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Posted on December 4, 2017 by Graham

I’m all done with WordCamp US 2017. Saturday was good but I had a rough start. I’ll leave out some details but Air BnB has crossed me twice now. I’m starting to hate that game. The joint I stayed at was full of cool cats that went to WCUS with me but the bed I (sort of) slept in was a wooden rack wrapped in linnen.

So I pulled a 22 hour day. Woke up at 3ish in the morning. My back hurt all day long as I tried to stay awake in session and rubbed elbos with some folks I knew from Atlanta. Brad and Kathy from the Atlanta WordCamp were there – I got to meet a handfull of new peoples also. Really a good time at the conference. WCUS good / AirBnB bad.

I got to help at the Happiness Lounge and met even more people and I would like to give a huge shout out to Jan Dembowski (@jan_dembowski)! Thank you sir!

Matt’s (again, first name basis) presentation was great. The direction is to get Gutenberg (hereby forward will be refered to as G-berg) to core roughly in 4 months. There was some concern overall from just about everyone who asked questions about that decision. There was also a live presentation from Matias Ventura which went over very smoothly so kudos to him and his team.

There was an after-party but I, in my limp and bedraggled state (from the so-called “bed”), couldn’t muster enough umph to get my butt there. I packed up and headed out. The drive home was peaceful. Lynard Skynard on the radio followed by techno in my blue tooth.

There was so much to take away from the conference. I still can’t believe it was only 40 dollars – I feel like a criminal. I can honestly say it was so good it moved me and I’m totally hooked for the next WordCamp. Probably both Atlanta and US.

See you all next year.

And thank you.

Posted on December 2, 2017 by Graham

I’m at WordCamp. I’m at an Air BnB which could second as a horror movie set location. But it’s filled with cool people so I don’t mind the faucet fixture falling off in my hand.

That’s 100$ a night I save.

A guess I should back up since I was happy about having my car back. Yeah, so that was only half the story. It stalled yesterday at work while I tried to go to lunch. Went to the mechanic instead. He looked at it and dried something off?Drove it to get gas. Stalled again. I wanted to cry.

I planned this 10 months ago – no way my damn car is going to screw me like this. So I too it back to the mechanic again. He said that it had a wet coil pad. Okay. So I got in it and just started driving. Got half way down SR 20 (Georgia) and wouldn’t you know traffic just stopped? I had to reroute threw a huge cloud of fog on SR 140. After that things started to get better.

I hauled some serious butt in order to catch up in time to make it into Nashville last night. I parked at the convention center and picked up my badge, and then made my way back to the Record House (air BnB).

Woke up this morning and jumped in my car. I got to the volunteer orientation with coffee in my hand and toured the “camp.” This place is huge. Watched the morning presentations and met a few people. Then I worked the registration desk. I was joking around with a very nice lady from Houston (Scotland) when Matt just walked up.

So I’m here at the Air bnb. I’m tired but so excited. Damn, now I’m hooked and will probably start going to more of these.

Time for bed.

Or whatever that thing is I slept on.

Posted on August 23, 2017 by Graham

Recently I’ve had a run in with security and have seen why encryption can be a powerful tool. Earlier this year, I had two sites hacked – a WordPress site and a Joomula! site. My host, which will go un-named at this moment (I’m pretty mad at them), pointed out the corrupt files and asked if I would like to pay to have them removed. Nice.

After jumping on to FileZilla and backing up the database, I decided to try to clean the WordPress site. Things immediately got worse and the site crashed. Not pretty. You can read about it up in the first link but the point to this is I’ve installed WordFence on that site and this site as well. But that doesn’t totally secure the site. I have to get an SSL.

Well, one of the items that came out of WordCamp US last year is support for letsencrypt.org. And if you dig deeper into that link, you’ll notice that GoDaddy isn’t on the list. Not even for “up-and-coming.” There are probably a number of reasons for encrypting your site, but the two big ones for me are security and SEO.

That, coupled with increasing prices, along with no desire to haggle over the phone (yes, I did) about; I’ve decided to leave GoDaddy. Adios, sayonara, toodles! So that drama is going on. But, that drama prompted me to find a provider that offers lets encrypt support, so there ya have it.

The narrow list, derived from the letsencrypt site, is OVH or Dream host but I’m leaning towards OVH. I figure the price has something to do with it. I’m making zero profit from this site and have no freelance work lined up. Need to pinch some pennies.