It's been crazy busy over here the past couple of weeks. I've been hard at work creating 3 training videos for a client, (we shoot in Studio on Friday,) preparing for my next live course (this Saturday,) and trying to keep the forum posts all answered... among other things...
Excelguru has a new host
The biggest news, as far as the site is concerned though, is that we're running on a new host. My former host kept sending me messages about the server usage, asking me to block users and shut things down, as I was too busy. They suggested that, if I didn't want to do that, I should upgrade to their dedicated server plan. I have to say I was a little shocked by that, especially when they told me it would move me from $4.95 per month to $164.95 per month. While I love hosting the forums and site, that was a little much to swallow.
Instead, after some research and conversations with my friend Simon, I've moved the site to host with URLJet, a company that specializes in vBulletin and WordPress hosting. They're more expensive than what I was paying, certainly, but what a difference in service. I signed up and within 10 minutes they called me to talk through the migration scenarios. The site migration was finished, tested and working within 4 hours, all done by them. They reviewd it, made some performance tuning changes, and recommended a few for me to do too. Very cool, and all done at no extra cost. I have to say that so far I'm really pleased with them.
We've been running on URLJet for a week now, and the site seems more responsive and forum posts are picking up. I'm not sure if that's coincidence (probably), but it's getting to the point where I could certainly use more people on the site. So if you love Excel or just want to learn, we have posts that need answering! 🙂
The old blog is back!
As if moving my site and optimizing it for me weren't enough already, URLJet also fixed the WordPress blog that I've been locked out of for 1.5 years too! While I was planning on using the vBulletin blog, WordPress is way more flexible, and I didn't want to lose all the old content so...
With this blog back live, I'm going to resume posting here. I ported the two articles back from the vBulletin blog that were worth saving, so if you see those in your feed, just ignore them. 🙂
A new article
In celebration of the whole thing, I also created a nice new article on the site as well. If you've ever been confused about how conditional formatting rules are applied in Excel 2007+, I've written up a VERY detailed, step by step article that will walk you through exactly what happens. You can find that by clicking here.
Facebook contest
My Facebook page at http://www.facebook.com/xlguru is creeping ever closer to 100 likes. I'd really like to make that milestone, so I announced last week that I'd give away a copy of my Magic of PivotTables video course to the 100th like. (NOTE: this offer is no longer available.)
I have to admit that I was hoping I'd be there by now, but then I got the following comment from Rick Grantham on Twitter:
"guess I need to unlike your FB page so I can like it back at the right moment. Maybe I shouldn't have told you that :)"
I had a good laugh there, but it did make me wonder... so I think I'll change the game up. (All those of you who are already Facebook fans can thank Rick (@BIStrategyGuy) for this....) Here's the new deal:
Once I hit 100 likes, I'll draw a random name from the first 100 people, and then I'll send you a discount code to download a free copy. It's just that easy. 🙂
See, now no reason to wait. In fact, you might want to hurry, as there are 97 likes as I post this! (But don't worry, this won't be the last one.)
