Yes, my self hosted blog turns 2!! 🙂 How has the journey been? (And, if you are wondering what is meant by “self-hosted”, just scroll down…)
Have there been only ups or only downs? Read more to know what I learnt or not…. 🙂 It has been an exciting and interesting journey and I wouldn’t trade it for anything in this world! It is almost like starting your own business but at maybe 1% of the effort or size.
Graduating from writing technical blogs and creating e-learning videos for different organizations to doing it for my own website has been fun! During my technical writing stint for different organizations, I wrote blogs or created the e-learning videos and each organization took care of the part that I was least interested in(digital marketing – ‘ugh!’)
Creating my self-hosted blog:
What is meant by “self-hosted” blog? In simple terms, I have a blog with a domain name without being tagged by the “wordpress.com” or “blogspot.com”(so, now it is “blogtech.online”) and I have to pay for it and can monetize it as well. Even though, I already had another free blog, ‘jayanthiweb.wordpress.com’, my self-hosted ‘blogtech.online‘ was my own space in the Internet.
Before, the blog went “live” I had a million questions. How would it work? What should I do first? What should I do next? Who was the best hosting provider? There were another gazillion questions in my head….and if you know me, you know I could ask a lot of questions to get my project started! 🙂 Special thanks to two people who helped me find all the answers and made my blog go “live”! 🙂
After all my questions were answered, I became the proud owner of a blog with a nice name that I thought reflected my blog’s writings at that time. I knew I would write about ‘Information security’. But I knew Information security alone could not sustain my blog – which is why I made it a ‘Technical blog sprinkled with personal thoughts” 🙂 I also had other interests like programming in Java,C and I knew my interests would meander even more with concepts like ‘Blockchain’ rocking the technical space…so the name ‘blogtech.online‘ stuck and it is 2 years since the day! 🙂
I knew that all blogs need varied content from different styles of writing. I did get a few writers to write for me and once in a while,my husband and my son always stepped in to fit the writing shoes! 🙂
Me and ‘digital marketing’ – a rough journey! 🙂
After starting my self-hosted blog, I realized I needed to do everything now. Free blogs are relatively easy – we just write and publish it to the community and you have tons of traffic. But my self-hosted blog was different… I was swimming on my own now.
I have had to head and do a “not-a-so deep dive” into digital marketing. I have learnt a bit of ‘digital marketing’ from my technical blog’s perspective. What was “theme”? What were the “plugins”? What was “organic traffic” and “bounce rate”? And analyzing Google Analytics was fun too!! 🙂 I learnt a little bit of the “digital marketing ocean” all by experience…they say “experience is the best teacher” – it is the “very” best teacher, I would say!
I cannot say I am a digital marketing nerd or anything remotely close to that, but it is good to learn it if you are anywhere in the Internet and want to be seen and heard! 🙂
Blogging communities:
For a self-hosted blog to survive, it is definitely necessary to be part of blogging communities. Thanks be to blogging communities like Indiblogger, Blogchatter and BlogAdda, I have made great online friends whom I have learnt a lot from. Thanks also to Twitter and all my Twitter friends without whom my blog would not rise steadily today!
So, what is the final report card?
I cannot say I have hit off the charts in Google search results, but my Alexa rank has finally dropped below the million mark! That itself, seems quite an achievement.. Interestingly, my Blockchain posts garnered more interest and attention than I thought! 🙂 (which is always good)
In the 2 years, I have blogged about Steganography, access control, physical security, the CIA triad, top-down approach to security, NIST publications, ransomware, single sign-on, deep web, dark web, zero-day vulnerability and more on the technical side…
To conclude, here are some of my best technical posts:
- Physical security
- Conflict resolution at work place(By: Mani Prithiviraj)
- Which is more secure SSL, TLS or HTTPS?
- What is “Dark Web?”
- What is ‘Ransomware?’
When I began writing 6 1/2 years ago, I did not know I would have so much to say! 🙂 But I did and I still do… Thanks for reading and continuing to support my blog!
Keep reading, keep commenting and warm wishes for an awesome 2019!