1 Year-ish of Roethig Tech!

We’re coming up on the New Year.  Not just 2024, but Roethig Tech launched last January 9th, so we’re coming up on the site's first birthday.  For what I’ve wanted to do, it's been a very successful first year.  Seeing that I plan on having fun for NYE, I’m giving an update and announcing some changes.

My Metrics 

I’m going to say what nobody else on the web will say, I have no idea how many views have been and I haven’t tried to make a cent?  Because I don’t care about either.  Being non-commercial is the only way I can do what I want to do with my site.  This is not my job.  This is my passion.

As I said almost a year ago when I launched, when writing was my job, I was writing for someone else’s requirements and brand.  When I did the rumor roundups when I was with Geek Beat, I added snarky little disclaimers because I didn’t think we should have been doing those.  We did them because they did well in readership.  I did a ton of product announcement posts, again for money, but long-form analysis was what I enjoyed the most.  With The Tech Hangout, I was trying to recreate what I did for Geek Beat, but on zero budget.  It was a lot of work for no pay.  It was also something that a ton of others were doing more successfully. It ran its course about five years ago.

Now, I have no bosses, no partners, I’m giving my own opinion and I’m the happiest I’ve ever been writing.  I’m also the happiest I’ve ever been podcasting as a guest on shows like the Big and Mac Shows on the British Tech Network , In Touch with iOS, and Mac Voices Live.  I truly missed it after Deconstruct and The Tech Hangout ended.

Enough of that, let’s talk about what’s changing.

Changes for Roethig Tech

The first change you’ll notice at the top of this post.  It’s a brand-new Roethig Tech logo.  The YouTube Channel, which is the Tech Hangout rebranded still had a mix of the old show branding and a very rudimentary logo designed by me.  Thankfully AI logo generation is a thing now and Skynet’s easel did something I’m rather happy with.  It’ll stick around until I can pay something to do one that’s better.

The other change is the site itself.  I’m working with a friend of the show to move Roethig Tech from a blogger site to a hosted WordPress site.  I’ve encountered some problems, chiefly Meta not allowing me to post my links on Facebook, Instagram, or threads.  The other issue is Google.  We saw Google Domains be sold off.  They tend to jettison things that no longer fit with little warning.  I don’t want to find this site disappearing out of the blue.  Also, why I tend for this to still be a very simple site, WordPress is a lot more customizable than Blogger on the layout.  So the logo will actually appear on the new theme this time.  It also should correct the annoying error where the first paragraph is double-spaced.  Yes, I know about that one, but was unable to fix it.

I won’t commit to the new site launching on NYD, because I plan to make the end of 2023 rather fun, but I’m hoping to be live by the first anniversary on January 9th. 

Final Word

Thanks to everyone who read my posts during the last mostly year.  It means a lot.  Also, thank you for your support on social media, especially Mastodon.  This should be the last post of 2023 barring any unforeseen news, which is entirely possible the way December has gone.  Everyone have a fantastic New Year and I’ll see you on the flip side.