bjbeier
A number of years ago, I purchased my own domain name, bjbeieronline.com. It was the first, but surely not the last. At the time I had no idea what I was going to do with it, but it was a big step in my digital life. I now had my own personalized spot on the internet. Don’t get me wrong, I’ve had a place in the internet for some time now with Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and even the once ubiquitous MySpace (just Google it kids), but this was truly mine. I’m mean, it literally had my name on it.
After years of playing around with the free Google Apps (aka Google Workspace), and playing with things like Google Sites, I settled on using Blogger to post my content. After setting up a basic blog, I posted a couple times, but quickly got wrapped up in other things. I barely checked on the site, let alone posted any new content. For the next few years, the site was left in a bleak state with little attention or traffic.
In September 2011, something caused me to take notice of the domain and site again. On a whim, I searched again to see if bjbeier.com was available yet. It had been owned by someone in China and left parked when I had last searched years before. I was pleasantly surprised when my search showed it was not only available, but decently priced. I quickly scooped it up and started planning my transition.
After moving to the new domain I thought I would try my hands at posting again, but just as before, quickly dropped off. The site again sat dormant until 2016 when I decided to use the site like a virtual resume. Nothing fancy, just some information about me and links to my other social platforms.
After a few months I moved back to Blogger and setup a static page using a free template I had come across. I was able to keep the same information, but give the site a nice responsive design with some animations. Once again I visited the idea of posting and made two professional/business themed posts in 2018. All the other parts had been personal about specifics in my life. I decided to go forward with content related to business or technology and keep personal stuff, well, personal.
Well, here we are at the beginning of 2022 and this will be the first post in nearly three years. I’m going to attempt once again to start posting more frequently, continuing to focus on the business and technical content. Over the last few years I’ve been getting more into Linux, playing with Raspberry Pi’s, and building up my home network. My plan is to post as I’m going through some of the projects as well as posting general tips or tricks I’ve come across.
I recently refreshed the site with a new theme and moved from Blogger to WordPress. The static home page and blog now share the same theming and are no longer on separate sub domains. With WordPress being more popular than Blogger it made a huge difference in finding themes and plugins to fit my needs. So far I’m happy with the transition and excited to keep up the pace in posting!