Making a hosting decision

This post is the start of something new

Earlier today, it seemed like a good idea to abandon my primary self-hosted WordPress instance and convert that domain over to the Substack platform. Starting the content journey anew was a choice that had to be made. Making the switch was pretty easy and involved just a couple of DNS changes and some configuration. Content production, however, will remain the main question of this new enterprise of daily writing. I had considered whether building a new Substack was the right way forward if I was intending to publish weblog-style functional journal posts on a daily basis. It may not really end up being a daily publishing cadence, but that is my intention at this moment. Within this new framework, each post will need a title and potentially a sub-title followed by some content for the actual post. That actual post starts with the basic prompt of “Start writing…” and that really should be enough to kickstart the process. Kickstarting the writing process is the way. It’s the way forward. Don’t discount the start of the process as being critical.

At this point in the grand writing journey, each post will just be written in the Pages word processing application and edited using the exceedingly interesting Proofread feature. That will pretty much be the basics of how content is created and ultimately pushed out using the technology stack that is Substack. Right now, everything is just hosted within this new instance, but the custom domain part of the whole equation is propagating. Apparently, it may very well take up to 36 hours for the process to be fully complete. I’m going to get an email letting me know the change has happened and been verified. You, of course, can figure out where you are in the process by just noting if the domain name is mine or still includes Substack. That is pretty much the test of it and everything you need to know about the now pending change. We entered some in-between point where the redirect to Substack is in place, but the technology stack that implements the change within the Substack system is not completing the redirection.

During the course of working on this hosting update tonight, I watched the ESPN-branded over-the-air broadcast of the NBA finals on ABC. At this very moment, less than 5 minutes are left in the 4th quarter. It’s nice to be able to watch the game using an antenna plugged into the television. That is way better than needing a streaming subscription of some sort to enjoy the content. Right now, it looks like the series is about to be tied up at 1-1, and that could foreshadow a highly competitive finals. Maybe the series will end up going 7 games. I’m not really rooting for either of the teams, and more basketball to watch is better at this point. Yep, the series is now tied at 1-1, and I’m still waiting on the automation to finish up transferring the domain. Based on the 36-hour timeline, the change may not go into effect today. Hopefully, it will be complete before the hockey game tomorrow. We will see how that goes. Only time will tell where we end up.