I launched a site last week that I’ve been working on for over a year. It is the biggest site I’ve launched as a free-lancer. It has been a tremendously rewarding experience, a great learning tool, and a great experience all the way around. You should check it out here: Word Music

We still have lots of tweaks to make it the best it can be, but it’s up there and it’s live and THAT is a huge relief. I have a great time working with the people at Word Music as well as the great team of free-lancers that I’ve worked with to make this happen.

Friday was a BUSY day launching a site like that. There were a lot of pieces to put in place. For those of you that don’t care anything about the technical details of what I learned from this launch, you will probably want to quit reading now Just check out the site and give Word Music some of your business. They are great folks to work with.

For those of you that are still reading, I assume you are interested in what I learned from this launch. This was a little different from the other launches I’ve made in the past. The easiest type of launch is, by far, the new domain name. They don’t have a site up yet and when we get it running, we get it running. We set the DNS a couple of days earlier than scheduled launch and then when we get the code ready, we upload it to the site, set up configuration for the database and BAM! There’s your site!

Then there are those that have a site already running. If the site is to be on the same server, then I don’t have to worry about DNS at all. When it’s time to launch the site, we just replace the old code with the new code, set up configuration for the new database, if needed, and BAM! There’s your new website!

There are also websites that are replacing an already running website but on a different web server or host computer. These are the tricky ones. If the client doesn’t really care about the exact minute that the site launches and isn’t concerned with the DNS propagation throughout the internet, then this isn’t a big deal. I just wait until the code is ready on the new server and set the DNS. Eventually, the client, as well as the rest of the world will start to see the new site instead of the old. Of course, since the DNS isn’t refreshed at the same rate and time thorughout the internet, they may see the old site one minute, the new site the next and then the old site again the next. This bouncing back and forth could last a couple of days. And if the client is cool with that, then my job has been done. But, there was never a ‘BAM!’

The situation I had with Word Music was that they already had a website on a different server. Their new website is on a new server and they wanted it to ‘go live’ at a specific time for the whole world. They wanted a ‘BAM!’ I respect that decision – it made the launch very exciting. It was almost like an unveiling. When they sent out announcements, they didn’t have to warn people that they might not see it right away.

So, how did we pull it off? Those of you that do this a lot are probably thinking this was a no-brainer. At first, I thought it was a no-brainer too. I had the DNS changed to the new site a couple of days early and then I set the .htaccess file to redirect everything back to the old website. Of course, since the DNS was in the process of being changed, I couldn’t redirect to the domain name, I had to redirect to the old IP address.

This worked really well until I had to start testing. How was I going to test the site while everything is redirecting back to the old site? This is where I had to use more of my brain power. I ended up setting the redirect back to the old site in the index.php file instead of .htaccess. I then created a new php file that would act as the index.php file.

Since I’m using the MVC model, this was a little trickier. The index.php is my front controller. If I ever lose the script name through the code, it will redirect back to the old site. Since we are using mod-rewriting on the site, we did have a few of those problems because the script name was getting lost, but for testing we could just substitute the script name in the address bar of the browser. At least we could get to the site and make sure that all the configuration was working and everything was looking good.

At 2:00 launch-time, I just had to take the redirect out of the index.php and let the traffic flow to the new site. Word Music announced the launch of their site and all is well. It was an exciting time!

A few things you may want to also note, I added a check for the IP address of those that were going to be testing so that even if someone did find my testing script that would allow me to bypass the redirect, they wouldn’t be able to get through.

I thought this might help someone else faced with this same type of launch. It worked really well for us and I wasn’t doing quite so much scrambling as soon as the site came up to make sure that I hadn’t missed anything while who knows how many other people were looking at the site for the first time.

It was a good day. I want more days like that one!

I am trying my best to get out of the rat race. I don’t like trading time for money. One of the best books I think I’ve ever read was Robert Kiwosaki’s ‘Rich Dad, Poor Dad‘. It really woke me up to a LOT of things. I learned that trading time for money keeps me in the Rat Race. I’ll never be able to really relax. And that made me start questioning a LOT of things that I have grown up believing.

His next book, “The Cash Flow Quadrant” was even better and helped me see the difference between being an employee, self-employed, a business owner and an investor. I originally read those books to help teach my children what they needed to learn, but ended up being the student before I could be the teacher. Reading those books changed my life. Totally.

Now, I’ve bought the board game Cashflow 101 and my life is changing again. I play it every month (by myself if I have to ). It’s an expensive game but I think it’s already been worth the price I paid. I’ve already learned a LOT about me and about money and ways I can change my way of thinking about life and money. It’s a lot like monopoly, only better.

Robert says in the game instructions that he built the board game so that we could learn from our mistakes in the game before we go out and make the same mistakes with our real money. I like that idea!!

Learning the principles from this book has already helped me to quit my job and work from home. Now, I’m slowly but surely getting out of the rat race and learning how to let my money work for me instead of me constantly working for money. Now, I work for fun. Can it even be called work?

Anyone up for a game of Cashflow??

I certainly learned a lot from yesterday. It seemed as though every where I went yesterday, someone must have read my post for the day and was trying to help me learn from my mistakes. Or they were trying to make me mad. Or something. It was a true Monday.

Or maybe it was just me?

At any rate, I’m certainly learning from my mistakes. And I won’t be making the same ones twice. There are often consequences from the mistakes we make and sometimes the price of that education is high. But, that’s a good thing, right? Because the higher the price, the madder I get, the bigger the consequence, the better I learn not to do that again.

THANK GOODNESS I’m learning to clear to zero every morning and get in a good place before I start my day. I hate to think what things would be like if I let my anger grow, or let my self-doubt grow, or let my resentments grow, or hung on to my grudges. Maybe I shouldn’t have any of those to begin with, but I do. The trick I’m learning is to not let them last quite so long. Each day has enough trouble of it’s own, so no need to carry over the trouble from yesterday.

Sometimes even clearing to zero only lasts for a little while, but that’s still much better than just picking up my anger, doubts, etc. where I left off the day before.

I get knocked down, I get back up again. As many times as necessary. And each time I get back up, I’m stronger, I’m smarter and I’m more confident.

Bring it on! I’m ready for the education. I’m not afraid to fail. Failure can be a very good thing. I’m not afraid to mess up. It will just make me better. Bring IT!

Can you imagine what would happen if you got just a little better at something – at anything – each week?

In my opinion, the best way to get better next week is to make a lot of mistakes this week. And then learn from those mistakes. Vow never to make the same mistake twice.

Not only should I learn from my mistakes, but I should learn from my successes as well.

If each week I figure out what worked and what didn’t and then do more of the stuff that worked and less of the stuff that didn’t, I should be making progress, right?

One thing I’m learning… A step to the right or to the left is still a step forward. I really can’t make a wrong decision. Making the decision is at least moving forward. Sitting in my decision and not making it, is standing still. And that’s a quick way to get no where.

Once I’ve made the first step, the next step usually becomes a little clearer. And if I step left when I should have stepped right becomes pretty clear once I’ve made that first step. The quicker I adjust the step, the less off track I become. The longer I continue in the wrong direction, the further off track I become.

Making the step is the important thing. The sooner I make the step, the sooner I know where the next step needs to go. Sitting at the starting point trying to map out my trek, can only slow me down.

Another important thing to me is knowing the end goal. Staying on track really doesn’t help me much if it was the wrong track to begin with. From Nashville, I-40 west sometimes looks like a better drive than I-65 North. But, taking the road less traveled might just take me to Memphis, which would be ok if I wanted to get to Memphis. It would be pretty sad if I arrived in Memphis and found out that what I really wanted was in Louisville though.

Sometimes, the easy way is not the best way. Knowing what I want and which direction I need to head in really helps. It doesn’t really matter how far away it is as long as I’m headed in the right direction. Getting a little better each day, or each week, or even each month, gets me a little closer to where I want to be.

All I have to do is know what I want, where it is and point my nose in that direction. Take a step. Whether I fall or not, I learn from it. Then take another step. Rinse. Repeat. Sounds easy enough. I can do this!

It’s not my most favorite job but sometimes for friends and family I will do a little maintenance on their computers. I finally got around to helping out a family member by giving them a computer that I wasn’t using anymore. They said that they were having a few ‘problems’ with their old computer. I brought their old computer home to transfer their files to an external hard drive.

My son, Matthew, who works with me in my home business, was tasked with the job of setting up the computer and copying the files. I was downstairs doing laundry when all of a sudden I heard all three of my kids screaming and laughing and jumping and carrying on upstairs. Mallory came to get me because Matthew had found a frog inside the computer.

My family member is certain that it was her ‘pet’ frog that kept the bugs off her porch. She assumes that the frog took a free trip inside when she brought in the plants this fall. The poor, unlucky frog was just trying to stay warm.

It was quite an ordeal trying to get the frog out of the computer since Matthew and Mallory were both freaking out at the thoughts of the frog getting in the house. Neither one of them are fond of small creatures. Mason, on the other hand, isn’t afraid of many things and rescued us all from the petrified frog. Of course, I then had to advise against any cruelty to small animals even after they are dead. He mentioned something about a firecracker. I will never understand the minds of teenage boys. I successfully talked him out of that, but then had to rescue Mallory as he tried to terrorize her with the poor little frog.

Although Matthew and Mallory were not fond of the experience, they enjoyed calling our family member and sharing the contents of their old computer. They invited them over for a dinner of frog legs – either fried or petrifried. Roxie, the dog, was about to take them up on the offer when I strongly advised that Mason take the poor, dead frog outside and dispose of him properly.

I’m glad that’s over. I’m also glad that my family member had a ‘pet’ frog instead of a ‘pet’ snake!