brandiboyd.com

Yes. I have been a bad blogger. No updates lately.

It’s summer. It’s 100+ degrees. I work at home. The kid is out of school……it’s down time. Being the daughter, granddaughter, niece, and cousin of teachers, summer has always been a time for refreshing, renewal. Taking stock, cleaning out, freshening up, and resting. Still is.

Out with the Old, in with the New

So, for business renewal, this month I switched from shared hosting to a managed server with WiredTree. After eight years with websites online it was a little past time. I chose WiredTree based on industry reviews and a comparison of their offerings with other VPS providers; and I know already that I made a wise choice. And I want to say how helpful they have been in helping me get up to speed. Adam, Zack, Joe and Jake have been exceedingly patient with my questions and are lightning quick with response time; and WiredTree’s managed services offer me and my clients great peace of mind. I’m not a sysadmin and don’t want to be, but I still want to have the ability to manage things myself if I wish; and so far all signs are that I can rest easy at night, or leave my cell phone in the car accidentally, knowing the server is just fine.

Learn and Re-Learn

I’m undertaking learning Ruby/Rails basics. And a few (hundred) other things, as the skill sets required these days seem to grow exponentially almost by the hour. I’m playing around a lot lately with the YUI, particularly the grids module; and some other CSS frameworks. Like everyone, I’ve had my own little snippets and big blocks of code I use all the time building up over the years, but not coming from a programming background it’s not been nearly as much of a framework as a set of templates. It is exciting to have an easy entry into deeper development with the modular aspects of both Ruby and the many developer frameworks cropping up everywhere; but I always feel uncomfortable incorporating technology I don’t quite understand into a project. So for the moment I’m mainly using them for active learning, reverse engineering, and self-teaching by mostly-mistake.

One VERY cool thing I did just implement is Ryan McDonnell’s method for running multiple (virtual host) blogs with one wordpress install and zero code changes. WordPress 2.6 came out a month ahead of time and the tickets in the trac went from around 700 to none in just a few hours, just as I was getting my clients all settled from the big 2.5 upgrade, and then the server move. The thought of upgrading all of my installs again, and again, and again….made my hair hurt, so I set out looking for a solution that wasn’t MU. Ryan, I think I love you. So, soooo much time saved by this, and cache and a bit of memory too. Woohoo! Made my day, like three days in a row.His writeup on the method was drafted a year and a few big WordPress changes ago, and I have not yet gotten individual theme folders for each user to work, but that is so not a big deal, for the most part. It is why I chose his over other methods, along with being able to have each blog running as a virtual host; but it is by far the easiest thing to live with. Clients should expect to see a few changes in the plugins and themes folders. I’m so excited by it I think I’m going to write a little bash script for making all the symlinks and such. Mmm…weekend fun.

Review and Renew

Of course, with each new mistake I realize there’s another language I don’t know, interface I need to get up to speed on, discussion forum I need to keep up with. It begs the question, just what is it I am doing again? Web design? Application UI design? Graphic design? App development? Server administration? Software support? Database management? Of course, like most freelancers, the answer is a little of all of that and then some. And, l think also like most freelancer web whatevers, I find myself following an ever branching path, on which it’s not always clear which fork to take next. So I’m taking a purposed look at where I want to go next and re-evaluating my business goals. No. I don’t have any idea where that will lead just yet. And no, I’m not going anywhere. Just trying to pin down an idea of what I can logically keep up with in the future as technology speeds ever onward.

So, that’s it … my summer renewal, at least the business portion. After so much renewal, I just can’t understand why I’m so tired!