Rourke on Technology

After a year of sporadic blog posts, rourkem.com was very personal, but very random. It lacked focus. Were I a reader of this site, I couldn’t imagine staying subscribed when posts included information on SOA, web service provider reviews, and pasta recipes.

There are a number of great articles out there singing the merits of the focused blog. Those articles have merit, but aren’t 100% applicable — this is a personal site and a personal blog. I’m not trying to make money with rourkem.com. I simply want to share reviews I write and to share my experience with new services and new technologies. I want a place I can post recipes and food commentary for future reference. I want to write about concepts and ideas that I think friends or colleagues might be interested in.

That said, the everything-into-the-stew model feels wrong. If I refer a colleage to something I wrote about SOA, he shouldn’t have to wade through french toast recipes to find related blog posts. If someone liked my review of an ISP, they shouldn’t be subjected to my wine tasting notes while waiting to see my further experience finding a home for my Wordpress-based blog.

I solved the problem — mostly. I split rourkem.com into three major categories: SOA, Technology, and Random. Each category has it’s own main page and its own feed. My background and experience give me a reasonable amount of authority when it comes to technology and SOA, but the two are certainly different animals that belong in separate playgrounds. All the other stuff I post will end up in Random – where it could be found if someone searches for it, but it won’t get in the way if people are “following” my Tech or SOA posts.

Time permitting, I will explain the technical side of how I accomplished this in a future post.