes on, but I am happy so far. Little weight lifted from the shoulders is always a good thing.

Here’s to another 10 years.

Photo Credit: Me on July 30th 2014 riding my bike on the back roads of Wisconsin. 

Categories
Blogging Life

Welcome Back

It’s been a loooong time since I have posted here. Well, time to change that. The experiment is over. Always been toying with other things. Twitter, Google+, Facebook, svbtle, medium, blogger, whatever. But I guess this is where I belong. Hell, I’m getting requests from this guy.

I focused on some other things.. stevenovoselac.com, which still is an experiment. Orignally it was a lifestream, on a few different services, then Posterous, which Twitter bought, so I moved it to WordPress, then Squarespace (which locks you in HARD btw) – and now decided to take some of the posts and move to svbtle. We will see what I do with it. Like I said, still an experiment.

In all reality I haven’t posted here since 11/2012.

What’s changed since then?

steve and olive

  • Life: Olive is almost a year old, our house is coming along
  • Work: I’ve promoted some awesome people and I have many less direct reports. I am getting into other technologies and projects.
  • Health: I started cycling. I’ve lost 65 lbs since 11/2012.
  • Tech: Chromebook? Macbook? Android? WP8? iOS development? Chromecast? Everything else? check. And more.
  • Music: Still rockin
  • Homebrewing: Yep, still doing that too. Need to do it more. I plan on it.

steve novoselac

I’ve cleaned up the theme a bit. Cleaned up some links etc. Still some categorization to here. Oh yeah, still have ads too. It pays for the hosting, and a beer every few months. 🙂

brewing

Looking at my Google Analytics, I can tell you exactly when Google Reader shut down…

Not even sure if anyone still reads blogs… do they? I know I do. Feedly is my drug of choice for a reader.

kom

What do people want to read about? Let me know in the comments.. which I guess I might see one or two. Otherwise I will just make up stuff as I go, which is pretty much how I operate anyways.

fam

Oh yeah, I love that Mase song – listen to the YouTube, it’s awesome.

Categories
Blogging

Publicize now for WordPress Hosted Blogs

This is just a test of the Publicize feature of Jetpack that supposedly works with WordPress.org/Hosted blogs.

Categories
Blogging Product Reviews

Google Reader Changes

As anyone who uses Google Reader knows already. They have changed. They changed for the worse. Design is somewhat horrible, removed features, etc. Sharing is not there anymore. You can +1 and then Share to G+. Ability to share to an RSS feed is gone. After using Google Reader for like 4 years and reading 10k items a month, it is jarring to see things just removed. Not sure what they were thinking.

Are there alternatives? Some readers out there, yes, but most already use Google Reader for the backend. What I am looking at doing is utilizing the “Send To” functionality on a post. You can set up some default Send To’s, or a custom one. Most likely a Posterous link blog/RSS feed type thing.

Otherwise? On the Mac, iPhone, iPad – use Reeder. Not sure what “Share” does at this point in that app. On windows, stick to the browser and utilize “Send To”. You will notice it under Reader Settings, in a Send To tab. The ability to add custom send to’s is what is interesting. As long as they leave that feature in the product as well.

What are your thoughts on the changes?

Categories
Blogging

7 Years

Been blogging for 7 years now. 975 posts. Hopefully I will get to 1000 this year. I am not doing a ton as far as posting goes, could probably do a lot more. Too many things have my attention now though. My 2.5 year old. My GF. My 75 social networks. My 10,000 things going on at work.

But yet, I still love this blog because it is MINE and I can do what I want, when I want, and control the content and the flow. It has been a good 7 years, It is funny I actually looked up a post back from 2004 today for something I was doing at work.

More to come.

Categories
Blogging

Dusting off the Blog Theme

Most people that might follow this blog probably hit it though RSS readers, or a post here or there from a Google search, so the changes aren’t probably noticeable to many, but they are to me.

Having started blogging back in 2004, on Blogger, and then a year or so in moving to WordPress (self hosted) – but moving it and changing it over time, you get some cruft. Back in the day, things weren’t so “easy”. You wanted a change, it meant PHP time. Over the years WordPress has become more and more “drag and drop” if you want it to be, of course you can still code whatever you want in your themes, etc, but the “widget” concept is pretty cool.

I think the last time I changed my theme in a major way was around 2006 or 2007, (if I remember, it was a “code camp” Saturday with Joel Dahlin at G Allens). It didn’t change too much but I think I started with Google AdSense after the last theme change. In order to do what I wanted it was code code code

Fast forward to today, where the theme is looking outdated, hard to update, etc. I wanted something new. Without totally jacking everything I had, I wanted to start fresh but yet be able to continue what I am doing and how I want to do it. The ads on the site pay the bills, for the hosting and other tools I use. By no means am I living high off the hog, but it is nice to have the site pay for itself and also allow me to do other projects online.

I searched around a bit, and was looking at WooThemes and others, but then stumbled into Headway. It really isn’t a “theme” in the sense that most other themes are, but a framework/system to be able to do whatever you want easily, visually, etc.

I set it up and I am really liking it so far, I have some ideas where I can go at my own pace yet keep things they way I want them easily, fully extensible and the “code” I might use isn’t at all embedded in the PHP files of the theme, but configurable like a modern CMS.

I hope to get more pictures and article, magazine type look as I move forward, that’s the goal anyways. It’s fun to dust off the site and theme and get back into it a little bit, so much out there to learn and use, pretty cool, also is making me rethink all my plugins I have been using, etc.

Another minor changes? I changed the favicon to my current avatar, which is kinda cool.

Another minor note, I am approaching 1000 posts on this blog. I should amend my 2011 goals and try to get to 1000 by the end of the year.

More to come as time goes on, as always.


Categories
Blogging Life

Yo Steve, Where You At?

Well, I had a good run, like a full week of a blog every day, then sputtered out. I hate blog posts about blogging as much as the next guy, but I feel like I need to write. Between tons of stuff going on at work (Trek World is coming up next week!) – which means multiple awesome projects coming to fruition and implementation, as well as some person dealings I am well, dealing with, there hasn’t been much time to get things typed out in blog form. I do have a list of things to blog about though, so it will come, in good time.

Also, I have piped off my old lifestream using soup.io and I am now using posterous at http://stevenovoselac.com , so most everything non tech/geeky/business intelligence/non blog post will go over there.

In other news, I did pick up a Dell Studio box, 64 bit, 1 TB, 8 GB ram. Running Vista right now, running two VM’s on it, Windows 2008 and a Vista VM, on its own Active Directory. That way, when Win7 comes out I can just keep my VM’s and be good to go. I also got a free Dell Mini 10 netbook with the deal. Not sure I like it. The resolution is just 1 setting to small (or big) for me. I am sure I will find something to do with it though.

I have to move to a new place, or find one anyway, in the next 2 months, so that is thrown into the mix as well, always something to stress ya out, always 🙂

Categories
Blogging

5 Years Ago Today…

Wow, two “X years Ago Today” this week..

5 Years ago today, I started this blog. June 19th 2004. I wish I would have started earlier. I was addicted to reading them (like crack) from like 2001-2003, and finally bit the bullet and started one in 2004. First on Blogger, then moved to WordPress (wow I jacked my SEO on that one), but then a few hosting providers later, even my own server, and here I am. Media Temple is my current hosting and I have never been happier with a hosting provider.

I do need a new theme, I wish someone would help me out! I would even pay – 50 bucks? Who wants to? I did add the “ads” about a year or so ago, and surprisingly it brings in decent money, not huge $$ but enough to pay for hosting for the year for sure.

I love blogging, I love my blog too. Why? Because it’s mine. I can blog about whatever, and it’s mine. It has been with me through 7 apartments, 3 girlfriends, 5 cities, 5 computers, 4 OS’s, 1 baby, 5 jobs, and much more. It’s always there.

People say “blogging is dead” and I don’t agree. Blogging may be dead, for the lazy. I can “tweet all day” but if I have something to really say, or put out there and think through and share, the blog is the place. I see so many A-list bloggers just let their blogs die because of Twitter/FriendFeed. For Shame. Don’t you have anything share that is longer than 140 characters? Come on.

Anyways, this blog will be around for a while, looking back I just wish I would have blogged more. Make it a ritual. Share knowledge. Share with the community (does that make me a communist? oh noes!) Have fun!

Thinking back 5 years ago, I can’t even remember much of what I was doing. in St. Cloud, MN. Working for St. Cloud Wireless Holdings. Doing ASP Classic/SQL 2000. Reading blogs with RSS Bandit and other tools. Using a PPC 6601 as a phone. Driving a Chevy Silverado 1500. Had a 1 bedroom apt, bachelor pad. Was starting to play guitar again. Never thought I would be where I am right now, never. And 5 years from now, I bet I will say the same thing 🙂

Happy Blogging! 🙂


Categories
Blogging Geeky/Programming

Twitter or Yammer?

Recently I have been using Yammer more often than Twitter, but they both have their place. You probably know what Twitter is as it has been going mainstream like crazy the last month or two. Yammer on the other hand is less known. Yammer is sort of like Twitter, but just for your organization.

What Yammer brings, besides being just internal to your place of work, are other enhancements. Groups, for one, is huge. I can create a group say for “Microsoft SQL Server”, and anyone on Yammer in my place of work can join that group and share, discuss, and consume anything from that group. Instead of me sending out emails from articles and tips, people can just subscribe to them.

Also, departments can create groups , private groups, to have discussions just within their dept.

Yammer also has an iPhone app, and a Adobe Air Desktop App (I think I heard TweetDeck integration soon if not already), and it uses SMS message as well if you want, and also you can get daily digest emails from your groups and people you follow.

I would suggest groups of employees that are on Twitter going back and forth, take a look at Yammer for internal needs. What I try to do is save anything for Twitter that is more applicable to everyone, and Yammer for things I just want to share with people I work with.

On that note as well, I separated out my Twitter and Facebook feeds, and am going to try to use Facebook for more non-technical status updates.

So,

Yammer = company/corporate/internal groups

Twitter = colleagues outside of the company, and people I find interesting in my same line of work, etc

Facebook = family, friends, etc

Categories
Blogging

Blogging in 2009

I have been looking through some of my Google Analytics logs, and I really find it funny. The top 3 posts on my blog really don’t have anything to do with stuff I am really into, but they are more things that I did in my spare time and blogged about.

1) Linux on my Ps3
2) iSight Camera Drivers on Macbook/Parallels
3) Ruby on Rails and MySQL on Vista

So yeah, I don’t really do any of that stuff “full time”. Even looking back over my blog posts, and seeing how things have changed since 2004. Talking about ASP development, SQL 2000, ASP.NET, C#/VB.NET, C++, BI, Other tech stuff. Fun stuff.

Now that I am doing Business Intelligence full time, but in more of a manager role than a “doing” role, I usually don’t fall into crazy development debacles or solutions that require a “blog” to explain, or a “blog” to save the next sorry sucker who comes across the setup or crazy steps I had to take to get something to work.

That, coupled with Twitter, and Facebook, and Yammer, and whatever else, blogging takes a back seat. But I still think there is a good time and place for blogging. You make it what you make it. You can use it as log to look back on (I do, I search on stuff I blogged all the time, instead of having to remember it), or just a good way to keep people up on what you are doing, in more than 140 characters.

Where do things go from here? I am sure there tons of things coming down the pipeline that I will be blogging about. SQL 2008, Sharepoint, Excel Services, More BI stuff (SSIS, SSRS, SSAS), Cloud Computing, iPhone, Mobile, Gaming, just good old plain geekery. And don’t forget lil Ella, and music and much more.

I have mentioned before that my blogging has also changed dramatically since I started using Mac’s full time at home. It makes it tough to get a “full solution” into a blog post. I have tried with VM’s but I just get too distracted 🙂

I have found that I get more though, out of reading and just consuming as much info as I can. Books, eBooks, Blogs through Google Reader, Twitter, etc. Still subscribing to 250-300 blogs, the cream of the crop, and I add more every day, mostly BI blogs these days. Unsub’d from most of the .NET Dev blogs since I Just am not into that as much any more. Things like that. I’d rather learn more than just regurgitate or create some kind of “echo chamber” here.

Blogging in 2009 is much different than 2008, or 2004, or whenever, and I am sure it will evolve. It should be fun! and I hope to embrace the changes that will come in the upcoming years.