Making Plans to Reboot My Blog

Here I go again. This feels both familiar and strange, all at once.

A little bit of backstory to start. In November 2022, my Facebook account was hacked. I know exactly when it began, as I had a strange “you must change your password” message. My Facebook account and my Instagram account were linked together, and whatever they did once they got inside was so bad, Meta would not give me my account back. At all. I tried everything short of working with a lawyer on it.

What a nightmare. My Facebook account was 16 years old at that point. My Instagram account was 12 years old. If you look at my decline in posting on this blog, it aligns with those time periods.

I have found the silver lining in it all, as it has been nice to have a fresh start. It is like moving houses, you don’t notice what all you have until you have to pack it up and find a place for it in your new home.

The only part that still bothers me is all the content that I gave Meta that is now just … GONE. From articles or quotes I found interesting to entire lengthy posts that really belonged on a blog. Photos from Instagram. Comments from friends. Gone.

The irony of all of this is that when I published my book in 2015, I talked about building on the land that you own – but I was not doing that myself.

Lesson learned.

My purpose here now is mostly selfish. Much like in the original days of blogging, actually. I want to write about what I think about, in a space where I know it will be here later. Probably. (Note to self: another post needs to be written about how none of us really own anything we put online, but not yet. No need to scare people completely.)

I want to use it like a Commonplace book, where I can reference and find things as I need them.

It will also function as a journal, a diary, a photo album. A place to put a good quote. A place to just keep my thoughts.

Here is my to do list as I get this site ready – in the form of links to articles and videos.

Commonplace Books, PARA Method, and a Second Brain

• Oscar Wilde and How He Kept His Commonplace Book: Insights on how to approach a Commonplace Book – and in a way, my foundation of what I want to do with this website.
• Beginner Commonplace Notebook Setup & Organization: Table of Contents? Categories? Well, that sounds a lot like Tags & Categories on my blog. I need to clean up the Categories here.
• Tiago Forte: Organize Your Digital Life with the PARA Method: I’ve followed Tiago’s work for some time. We will be discussing this.
• Index – The Easy Lookup for Information in Your Commonplace Book: More inspiration for indexing this content.
• How to Remember Everything You Learn: Part of what is driving me to build upo this site? THIS. My memory seems to be terrible lately.
• How To Keep a Commonplace Book of Wisdom: A way to hold on to Wisdom. Focus in on collections to understand diaries, journals, and more.
• My Box of Inspiration! How to Create a Commonplace Book: Another way to track what you’re thinking, using notecards. Help you synthesis and coordinate what you learn. These notecards remind me of when we did research papers in junior high.
• A Commonplace Book Will Revolutionize Your Life: This video just makes me excited about what I’m doing here.
• What’s In My Commonplace Book? – 2023 Edition: Using the Remarkable 2 for a Commonplace Book, similar to my Blog goal.

Productivity

• How to Stay Focused and Get Things Done: There are a lot of things to do on this list, and I need to set myself up for success and getting it all done.
• How to Fall in Love with Your Planner: Great ideas, but wow. I don’t want my planner to be a scrapbook. No.
• The Most Overlooked Productivity Superpower: Hours don’t equal outcome. Overworking does not make you more productive.

WordPress Design Updates

This site is using a Block Editor theme at this point, but now there are Patterns. I need to figure out what they are and what to do with them.

• OllieWP: Everything you need to know about WordPress Patterns: This will help me get going.
• WordPress Block Themes: Don’t make this BEGINNERS mistake!
• WordPress Block Themes are amazing 🔥: I know I want to use custom post types at some point here. Fantastic information on them.

Close the Backdoor in my WordPress blog

• WPBeginner Tutorial: Find the Backdoor and Fix It: If you look at my old posts, there are a lot of injected links. I’ve already taken some of these steps, but I need to go through this tutorial and make sure this is resolved. I also need to check my server itself to make sure everything is ok.
• WPBeginner: WordPress Security Guide – Step by Step (2023): Oh yes, we need to get SECURITY in here too.
• WPBeginner: 12 Signs Your WordPress Site is Hacked (And How to Fix It): More tips that I need to review.
• How to Find and Remove Spam Link Injection in WordPress?: They may be a bit biased, as they offer the plugin needed. However, I have thousands of pages that have spam links injected. I need help.
• Jetpack: Has Your WordPress Site Been Hacked? How to Check & Fix It: See above. Thousands of pages. Help.
• BuzzFeed News: Hackers Are Breaking Into Websites And Adding Links To Game Google: I mean, I guess it’s good to know I’m not alone?
• WordPress Website Hacked? 10 Steps to Get You Back on Track: More solid tips.
• Andrea Whitmer: How to Find Out if Your WordPress Site has Been Hacked: More ideas on security. I also like the “Museum” concept and the note at the top that the article is old and might be outdated. For a site that is 23 years old, this could be a good addition.