I blew up my site. Deal with it.

Since August  27, 2007, I’ve been chained to my very “How To” centric blog. For 5 years, 8 months, and 21 days 90% of my content has been about how to help others “do things” with code. The other 10% have been rants or raves about geeky-web-designer stuff.

That ends today. I have completely wiped the database and done a fresh install of WordPress.

You see, the purpose of this blog was to make money via referral links to products I use like MailChimp, Hostgator, and Genesis.

In order to generate enough traffic to make a sale, I would write about “How to do XYZ with ABC code” in hopes that it would generate sales leads to my freelancing business.

Now that I’m working at WebDevStudios, I no longer need to concentrate on referrals or lead generation. Instead, I can use my domain name as I see fit. Because, God forbid I write about my wife, kid, or crazy dogs…on a “tech blog”!

It wasn’t uncommon to lose four or five RSS subscribers every time I published anything other than code.

This is what traffic here usually looks like:

1. USER TYPES INTO GOOGLE, “genesis code snippets”
2. USER CLICKS ON MY POST “Genesis Code Snippets”
3. USER FINDS OUT HOW TO REMOVE THE THING FROM THE THINGY
4. USER CLOSES MY SITE NEVER TO RETURN

Enough is enough. I don’t want to be held hostage by this blog. I don’t want to maintain several social media accounts.  I almost signed up for a Tumblr account damnit! Why? When I can live my life online, all here, using custom post formats.

Bottom line: I want to “own my own data”. That starts with taking back my domain name.

• Yes, I will continue to share and maintain code snippets – but those are going to move to GitHub.
• Yes, I will probably re-write the top 5 posts from the old site (they’re due for a refresh anyway). Those include: Genesis Code Snippets, Install LAMP on Ubuntu, The Perfect APC Configuration, and Edit Genesis Footer.
• Yes, you will see pictures of my family, dogs, camper, deer stand, and all the different beers I drink.
• “But Greg! What about all the money from referrals??!!?!” Listen Scrooge McDuck, $15-$25 a month wasn’t exactly “payin’ the bills” ya know?

Thanks for following.