My aim for this blog is…..
“To ensure all visitors are provided with a valuable, enjoyable and quality experience”
I feel so strongly about this that I have invested (and continue to invest) my own personal money, in order to achieve it.
To deliver a quality web experience does require a wee smidgen of deliberate planning, a strategy if you will, and a reasonable amount of technology investment.
I use a variety of technology to enrich the experience of visitors and improve the quality(hopefully) of content that I produce and deliver. Below you will find a list of tools that I personally use and recommend you to use, if you are serious about blogging, quality content creation and providing a valuable experience to your readers.
In the interest of transparency please note that some of the links below are affiliate links, meaning I receive a small amount should you choose to make a purchase. All of which is invested right back into the blog and forum only, thereby continuing to enrich the visitor and community experience even further. Splendid…….
WestHost Hosting
Note that currently only the SQL Community Forum is hosted with WestHost as I’m now using WPEngine, a dedicated WordPress host for the blog site.
Moving to WestHost was one for the best decisions I have made for hosting. The performance of my website and particularly the initial connection response, improved dramatically when I moved away from “Slow Daddy”.
I’ve been particularly impressed with their support service, which I’ve used for both trivial and some more obscure troubleshooting needs. You actually get to speak with someone who is a technology professional (like you and me) and who can work WITH you to solve your support query, rather than point you to a knowledge base article or read from a script to you.
On one occasion I was having an issue whereby the SQL Community Forum was not permitting posts if more than 3 links were included. Weird right. I had an inclination that it was an Apache security configuration that was causing this behaviour but technically I was out of my depth. A WestHost support representative responded to me personally on email and then worked through the issue, including test validation of the fix. That level of support skill and customer service quality is just unheard of in hosting circles but it just comes as standard with WestHost.
I know WordPress hosting can be painful when it really shouldn’t be. If you’re looking for a quality hosting provider WestHost are an excellent choice for your average blog. Great value, great performance, outstanding support.
If you’re looking for a premium dedicated WordPress hosting experience and demand exceptional performance levels for your site then you may wish to look at WPEngine.
Aweber Email Broadcasting
With over 7000 subscribers to my email updates, a professional, reliable and affordable email service is essential. That’s why I use Aweber.
The plethora of features within the service effortlessly take care of email newsletter delivery, subscriber management and validation, broadcasting the blog RSS feed, handling the automated delivery of my free ebook DBA JumpStart and much more.
Let’s not forget the easy to use design editor and the large number of email templates available for use, which combined give my emails their professional and branded look & feel.
If I were not using Aweber I would simply be unable to provide many of the blog’s services and ultimately I wouldn’t be able to share content to reach and help others.
My advice, don’t waste your time with MailChimp. Sure they offer a free email service up to 2,000 subscribers or 12,000 emails (whichever limit you hit first) but once you start paying and you will much sooner than you think, it’s actually more expensive than using Aweber. Of course you can’t just simply transfer to another email service without re-validating your email subscriber list, meaning you’d loose some during the transfer process. Save yourself a lot of pain and effort by using a quality email service to start with, go with Aweber.
The first month with Aweber is just $1 so in the highly unlikely event you do change you mind it won’t be a costly choice.
Blogging Platform and Technology Stack
- Hosting Provider – WestHost
- Blogging Platform – WordPress
- WordPress Theme – Genesis Framework using the Metro Theme
- Content Delivery Network (CDN) – MaxCDN
- Email Management and Delivery – Aweber