First blog entry — what I hope to accomplish

A new endeavor, I am excited to blog about my interests in health and technology. Early blogs will focus on Ubuntu functionality.

The world of information is being consolidated into a select few mega-corporations. I have nothing against them in particular. I admit I still use them quite regularly. But to the extent that I can control it, I would rather pay for my own information storage. I still like the idea of Big Brother as fiction rather than reality.

But I also want to be paid for my time developing this blog site. So this will be advertisement driven. Which will require interfacing with companies like Google, Microsoft and Amazon.

I have laid out a roadmap for developing this site. The first step was to launch my first blog (which you are reading). The next steps will be explored further below.

• Why not Wordpress or other CMS?
• Set up Google Ad Sense
• Fluid or responsive CSS layout
• Secure the site even more via CSP, headers, etc.
• Develop script for blog management
• Submit more blog entries!!

Why not Wordpress or CMS?

If you have looked under the hood of my site, you notice that this is all custom written code. I have not used a Content Management System to manage my blog. The most popular CMS is Wordpress.

The main reason behind this is bloatware and cost. I wanted to minimize monthly expenditure to maximize any money I may get from ads. There are many free plug-ins for Wordpress. But the most useful are generally of the free-to-start variety. This means you get to use basic features of the plugin, but need to pay for the really useful stuff. I admit there is huge upfront cost to doing it all myself. But I’m okay with that.

The other reason is site security. Several years back W3C launched CSP to improve security of web browsing. However, I noticed that it is almost impossible to implement CSP with Wordpress. More on this below.

Set up Google Ad Sense Amazon Associates Ads

I had previously set up a private blog site on helping family and friends with basic tech troubleshooting questions. I never updated it, never released it to the public and it never made money.

I want to collect all the notes I have over the years of dabbling in this space, and see if people find their way here. With the time I have spent creating my cloud servers, I hope to see how much I can make from it.

The simplest, it seems, is by incorporating Google Ad Sense Amazon Associates Ads into my site. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases. I looked into alternatives. There are plenty out there (maybe a blog on this in the future). But I chose the big mamma of them all.

I may return to Google Ad Sense in the future. But for now, they kept saying I was not in compliance with their service agreement. I think it has to do with such a young blog site. Maybe after I've posted other blog entries, I'll retry.

Fluid or responsive CSS layout (completed)

The current original site was a lrge-screen max-width layout only. I will likely have two other layouts for other devices that may come across my site.

For small screens like cell phones, it will be a one column design with an ad banner at the bottom and other ads spaced throughout the blog.

For screen sizes in between, it will likely be a two-column model with content on the left and ads on the right.

These latter two layouts will have to be fluid or responsive. What this means is the layout changes to fit the size of the screen. I will have to play around with CSS, JavaScript and jQuery to get this done.

Secure the site even more via CSP, headers, etc.

As alluded to above, the idea of information security is very important to me. I want to minimize security risk that balances active involvement with risk of attack.

There are many paid and free customizable tools out there. I want to minimize cost, of course. But I also don’t want to spend hours daily developing and maintaining my servers.

And so I’ll use common best-practices out there for securing the site. Content security policy is one method. The world web web governing body (W3C) introduced this security standard in 2012. Ultimately, it’s about trust. The web developer has to explicitly decide which code should be trusted by the browser. Otherwise, the browser will block it. The most common code affected are CSS (which formats the content on the browser) and scripts (like JavaScript and jQuery). Malicious content can be injected from third parties, and this is a way to counter that attack.

Server headers can also help lock down the web site.

Develop script for blog management

A Content Management System is necessary for blog management. Because I’m not using proprietary CMS’ like Wordpress, I will have to make a custom system specifically for my needs. It will likely run via Bash maybe PHP with regular cron jobs to ensure site integrity.

Submit more blog entries!!

And of course I need to add content. The first few blogs will be about server operating systems and which I have used. The most common by far is Ubuntu, also some in RaspberryPi, and before that Windows Server. I have developed my own cloud based VPN, DNS, email, document storage and office applications. It’s just a matter of collecting my notes and getting them on here.

Down the road, I also want to include some health blogs as well.

You may be wondering what I do regularly. I don’t work in tech. But I’ve always dabbled since I was a kid in the 1980’s. I’m a physician who treats spinal pains and work in Seattle and Tacoma. You can read more about my medical practice at drsueno.com.

How much time I have when not doing my first job, will determine how much I can work on my plans above. I may work on them piecemeal. I may launch them in a different order. I may add more tasks (very likely) or maybe remove tasks. Or maybe this will be my one and only entry. But I truly hope not.

I hope you stick around and are patient with me.

Salamat!