Problem is, I don’t plan very often. I too look and feel human, and like the Cylons I do have a plan, but mine is a recent one.
I’ve been writing personal sites since 1996 or something, but I never imagined a website as my main source of income. Big mistake. Should’ve done it a long time ago.
My personal site turned Generic-blog, www.carloscardoso.com, exists since 1996, but it never took off, even during a time when it was running PHPNuke and franticly updated many times a day.
Why? Because it was closed in itself. No community sense, I never visited other sites and never left comments on other blogs, either.
When I started my World Conquer Plan, it was imperative to be aware of my past failures. I understood that good content is not enough, one needs networking. Not in a bad sense, but real networking, making others aware of your existence. Don’t need to beg for links, they’ll happen.
My plan involved commenting on lots of blogs, always posting wise and reasonable comments. It worked.
Of course that was only the beginning. There’s more, much more.
For now Bluehost is great and fulfills all my hosting needs, but I’ll sooner or later need a dedicated server. As a good planner I already know a few places to order one and how much it’ll cost.
I do plan for future growth too. I know I’ll reach a point where updated will be mandatory, and I can’t take care of a website with a few dozen thousand users / day AND provide content at the same time.
It’s simply not possible; the user-related work will overgrow the content-creation work.
So, in a foreseeable future I’ll hire a Sysadmin. On a perfect world I would hire Simon, the Bastard Operator from Hell.
Part of the BOFH’s functions will be:
- Keep all the softwares updated
- Check and update all Wordpress’ plugins
- Perform and download daily backups
- Find and technically evaluate new plugins
- Update the templates to reflect new plugins and/or solicited canges.
- Test the blog on 5 or 6 browsers and resolutions, identify problems and.. Solve them.
If I don’t plan ahead, I’ll find myself buried in paperwork, and that’s exactly what I don’t want to. If you think your blog is too small for planning that far, and that you’ll never have such expenses as Sysadmins or dedicated servers, you’re probably right. Small thinking always lead to small achievements.