So, What’s The Point?

So, here you are!  What’s the point, might be the question in your mind!  Please, allow me a few moments of your time to explain.

Well to be honest, this blog in part owes it’s beginning to a whim! I was surfing the web one day when I began to be miffed about various website owners claiming to be making a bunch of money with Google’s ad publishing platform, Adsense.

Succumbing to my own internal aggravation, I decided, why not try ‘the making money with Adsense thing’ myself! Consequently, the domain name “TrieditMyself.com” was born.  Now, I wouldn’t say that this was a good reason to start a blog, since I never really made that much money from Google Adsense.  But hey, it is what it is!

Around the time of my aggravation driven epiphany I began dabbling with Open Source software with a couple of friends. We were also co-workers in the Telecom Industry at that time and we began experimenting with Open Source applications, such as Linux, Apache, MYSQL and PHP. Along with those, we also experimented with Content Management Systems such as PHP Groupware, Post Nuke, and Mambo.

Today there are scores of Open Source CMS applications available to almost anyone interested in experimenting with them, accessible with just a mouse click. Not only that, but today’s applications are built on top of a host of different frameworks, platforms and programming languages. It makes looking back to when they didn’t exist like looking back to when the Internet wasn’t much more than Hypertext and static web pages! But, this subject matter is for another post.

Let’s get back to my point. As I was saying, while experimenting with Open Source CMS software I kept hearing about this one application called “WordPress“. It was fast gaining Worldwide popularity as the go to application for launching your very own “Blog”. Feeling that vague sense of aggravation again, I decided, why not!  Give it a try!

So, I downloaded WordPress from WordPress.org, loaded it onto a web server, and pointed Trieditmyself.com to the web server.  Lo and behold, to my amazement I correctly configured the software to connect to its database and run through the install procedure!  I logged in and begin publishing my very first blog posts!

What amazed me was, one, I was able to do something on the Internet that I had never done before, publish my very first Blog! Two, as I continued to publish blog posts, I found myself communicating with and connecting with people from all over the world! I connected with people from the U.S., Canada, the U.K., Germany, Romania and Australia! I’ll never forget receiving the first comment on one of my blog posts. When I saw it I thought someone had hacked my website and attempted to post something without my knowledge or approval! It was a comment on one of your posts, silly!

Three, I did this without really knowing what the heck I was doing! Well, that’s not entirely true. I had enough of a working knowledge of a web server to FTP computer files to the correct directory structure on the server’s hard drive so they could be served to anyone anywhere on the Internet who requested them.

And four, this elegant piece of software was and is freely available for anyone to download and make their own! Anyone anywhere could have their very own web presence on the Internet, and that with just a little bit of effort! I could not believe that software of this caliber was free to download and use! This was the beginning of my admiration of and appreciation for Open Source software and Open Source ideals!

So, What’s the point?

Open Source software, WordPress in particular, makes it possible for anyone to have a presence and a voice on the Internet! Because of Open Source software this World Class opportunity is made vastly abundant! To appropriate it, all anyone has to do is willingly explore and experiment in the realm that is Open Source! It is literally at your finger tips, only a mouse click away!

TriedItMyself.com may have begun on a whim! But, it has exposed me to something so vast, so valuable that trying to measure its worth can only be described as a daunting, herculean task!

It is my hope that once again people from everywhere will connect with me here on this little corner of the Internet to share in the discussions about the things that I have tried that bring enjoyment and value to me. I do this in the hope that they will bring enjoyment and value to you also!