I set this blog up a couple years ago back when I was working in a "real" job for somebody else. It was essentially a dumping ground for useful tidbits I came across when I was too lazy to bookmark anything. As a result, it's all a bit of a mess - particularly the earlier "posts". Don't get me wrong, WordPress is alright for a basic blog, it's served me pretty well at least. Probably the main thing that's delayed moving before is the site stats. They're only basic, but it's nice to have Top Posts and the number of views/day for the last couple of weeks right there in the dashboard. Guess I'll have to make better use of Google Analytics...
So I've just finished installing Disqus for comments which is the first step to moving away from both WordPress and Pagodabox. Where will I be moving to? Wardrobe CMS, being developed by @ericlbarnes, is a very strong contender for the blog side of things. It's a nice, clean, markdown-based blog system built on Laravel (with the aid of Coffeescript) - so the code is clean too. I only started looking into it properly yesterday and I've already contributed a fix for Gravatars. That's the key reason for moving away from WordPress - it "does the job", but barely. The code is terrible and I have absolutely no intentions of re-learning WordPress' internals. Nor do/will I use it as a tool in my development arsenal, so it makes no sense using it on my site.
As for hosting? Probably Amazon EC2 or that host everyone was talking about that I've forgotten the name of. Was it Digital Ocean? Perhaps. But I digress: comments should be migrated to Disqus some time over the next 24 hours. If you're wondering where they've gone, it's fine - they're just in limbo. Laracon EU is under a week away so maybe if I can get everything sorted before then I can actually start writing some decent, relevant stuff. Any articles I have written previously tended to be more of a quick tip than an actual article that was worth reading. I'd really like to get into more informational type stuff, maybe more tutorial-type posts like Using Blade in CI (although I don't use CI now, and haven't for a long time).
Well, we'll see. I've never been one to write a diary so whatever happens, you don't have to worry about what I'm having for tea on any given night. With Laracon EU right around the corner I'll hopefully be learning a heck of a lot in an awfully short time period, so you never know! Assuming anyone actually reads this, I'll end with a question: What do you want to see here in the future?
Oh and one last thing. I've also got the challenge of possibly turning this into a more "work-oriented" site in the future. It's been over a year since I left the drag of full-time employment and I still have nowhere to send people when they ask the inevitable "Do you have any projects you can show us?" - that needs to change. Haven't got a clue yet how I'll go about such change, but let's take this one step at a time.