Turning 10

In August 2013 (Whois.com officially says August 28, 2013), 18-year-old Meredith sat in her first college class at Mary Washington. I was introduced to a thing called a domain name. She was asked to register a domain name as part of a class and was asked to write weekly reflections on the readings. And she created her first blog on meredithhuffman.com. Little did that version of Meredith know how much the blog would be used throughout those 10 years. From class assignments to professional development, that blog has stuck around. It's become an archive of projects, milestones, fun, and reflection....Read More

Reclaim Open: Where We’re Going

Whew-- what a week of Reclaim Open! This was Reclaim Hosting's 4th hosted conference and one of the best I've attended to date (and hopefully many more to come!). It was my first in-person conference since the pandemic and it absolutely did not disappoint! The week overall was incredible, full of laughter, catching up with people I hadn't seen for several years, and even a trip down memory lane to visit the campus at UMW. Even more, attending a conference in the building I'd spent most of my time in as a student, the Hurley Convergence Center. I've been reflecting...Read More

Projects Lately

I think it's about time that I dust this blog off! via GIPHY It's been almost a year since I last blogged about one of Reclaim's first Flex Courses in Reclaim Ed Tech, and now we've completed the first year! Throughout that year we've put on several flex courses, workshops, and even planning for a Conference! (P.S. You should go register for all the awesome stuff planned!) Towards the latter half of the year, I started participating in a lot of the Flex Courses and even the WordPress Multisite and Domain of One's Own Workshops. We've got most of these...Read More

Form of Awesome: Week 1

This month, I'm participating in some professional development offered through Reclaim Hosting's EdTech Subscription, where we're diving into all the Gravity Forms offers. Last week, we met for the first time so I wanted to jot down some notes and set up some gorals for the next 3 weeks! First, I did have some experience with Gravity Forms prior to this workshop, Reclaim already utilizes the plugin in a couple of forms within our internal work flows, and even on some Domain of One's Own schools! You may have seen some of these forms in action, like our Migration Assistance...Read More

New Tool Find: Scribe

I wanted to highlight a very cool tool I found (thanks to TikTok!). I am always running folks through processes, like renewing domains or transferring accounts, where the process would be the same each time you go through the scenario. I write documentation for these processes or writing within tickets. Any time I can Use visuals is always helpful. Introducing Scribe: The chrome extension that allows you to create a step-by-step process in a matter of seconds. And it was the easiest set up ever. I signed into my account using their Google SSO integration and installed the extension. Then...Read More

2022 Desk Setup

As promised in my last post, I am writing a post about the tech specs as to how everything comes together on my desk. Working from home again meant I needed to come up with a dedicated space to work, and moving into a new space allowed Brandon and I to think through the perfect space for the both of us. And it's like I have two built-in coworkers now! Right now, I'm running two machines, a 2019 Macbook Pro and a hand-me-down gaming PC (that still runs like a champ). Current specs on the PC: an Intel i5 8600k,...Read More

Desk Evolution 2022

Over the years at Reclaim, my desk/workspace has seen several iterations. I've worked through CoWork, the dedicated Reclaim Hosting office, then shifted to work from home at the beginning of the pandemic and back to the Reclaim Office. Reclaim recently went "fully remote" (as if the pandemic made this transition easier), where we retired the physical office space and allow all employees to work remote. Reclaim always had some idea of a remote company back in it's history, really since it began. When I joined the team back in 2017, the team was still scattered across the world, and we...Read More

Professional Development: Activating Omeka User With Our Password Reset Email

Recently, I've found that I've needed access to an Omeka admin dashboard without a previous admin user on the site. Installatron makes it easy to log into sites like WordPress automatically but they don't offer this option within Omeka or other applications. We've been able to figure out a way to access the site through the dashboard directly from the database. This method relies on receiving an email reset to confirm the password, but what happens when you don't receive the email? Well, let me teach out! Omeka Login Once you've added the user to the Omeka database following the...Read More

Domain Tips and Tricks

Domains are honestly some of the coolest pieces of the web that I've worked with over the years. There are so many combinations to them. You can work with whatever you want on the beginning (like mine for example, meredithfierro.com) and there are a wide variety of domain extensions as well! Most folks know .com .net .edu .gov .org for example but did you know you can have extensions like .media .photography, even .yachts! I even found some that I didn't know existed looking through GoDaddy's list of extensions (although I would recommend referencing the IANA list through data.iana.org instead)...Read More

Reclaim Cloud: Accessing Databases

Previously on Reclaim Cloud Learning; I talked through working with SSL certificates on the Cloud and Mattermost training, and now I'm going to be talking about working through databases to round out the Reclaim Cloud month. This one, in particular, surrounds accessing databases (like WordPress, or Mattermost) without the confirmation emails from Jelastic. I'll walk you through getting access to the database node from your Cloud Dashboard without your database credentials. Reclaim Hosting uses this method on our support, so we don't have to reach back to the user to see if they've saved the credential emails. It helps us save...Read More