Goals for the first half of 2018

Sriram S
Self Improvement
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A very happy new year to the readers of my blogs. It is time for the semi-annual update about my blogging and learning goals. And I must say there are some interesting goals that I conjuring up for myself.

Status of 2017 second half goals

I had set a goal to write 3 blogs in the second half of 2017 without specifically talking about what those blogs were. The reason was that I was experimenting with technologies like Docker and Cassandra. So I could plan specific topics related to these upfront.

  • Score: 5/10
  • Status: In the end, I wrote two blogs about Docker. For 2 out of a goal 3 should fetch me better score, I really feel I could have written one more blog. I was split between going further deeper in Docker related to technologies or skim the surface of several other technologies. Eventually I have decided to go breadth-first for reasons best known to me.

Goals for first half of 2018

For the first half of 2018 I plan to write couple of blogs at most. This will allow me to spend time on cleaning up my existing blogs - a long overdue task. Since I need to spend more time on a critical activity, I have not planned for specific topics as yet.

The main goal can be summarized as Blog rationalization. And I will describe what I am planning to do. Currently I have two blogs one active and the other dead for all practical purposes. These blogs are hosted through a paid account at a Web Hosting provider but I also use Google services to host my mail for the same domains. The goal is to consolidate and also explore newer options to host my blogs.

Blog Rationalization Plan

  1. My personal blog at www.srirams.org is in a moribund state. I have hardly blogged at a personal level and I strongly feel that Facebook is a better medium for personal posts.
    • I will be shutting this blog down very soon.
  2. My old technical blog is quite active. In fact some of the blogs appear at the top in Google search. The interesting aspect about this domain is that the blogs are hosted on a Hosting provider platform but my mails are managed using Google Suite (GSuite) for Business. The GSuite includes applications like Google Sites that can be used for blogging. Though not a ideal replacement for WordPress blog platform (that I use today), GSuite meets most of my needs as a solo and relatively infrequent blogger. Another alternative to using GSuite is to use a paid account at WordPress.com.
    • To reduce account management overheads (security, SW updates, passwords) I want to migrate to GSuite Sites or WordPress.com based blogs. I already have GSuite paid account so WordPress.com will incur additional cost.
    • Migration to GSuite will require considerable work since I need to migrate all the existing links. It will be a time consuming process and something I am determined to do. I also need to be careful about the loss of functionality in this migration.
    • I have paid my Web Hosting provider for 1 more year - so I do have some time but the migration of blogs, their URLs without impacting search ranking needs to be carefully done.
    • Overall the goal is clear - get away from my Web Hosting provider. And this requires regular weekend work, reading and execution.
  3. The final aspect of the Blog rationalization is to start blogging on LinkedIn. I have been blogging about technical topics whereas my work experience is more on the managerial side. Moreover writing about non-technical yet professional topics will challenge my writing skills more. I will be posting about this on my LinkedIn account soon.

Conclusion - as you can see I am trying to consolidate the various online blogging platforms and align them to meet my future plans. You can really help me by sharing ideas and suggestions about Medium, other online blogging platforms etc. Or sharing tools that will help me with the rationalization.