I haven’t been posting as frequently lately, and with good reason:  I’ve been busy.  Work has picked up with new projects (including some interesting SF.com work), I’ve had a ton of stuff going on in the offline world, and I’ve been studying.  I’ve been preparing for the developer, consultant, and advanced administrator exams.  Stay tuned, you can expect some materials in the not too distant future.

Migrating from WordPress.com to a self-hosted solution was surprisingly easy.  I purchased the domain previously through a provider, the process is likely more complicated if you purchased a domain directly through WordPress.

1. Add a hosting package to your domain (usually 5-10$/mo).
2. Export your WordPress.com blog.
3. Change nameservers on the domain to your web host.
4. Install WordPress on your web host.
5. Import the file created in step #2 into your newly hosted blog.

I set up a hosts file entry on my local pc so that I could access and configure the site completely before the nameserver changes made the site live to the rest of the world.

That’s it for now!  Cheers,

John

[one quick edit: make sure to edit your permalinks after you install WordPress to match the style used on WordPress.com]

Through the downtime in the last few weeks I’ve been able to find the time to work on the site.  The updates shortlist:

• New theme
• Added articles feed (my google reader salesforce tagged items)
• Added tags to past post
• Changed sizing of certain graphics and reposted some graphics for consistency
• Added sites to blogroll (pretty much the article feed)
• Updated certifications table
• Published feeds through feedburner (removes weird formatting issues in Google Reader)

That’s about it for now.  Happy New Year everyone!

I spent some time digging through the various certification materials, and it seems I was mistaken about the advanced administrator exam: it does not require code knowledge.  I will definitely pursue that one in the future.  I’ve posted a table here outlining the different certifications.  I have also gotten several requests to update site content for the existing administrator exam outline so look for some new content this week.  Thanks to everyone for the positive feedback so far on the site.

I did a minor site overhaul today, which will hopefully make things easier to view.  This is my fist blog so I haven’t hacked it to bit yet.

I’ve decided that I am going to take the exam this month.  This means I’m going to have to pick up the pace, and really dedicate some energy to getting results.

This means a change in site focus.

Short term:  pass-the-exam style info, presented a la carte – lists, facts, gotchas (will probably still follow the outline)

Long term:  in depth information, practice exams, product reviews/experiences, tips n tricks, links to other sites (or just my sf rss google reader feed)

No promises but I should have some good stuff up soon!