Over the past year, I’ve been wanting to blog a good bit more for a couple of different reasons - many of them completely unrelated to blogging. For example:
- I’m convinced at this point in time that the manner in which we’ve been thinking about building dynamic Web sites and applications for the last 15 years or so (e.g. Web-server driven, dynamic application fameworks and CMSs) is completely wrong and in many ways runs counter to how the Web is intended to work (In fact, this will be one of the subjects I’m planning to cover in my next Pluralsight course). As such, I’ve been wanting to experiment more with static site generators like Jekyll and taking control over the technology behind my blog seemed like an easy way to create that opportunity.
- Following the previous reasoning, I have some pretty strong ideas about how architecture and cost are correlated in the cloud, and the only way to feel confident asserting my ideas is to put my money where my mouth is and pay actually pay for running a site. Stepping outside of that comfort zone will, I hope, surface any potentially hidden costs of running an application at scale (though in my case, much of that scale may end up being synthesized through distributed load testers :))
- By the way, while I will do it tastefully (or not do it at all), I may put ads on the site to pay for my mad scientist experiments. For what it’s worth, I will be sure to document those experiments on the blog.
- I registered this cool domain name a while ago and wanted to use it. That and I wanted to make sure that I really had a more practical understanding regarding core Internet technologies like DNS.
- Every now and then, I may decide to blog about something that’s not purely technical - and while I’m sure that the good folks over at CodeBetter would grant me some leeway, it doesn’t make sense to but them or the CodeBetter readership in the position of needing to even consider it.
- Did I mention that this basically gives me a laboratory to try out new ideas and technologies related to cloud architecture and Web development?
So, there you have it. For better or for worse, that’s my rationale.
I would like to thank the good folks at CodeBetter for all of the support during the years that I’ve been blogging on their platform. It was truly an honor to have been invited into that circle and I will continue to have the site as a staple in my RSS feed. I have no intention of removing any of my previous content from that site. My plan is simply to start blogging over here going forward. Also, expect that there may be a few swings in look/functionality/other in the early stages as I’m in the process of learning best practices around a bunch of different things, like:
- Learning the ins and outs of Jekyll
- Setting up plugins like Disqus and whatever ads platform I decide to investigate
- Deploying to S3
- Mapping a domain name to an S3 bucket
- Automating the deployment process
- other stuff that I don’t yet know that I don’t know
And naturally, if you have any thoughts or ideas that could save me some headaches or wasted time, leave a comment or message me…well, as soon as I figure out how to get that setup!