Fairly short post here. Due to the recent events around Twitter (which I will not get into), I’m making an effort to reduce or completely cease my activity on that platform. My Contact page has been updated with all of the below accounts/sites.
If you’re reading this test post, it means DNS has updated properly and I’ve successfully migrated to Azure Static Web Sites. Welcome!
Over the next couple days (weeks?), a significant change is coming to my blog (and if you’re reading this text, it’s already happened). I will be leaving Wordpress behind and my current hosting. Replacing it will be an all-new site hosted on Azure Static Sites, with the content written in Markdown and pages generated via the Hugo static site generator.
Yeah, so…that was a hell of a year, wasn’t it?
Reviewer #1: 👎
Reviewer #2: ★✩✩✩✩, would not recommend
The year started out really well. I was getting into a good groove at the new job, I spoke at SQL Saturday Cleveland and SQL Saturday Rochester ran smoothly. My session for SQL Saturday Raleigh was accepted too, I submitted a session for SQL Saturday Albany, and I was invited to present remotely for SQL Professionals of Chattanooga. I was visiting and hanging out with #SQLFamily on a somewhat regular basis and it was awesome!
As we open 2020 (and the house is still quiet on this New Year’s Morning), I thought I’d take a moment to reflect on the past year.
2019 was another good year here. I published 32 posts totaling over 21,000 words! What really amazes me is that a post from 2018 is consistently one of the most popular ones. I must have done a really good job on the SEO with that one.
Like many folks using Wordpress, I post a tweet each time I publish a blog entry and that’s done automatically by Wordpress. In the Wordpress Classic Editor, there was a section in the sidebar next to the post to select where the post was publicized (Twitter, LinkedIn, etc.) and customize the accompanying text. By default, the message is just the post’s title, but I like to add in hashtags when appropriate so being able to edit that text is important to me. After switching to the new Block Editor in Wordpress 5, I couldn’t find those settings. Here’s how to get them back.
As we open 2019, I thought I’d take a moment to reflect on the past year.
2018 was my biggest year of blogging yet! I published 28 posts and got more traffic than I ever thought possible, thanks in no small part to being linked by Brent Ozar’s (blog|twitter) newsletter.
I also moved my blog to its own domain (which you’re looking at now), with independent hosting. I’d been putting this off for over a year. The old Wordpress subdomain name was clunky and I don’t feel like it properly reflected the direction I’ve taken since setting it up. I’ve had a few bumps along the way which I can’t quite explain (and as a result, didn’t get a post out for New Year’s Eve as I’d hoped), but I’m enjoying the freedom of having my own domain and full control of what I do in managing the site.
Welcome to the new home of my blog! I’ve had this domain for over a year but with PASS Summit 2018 coming up soon I decided it was time to make the move official.
I’ve brought all the content over from the old site but all new content will be appearing here. I’ll throw a new coat of paint on at some point just to freshen things up.