I began this site as a way for me to share my experiences in Jamaica with my friends and family back in the US while I was serving in the Peace Corps. Now that I am back in the US myself I think it is a good time to transition to my own personal domain of http://www.oliverhansen.com and start fresh. On this current site, I've been using Joomla which is a great CMS but I was never able to get the comments components working correctly. Not that I spent a great deal of time trying but that's not necessarily what a CMS is for. The new site is running WordPress which is a great blogging software. I will also be starting a gallery on the new site which I will talk about once I get it going. These are all Open Source programs and do their respective jobs quite well!

My new site will just focus on myself in a more general way whereas this one was more focused on Jamaica. I'm not sure what I'll do with this site in the long term. It will certainly be here for a little while but I don't really want to keep doing security updates and checking it while not using it. Until then, you can check out my Oliver Hansen blog at http://blog.oliverhansen.com and eventually the rest of my site from http://www.oliverhansen.com.

I really don't know what I'm going to be doing with this website from now on. I started it so that people could read about my experiences in Jamaica while I was there. I am no longer living there so my life is not so interesting at the moment. It's also less interesting to myself. I don't have a job. I'm watching my readjustment allowance slip slowly away and I'm not helping anyone or working with computers like I have enjoyed for the previous two years. It has been nice to see people here that I haven't seen for a while but most people aren't really that interested in what I did in the Peace Corps or don't know how to ask about it. As soon as I begin talking about something I did or experienced, the subject is changed to some exaggeration of Jamaica or a story slightly relating to my story but more involving the current location. Many of my friends have wives or live in girlfriends so I can't hang out as I longed for while I was gone. Most are working and between work and home seem too tired to really do anything.

Sometimes I complain that people expect me to be the same here as I was before I was in the Peace Corps. The funny thing is that sometimes I expect them to be the same as well -- like with having girlfriends now and not having time to really do anything. It's a strange situation. I started writing this on the 17th and quite a bit has happened since then so I guess I can't really complete as I had planned. Oh I have been awful at updating this site lately. I have photos and things but I just haven't edited and put them up. If you feel like bothering me with an email and complaining, go ahead and it just might help! Well... Later.

The ranking on google and other search engines depends on many things and one of those is the text with which others link to your site. It also helps that the same search term (my name) is in the URL(address) of my site. You can read more about Search Engine Optimization at wikipedia.

I have also registered the domain name http://www.oliverhansen.com for the future. Currently, it will only redirect you to this site, but eventually the change will be made.

It's basically system of computers that keep the names we know and can remember like google.com, msn.com, yahoo.com and translates them to the address of the computer that the site resides on. I admit if you don't know much about how websites work this may be a bit confusing still. I'll give you one example of how it is handy. In march I decided to switch companies that host my website. Now, since I own the domain name (hansenfarm.com), I can keep it but transfer the files to the new computer that I'm paying the hosting company to use. The old company's computer had a different IP address, but thanks to DNS, I can just re-register my domain name to be linked to the new computer my site is on. The point is that you, the user, will never know that my site is on a different computer because you still type the same name. This is all thanks to DNS!

So what happens when DNS is not working properly like mine the past month and a half?

You can also view the topics without opening your internet browser. This means you won't have to visit the site to check for new items because when they are available, you will see them. Some email software allows you to add a feed just as you would add an email account. There are also a number of feed readers available for download. Additionally, if you have a personalized start page on Yahoo! or Google you can add my feeds to show up on your page.

To learn more about RSS and other site syndication formats visit Wikipedia.org.