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Thursday, June 13, 2013

Free Money Finance - Wealth Lion


Free Money Finance

Posted: 28 May 2013 01:29 AM PDT
Logo n tex 2 blue For the eight years that I've been writing FMF, I've used Typepad's service for the site. They include both the content management system (how I publish posts and control the site's design) as well as the hosting (how readers see/access the site on the web). It was a great beginning blogging service since it was very easy and my technical experience was zero.

For several years, Typepad served me well. Yes, there were occasional hiccups and I was limited by what I could and couldn't do on the blog (with design, marketing, "extras", and so on), but for the most part, things were fine.

Then Typepad recently changed spam providers and things went haywire. Comments couldn't get through, they would post and then disappear, long comments were eaten, and I would have days where hundreds of spam comments hit the blog and I would have to go through one-by-one and delete them. When I contacted Typepad customer service, their response was "wait and it will get better" and "set comments so users have to log in to leave a comment" (something I didn't want to and shouldn't have to do). I did implement a couple of their more practical suggestions, but the results were mixed.

At the same time, I have been hearing more and more about WordPress as a blogging/website software provider. It's been around since I started blogging, of course, but over the years it has really developed into quite a remarkable system. In addition, it has become very easy to use WordPress to install and host your own blog (something that used to intimidate me.) It has all the bells and whistles that make both the front and back ends of a site work really well. Finally, it's mostly under my control, not under the control of a company that makes decisions for me (like Typepad does).

So I considered moving FMF to WordPress. But as you might imagine, this process is far from easy. Specifically, the site has thousands of links coming into it (a great benefit for FMF) which were likely to be messed up in part or whole in a transition. This could reduce me to basically starting over from scratch, something I wanted to avoid, but had to consider.

After I thought it over, my feeling was that if I was going to start over, I wanted to do it from the ground up -- to both see if I could do it as well as avoid the mistakes I had made in the past (yes, I've made mistakes, written not-so-great posts, and refined my thinking a lot in the past eight years). I would want to start fresh.

As I considered the options, I asked FMF readers what they wanted to see more of on the site. There seemed to be two competing sets of answers. One group wanted the sorts of pieces that FMF has always done: Reader Profiles, short commentary pieces, and the like. The other group wanted deeper and broader topics covered. Some liked the real estate posts and others didn't. Some wanted more in-depth Reader Profiles while others wanted follow ups to past ones. Many wanted more of "what I'm doing."

So I took all this feedback into consideration and came up with the following solution:
  • FMF will continue as it always has on the Typepad platform. For now my plan is to publish three times a week on Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday (beginning immediately). The posts will be Reader Profiles (using the same format as I've used all along), shorter commentary pieces (where I see an article, take a paragraph from it, and offer my thoughts on it), and a few smatterings of this and that (what I want to write about). It will pretty much be what I've done here for eight years, with a few exceptions as noted below.
  • I'm starting a new WordPress website called Wealth Lion (If you're wondering about the name, you can read Why the Name). For now my plan is to publish three times a week on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. The posts will focus on the basics of building wealth (some), how to manage wealth once you have it (more), real estate investing (with details of how my investments are going as well as a calculator or two), and details on what I am personally doing as I now work my way through paying for college and planning for retirement/early semi-retirement. In general the posts will be longer and more personal than what I've written at FMF.
I have already seeded the site with several basic pieces (many of which you've seen on FMF) just to get it started. A few of them are:
For the first few weeks you may see posts/themes on Wealth Lion that you've already seen on FMF. These are put here for the new reader who comes along, knows nothing about FMF, and wonders where I'm coming from. I want to at least have my general thoughts on wealth building, careers, and the like on both sites.
You can also subscribe to the new site by either email or RSS feed.

I will transition to the three posts on FMF and three posts on Wealth Lion per week set-up starting this week for FMF. Wealth Lion will begin posting the first week in June. For the first month or so (and maybe a bit longer), you will likely see some design changes in Wealth Lion as we finish construction. If I waited until everything was 100% completed and perfect to launch the blog, I probably wouldn't do it until 2014. So please bear with me. (And if you find a glitch, please email me!)

I want to thank FMF readers Old Limey, Apex, Mike Hunt, and Money Wise Pastor for looking over Wealth Lion while it was in development. Their feedback was very helpful and appreciated.

So that's how we'll operate for now -- one writer of two blogs, each with its own personal twist. How will it work? Who knows?  We'll play it by ear, see how it goes, and adjust as needed along the way. I hope you decide to join me for the ride.
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