side3’s super-neato posterous land

FAIL!

This morning I was going through one of my Wordpress installs and I noticed that it was painfully slow working through some posts.

A few months back I setup a plugin to manage my WP database and decided to take a look at what it was doing.

Nothing...

Apparently, the plugin was broken but still running. I'm sure that it was something I had done to make it less effective (since the plugin author has some major skills) but the fact is.. the plugin that was backing up and optimizing my Wordpress database had gone the way of the epic fail and I had no idea.

So here I am the author of a post on tips for speeding up your wordpress install and the friend of WP-ninja (aka WP-Diddy or @human3rror) who also wrote a post about performance enhancements for wordpress.

Which advice did I follow?

Half of each article... Maybe.. and I was fully dependent on a plugin.

Anyway, I went back through the site this morning and performed some tasks and voila! (I knew that French would come in handy) major speedyupidness to the site.

So like the cobbler's kids who have no shoes I was the web guy with the slow website and no backup.

I'm glad the performance issues brought this to my attention before something worse happened.

"What's in a name? That which we call a rose
 By any other name would smell as sweet." - Billy S.

I looked back on a twitter account I had setup in 2007 realized I had made one twitter entry and then never used it again.  I didn't get it. 

Perhaps, it was because there really wasn't anyone else was out there, or perhaps it was I didn't know what to say but it just kind of sat there.

In late '07 early '08 I started a blog called lightvox to share with people my love of music as ministry. As I started to scour the internet for information to pull together, I had noticed that a number of the artists that I enjoyed listening to had twitter accounts. I decided to create a new one called @lightvox to be able to follow along and provide "breaking news" from the Christian music industry. 

This led to a whole new identity for me but it was only a part of who I am. 

My twitter friends grew to some amazing people working in design, music, ministry and other random walks of life. Because of my @replies, recommendations of others or just randomness of my twitters, people found me and added me.

Now I am no twitter rockstar by any means, but as I was reading a blog post by someone that I follow (@maurilio) I realized that I was limiting my online identity to just one aspect of my life (an important part of my life) but limited just the same.  

My online identity is the closest to the sum total of whom I am. I share thoughts, pictures, video as an ever-growing collage of, well, me. My online friends, people whom I've only met throught my online persona, often say to me "I feel like I really know you." And, if they follow me on Twitter or Facebook, they probably do. Some might feel I share too much personal information, while others appreciate my transparency. However, my personal brand continues to grow and get exposure to people all over the globe. I could have been "Brazilio" or "LatinMan" if I were using the web for nefarious reasons. - Maurilio Amorim 

This post with some additional feedback from some other friends led me to change my @lightvox to @side3 (side3 being a nickname I have had for many years and also the name of my design firm)

I was a little nervous on the impact of changing a name that people knew, had recommended to others and was associated with all my online profiles but I think it is going to be a change for the better.

So with some additional advice from a posterous alltop member, I created this posterous blog to be the conduit, a personal space that links me the person, to my vocation and my passions and I am hoping that you will find this helpful.

Of course... I will still be posting the randomness of things like "Why my wife gets embarrassed when we go shopping in Target" but now, it may not seem as out of place to new people visiting Lightvox.com for information on the Christian music industry.

Thanks for your reading time, 

- Christopher (@side3)