From time to time, you may notice that this blog isn’t working, or something is messed up, or you see an error message. One of the reasons I decided to setup this blog rather than using something like blogger, wordpress.com, etc., was to muck about with the bits and pieces from time to time. I find tweaking PHP code, looking at new plugins and editing themes to be a nice break from drafting 50 page master procurement agreements. In fact, I would have liked to do everything from the ground up (i.e. set up the box, linux, apache, mysql, php, etc.) but these days hosting service providers make the proposition of setting that up much less attractive. I figured taking care of some (but not all) of the bits and pieces would satisfy my tweaking desires. And let me keep somewhat acquainted with such things. Of course, not being an elite hacker inevitably leads to things that break from time to time.
Switched to WP Engine. Their service was too amazing to resist. I realized that I didn’t have time to do everything, after trying out Linode (great service, by the way).
Anyway, the great (and for the most part free) software and other stuff used to create techblawg.ca:
- WordPress – amazingly great and overall very, very cool blogging software
- Theme – Responsive by CyberChimps
- MySQL – the stunning database engine that will one day take over the entire world, but which in the meantime serves as the back-end database storing all the bits and pieces for WordPress
- PHP – the remarkably versatile scripting language that WordPress uses
- Plugins – a whole bunch of little individual bits of code that plugin to WordPress to extend functionality in a million different ways. There is a long, long, long list of different plugins used on techblawg so for the time being I won’t be listing them all out here
Without the work and dedication of all the folks who created the tools listed above and made them freely available, many blogs (indeed, many sites) would simply not be in existence as it would have otherwise not been practical to create them. I guess this is the exact opposite of the tragedy of the commons.
Other things that power this blog are myself, David Ma, and huge quantities of coffee. Hope you enjoy it.
