The headline says it all, Linux-Tips has reached its two-year anniversary! Let me tell you, it has been a whole lot of work! Oh, man, has it been a lot of work. If you want another meta article, read on to appreciate the news with me!
A bit like Sisyphus, there’s always another article two write – and the boulder never reaches the top of the hill. As I finish one article, I’m already starting to consider what the next article will be.
But, I’ve had some help. Out of the 366 (this will make the total 367 published articles) posts, about 10 will have been from other people. I’m grateful for every single one of those. Man, am I grateful…
I suck at making images, or I’d make a celebratory image to show the joy of reaching this milestone. So, use your imagination and pretend I created such an image – and did a good job at it.
I’m aware that this is the 2nd meta article in a row.
I do not care. Nope. I care exactly none. I have none cares.
See the first article was:
The first article with real content came one day later (instead of the usual two days later) because it seemed like the thing to do at the time. It’s an article I’ve referenced a couple of times, but it never got much attention. I used it as the litmus test when checking to see if the site was being indexed in search engines. So, at least it served some purpose!
How To: Generate Sufficiently Complex Passwords In The Terminal
We’re older than two years, as there was an earlier site. That site still exists, but many articles will automatically redirect to here. That original site was the motivation to start this site. That site was the motivation to write a new article every other day. That site is:
Celebrating a Two-Year Anniversary!
Before starting this article, I did some checking…
The site’s articles total more than 270,000 words. That’s a whole lot of keyboard pounding! I regret nothing!
If you read 250 words per minute, it’d take more than 18 hours to read the entire site, from the first post to the last post! Good luck with that!
The site has shown millions of pages to hundreds of thousands of people. Only about 180 comments have been written, but that’s not bad for a site of this nature.
I don’t even want to guess how many hours I’ve invested in creating, maintaining, and curating this site. Depending on the article, we’re looking at about an hour as an average – counting research, writing, formatting, and editing. Things then get scheduled for automatic publication, ensuring I have a new article every other day.
That’s just the tip of the iceberg. The article gets shared and I deal with questions, suggestions, and general feedback. I pay attention to search engine optimization, doing my best to rank well in the search engines (I’ve given up on ranking at Bing). I also then pay attention to the ads, though that’s not all that tough. Most of you have blocked ads and not whitelisted my site. (Hint! Hint!)
Today, the site ranks near the top for a whole lot of search terms. Alas, they’re not the most popular search terms – but it’s nice to see the site in the top position for some words and phrases. It might seem like a small thing, but it’s big to me!
Man, if you only knew…
While the site looks nice and simple, there are a whole lot of changes between this and regular WordPress sites. (WordPress is the software that runs the site, which I use as a CMS more so than a blog.) For example, there are seventy-something plugins. Those all must be maintained.
Further, there are daily backups, a duplicated process with weekly updates being done in triplicate. Fortunately, those are processed more or less automatically, though I do sometimes need to test them to ensure they work. Those have to be monitored.
There’s always something that needs to be done and seldom is there enough time (and motivation). Still, I take a bit of pride in keeping my site secure – and keeping private any information you share with me. Heck, I probably pay even more attention to security because I am responsible for some of your private data.
Wow…
You know, I started this project not knowing where it would lead me. I don’t think I expected to make it two full years without missing a single publication date. I don’t think I expected to make it a full year. I also didn’t expect the results, and those results (including the feedback) are what seems to keep me motivated to keep this project going.
I complain about the cost, but it’s not too expensive. It’d be nice if it paid for its expenses, but that’s fine. I think you can be pretty sure that I’ll find a way to keep the site up and running, regardless of costs. Y’all chewed through a bunch of CDN bandwidth last month, but it looks like it’ll be cheaper this month.
Meh… It’s not too expensive, though this site consumes enough resources to warrant moving it to a VPS. Right now it’s still on shared hosting. I could probably find someone willing to sponsor the site (a hosting company) given that it’s all about Linux. I don’t think I’m going to bother doing so.
All-in-all, I think the majority of articles have done alright. Boy, have I whiffed on a few of them. Fortunately, someone’s always willing to chime in when I’ve made a mistake! (I’m very, very grateful when people do so and I try to make any necessary corrections promptly. I am not perfect, however.)
So…
Yeah…
That’s it… It’s been two ****in’ years! I’m as surprised by this as you are!
Closure:
I think I’ll have a glass of wine or three to celebrate the two-year anniversary. This isn’t the kind of article to bother optimizing for search engines, which is nice. I will kinda proofread it, though lately I’ve been cheating in that department and using Grammarly. That helps and has impacted my writing style – in a good way.
But, perhaps there’s an article in that? Some future articles, perhaps? LOL Maybe I should sign up as an affiliate and then write the article while using affiliate links?!? You never know. Heck, I don’t even know. So, if you did know, you should tell me so that I would know… That sounds reasonable!
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