If you have never been to my site, welcome, but this post is unlikely to make much sense to you. For those returning, welcome as well! I just wanted to share a quick note on what I have been doing recently and why. As you can see, things are a bit different here today.
Why the Change?
So, besides the old adage “change is good for the soul,” I was forced into it. Years ago, when I first really put some time and design thought into my website, I wanted to make it look nice and fancy. So, I purchased a custom theme and some custom plugins, like a blog post scroller. I wanted my site to look professional and welcoming. I wasn’t a web designer, so I purchased from someone who was. I then spent about a week customizing the theme to the vision I had in my head. I really liked it. I thought it looked smart, had some cool features, and gave off the vibe I sought.
Fast forward to about three weeks ago. I logged into my site to start working on a new blog post and access to the admin console failed. I was able to log in, but after that, I just received a WordPress error that my website had failed. The email sent to me with the information indicated that one of my plugins (remember that blog post scroller I mentioned earlier) was no longer supported and through an error. Ok, fine, let’s disable that, and I’ll replace it later. So, going into the backend of my site, I was able to disable the plugin. This time, when I logged in, I could get into the console, but I still had errors all over the place. As near as I could tell, WordPress had been auto-updated (which is what I want), and the new update broke not only that scroller but some of the custom hooks for the theme. Upon further investigation, I found that the theme I purchased back in 2016 stopped receiving updates in 2018! Silly me for expecting it to be updated just because I purchased it. It’s not like other companies update products, so you have to buy new ones instead of using the same ones you have always had. Who does that right!!?? So, to be terribly honest, I am surprised my site lasted as long as it did, considering it hadn’t been updated in six years. So that’s why my site looks different now.
The Theme I Picked and Why
Having learned from my past mistakes (yes, I can do that…) I decided to go with one of the WordPress standard templates (the new Twenty Twenty-Four to be exact). Are they fancy? No by themselves? Can you make them fancy? Sure, if you want to. But the main reason I went with a standard template? Because WordPress’s oldest template is 14 years old and still gets updates. That likely means I won’t have to worry about this again for a very long time, and by then, we won’t have browsers; we’ll be traversing the web in our brains or something. Yes, I wanted stability. Another reason I went with a basic theme is that, over the years, I have learned that people very seldom go to blog sites by hitting the front page where all of the bling resides, they go to a blog site like mine because a Google search brought them, or they received some form of a notification that I released a new blog post. Either way, they weren’t coming to my landing page; they were coming directly to a post I wrote that interested them or met a need they were looking for. So why spend time and money on blinging up my site? I did take some time to add a bit of colour to my site. I hope you like it. I didn’t want to go crazy with colour, but I also wanted something other than a stark white page to look at. Let me know what you think. I’m open to suggestions.
Why a New Domain?
This was a hard decision, to be honest. Over the years, I have tuned my SEO pretty good that I was getting some good traffic. It is not fantastic compared to friends of mine, but it is pretty decent. I was, and still am, concerned that changing my URL would result in a loss of traffic to my site. This remains to be seen, but I am hopeful you all will still like the content I write and will continue to visit my site. But what it came down to is that my domain prariedeveloper didn’t tell my story anymore. 12 years ago (ufda has it been that long?), when I was coming up with my site and my brand, my URL described exactly what I was. I lived in the prairies, I was a developer, and I wanted to share what I learned over the years. The URL made perfect sense and to be honest, it was kind of catchy. But I am not that person anymore. Do I still write code? At times, yes, though it is mostly PowerShell. But I am not purely a developer anymore. So, it was time for another change and now seemed like the perfect time to do it.
So, the next hard decision was what my URL should be. So I started in the same place that Joanne Klein and I did when we created Compliance Unplugged… ChatGPT. In the prompt, I put in what I was looking for, what I did now, and that I wanted to tie it to me, David Drever. It came up with some that I liked, such as:
- DreverDataGovernance.com
- DreverDataProtect.com
- ComplianceByDrever.com
None of these felt right. I also wasn’t sure if I wanted to go down this route again. Who knew what I was going to be doing in a couple of years? I could have a nervous breakdown and become a Gumologist (look it up. It’s a thing). The bottom line is, in five years, I may not be focusing on data security or compliance (though I hope I still am). So the only real result that changed with me, was me. Hence, to get to my site, you must go to daviddrever.com. This will allow me to change to my heart’s content, and my site can change with me. I’ve parked prairiedeveloper and will keep it for a few years at least so that URL will still work as the rest of the world comes over to the new domain, and the search engines get used to the new URL as well.
So I hope you didn’t mind reading my ramblings and thanks for sticking around. Now, back to your regular scheduled programming of Information Protection, Records Management, Data Governance, everything Microsoft 365, and really whatever I feel like writing about. As I said back when I first created my site, it’s my site and I’ll write what I want. I just hope there’s something there for everyone.
Thanks for reading!
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