Yesterday I declared my blog reopen for blogness and today I republished all of my old posts. Last year I removed a lot of posts as I wanted to depersonalise my blog. I decided to put them back today for 2 reasons:
A. To restore any broken links on the site
B. To see how much extra traffic I pull in through the extra posts

photo credit: ShironekoEuro

The traffic on this blog was growing steadily last year until I stopped posting. Although I'm not too worried about traffic on here, it's just an experimental thing to see how many extra hits the site gets over the next month after fixing broken links and by re-publishing old content.

I recently completed my PGCE in Secondary ICT and I am now a qualified teacher. Due to the commitments of the PGCE course, I didn't have time to commit to blogging over the last 10 months. I have however, spent some time blogging on theleavingcert.com (a site I partnered up on with Sean MacEntee last Summer). Recently myself and Sean purchased a second leaving cert related site (leaving-cert.net) so I'll be dedicating some time to both those sites over the Summer months.

photo credit: mag3737

I may also do a complete re-design on the theme for my blog if I get the time and relaunch some sites that I'm currently involved with. Hopefully I'll get back to a regular blogging schedule too, to keep all 3 of my readers happy

I've wanted to switch this blog across from the current Windows hosting solution to my Linux hosting account for a while now. I thought this was going to be a nightmare but it went really smooth (i think) and took less than an hour. For anyone look to do the same here's what I did:

1. Backed up all my wordpress files currently saved on my windows hosting account. To do this I just FTP'd the entire root folder that included all of the wp-content themes and plugins as well as any image and resource files that I linked to.

2. Backed up the database stored on my windows server. To do this I followed the Wordpress Codex doc on Backing up your database. Really easy to follow. I downloaded the .sql file to my hard disc.

3. Switched my website hosting from Windows (IIS) server to Apache (Website) from within the control panel that links to both my Windows and Linux hosting packages. The switch took about 5 minutes. This left with with a blank webspace on my linux server.

4. Uploaded the latest version of Wordpress (2.9.2) to my linux web space.

5. Set up a new database on the linux server.

6. Edited wp-config.php in the root of my Wordpress installation to point to the new database settings and also uploaded a .htaccess file to the root of my wordpress installation.

7. Used the Famous 5 minute install from Wordpress to install Wordpress on my Linux webspace. I then had a blank installation of Wordpress with the default Kubrick theme.

8. I uploaded all the wp-content files (themes, plugins etc.) from step one into the new installation.

9. I then imported the original database that I downloaded in step 2 using the restoring your database guide from Wordpress Codex. I was slightly confused as to how this would work before I done it as I did not keep the same name and settings for the new database on the linux server. This didn't cause any problems though and it simply imports data into the new database from the old one.

That was it. Simple and a hundred times more painless than I thought. As far as I can see everything is working perfectly. I don't know if it will have any effect on rankings in Google but I wouldn't think so. All in all I would say the site was only down for about 10 to 15 minutes so I'd be a lot more confident about doing this next time. Hopefully I won't have to do it again though as my reason for switching is that my Windows hosting solution is due shortly and I am not going to renew it as it's easier to have everything stored on Linux.

That's all for now...

Update : 6th of April 2010 : I had said that the switch was seemless but I did notice a problem with the sitemap.xml and sitemap.xml.gz files associated with the all in one Seo plugin for Wordpress. Any new posts such as this one were not being written to the sitemap files. I corrected this by CHMODing the files to make them writeable.

I had an email today from Barry (have a look at Barry's personal site to see some of the projects he's involved in) about the caricature image I created for my header. I created the cartoon image of myself using befunky.com. BeFunky.com allows you to transform any image into multiple styles of artwork with the click of a button. There's no need to download any application as everything is done online and it's also done very quickly!

photo credit: Drew and Didi

After I created the cartoon image of myself I edited it in Photoshop to create the desired effects and also split the image into 2 pieces one for my header and one for my hand clasping over my nav bar.

What I've done is by no means brilliant but with a bit more work on Photoshop I'm sure you could come up with something very good. I did follow some youtube tutorials on creating a caricature image of myself but none of the outcomes looked anywhere near what I was able to produce using BeFunky.com in a couple of minutes.

It's great to get someone asking about something relating to something on my blog or indeed get any kind of feedback, as at least I know someone is having a look about on here

Updated: See a more in depth post on using be funky here.

I'm starting college one week from today on the 7th of September. The course I'll be doing is a PGCE in ICT (Post Graduate Certificate in Education in Information Communications and Technology) at Edgehill University in Ormskirk just outside of Liverpool. So I'm making the big move over to the UK on Wednesday. The course runs from September to June and includes 3 different placements in schools were I'll be getting teaching practice and at the end of the year I'll become a qualified teacher.

photo credit: wouter_kersbergen

As I mentioned, I've was away in Liverpool before and this was for a interview to teach maths (this course was also at Edgehill). I received an offer for the maths course but only for entry in September 2010. I was told to brush up on my subject knowledge over the next year. I was happy to be accepted but becoming a teacher has been on my mind for years and I finally decided that now was the time to do it. Having to wait another year was not an option in the times that's in it so I re-applied and went for ICT.

photo credit: solofotones

I returned to Liverpool for the second time and was successful in gaining entry for the ICT course in 2009. It's probably worked out as a blessing in disguise as I'm much better equipped to teach ICT than maths. I selected maths initially as it's one of the core subjects on the curriculum, couple with the fact that I really like maths, I wanted to challenge myself to teach it. As I say though I have a feeling that everything has worked out as it should have. Although it's all a bit rushed; I've only known that I've been accepted on to the course for a couple of weeks. I'm really looking forward to making the move and getting stuck in to the course.

photo credit: jnxyz

I'm not alone, my girlfriend has also been accepted on to the course and will be making the move with me We have worked in 3 jobs together since 2005 so we're used to helping each other out. A lot of people might see this as a bad thing but we've worked on the same projects right at the next desk. We moved to Microsoft and worked on different projects but worked on the same floor. We then worked in an office with 20 people were everyone was quite close knit and we've never had a problem (apart from the odd wee disagreement, which probably would have happened even if we worked in different jobs anyway ) The course itself if meant to be really tough so it'll be nice having my best friend there with me to help me along every day

photo credit: derek*b

I've decided that I will be blogging about my PGCE course as it helps to structure the workload and it'll act as a diary of my experiences throughout the year to help track my progress. I already have another domain name that I'll be using to blog about my PGCE and won't be blogging on here about it (I'll post a link to the site when I get it up and running for anyone that wants to track my progress). I've had a look around and a lot of trainee teachers started off with blogs at the beginning of the year and they disappeared very quickly. From talking to people that have completed the PGCE course it's understandable, such is the demands placed on trainees over the year. A friend of mine said that she was basically working on the course from 7.30 in the morning to midnight Monday to Friday and about 6 hours on Saturday over the last few months of the course, so it won't be easy! With Lucky.ie, a really challenging course and another blog to track my PGCE I hope I can keep everything going and that I'm still able to keep this blog alive!

photo credit: totalAldo

Lucky.ie has been a massive success in the first month so that will take priority over this blog if need be. My PGCE blog is not essential but if you've tried blogging before you know how much it helps so I'll be working hard to try to track my experience as regularly as possible. That's all for now, if you don't hear more from me over the next week or two you'll know why. I will be back though!