TheRileys.net is the web home of, well, The Rileys. There are four of us Rileys: Ryan (me, the husband/dad), Rebecca (the wife/mother), Madi (the daughter) and Lily (the bulldog). Although this site was turned on several years ago, it remained fairly dormant until October, 2004. That was when our former family of three found out that we’d soon become a family of four. Rebecca and I were obviously excited beyond belief. Lily, however, was a little more skeptical… She soon got used to the idea of being a big sister and we were on our way to parenthood.

It wasn’t very long into the pregnancy before we realized a couple of things that eventually made this site actively updated and maintainted. The first of those realizations was that, with us being a good 6 hour drive from the majority of our family members, we had to come up with a quick and easy way of keeping everyone up to date with the pregnancy (and eventually the baby, of course). The second realization is that, well, let’s be honest here, the process of pregnancy and childbirth cause certain, shall we say, interesting situations. That, combined with great pride in my personal sense of sarcasm, meant that I had to document the process somehow. Thus, the real TheRileys.net was born.

If you’ve read this far, you’re probably bored. I type like a madman (100+ words per minute), so I can get pretty wordy… The remaining text on this page goes into some of the technical details behind the curtain of TheRileys.net. If you’re not interested in that, go on home. Otherwise, carry on!

From time to time, I get a similar question from friends and family… “How easy is it to do a site like yours?” Well, let me tell you… What used to be a chore (although I still enjoyed it just the same, maybe more) is now a fairly simple undertaking. First things first, you’ll need someone to host your site. This can be as simple as signing up for a free blog at Blogger, WordPress.com or any of the other several free blog hosts out there. Getting hosting can also be as complex as setting up a full-blown hosting package with any of the billion webhosts out there. Personally, I went with the latter of these options and setup hosting with DreamHost and have been very pleased. They’re nice and cheap, starting at $7.95 per month for an account with more traffic and space than you’re likely to use… That price includes a free domain name, which you’ll have to have if you go with this type of site hosting. This option is more complex than the free hosting, but not significantly (full disclosure, I do this for a living so I may have a skewed point of reference).

If you go with the free hosting option, you’re done! Stop reading this page and go start posting to your site using the instructions provided by whichever host you went with. If you went with the paid hosting option, keep reading…

With “real” hosting, you’ll need some software to run your site (technically you could do it by hand, but that’s SO 1997 and, well, stupid). For this site, I chose WordPress, which is the same software that’s used for the free WordPress.com hosting mentioned earlier. Alternatives out there are Movable Type (not really free, but cheap), Django or ExpressionEngine, among others. I chose WordPress for many reasons, including the fact that it’s got a huge base of users, loads of plugins (to make it “do” extra stuff) and themes (to control the appearance) and it’s FREE! If you go with DreamHost for hosting and WordPress to manage your site, you’ve got it even easier because DreamHost has a 1-Click-Setup process that will get WordPress up and running lickety split.

Once the software and hosting have been chosen, the fun begins. You can start posting and sharing your site right away, or you can tinker with it endlessly until it does your bidding. I mentioned plugins and themes earlier… This site uses several plugins, including (but not limited to):

There are other plugins in use here, but those are the major ones. If you want to know more details about the ones used here, shoot me an email.Themes provide more fun to the mix because they let you manage nearly every aspect of how your site appears to users. This site is currently (as of this writing) using the Unsleepable theme, with several modifications by me… There are hundreds, if not thousands, of themes that have been developed and shared among the community, there for the taking. If you’re a creative type, you can design your own site from scratch if you’d prefer. I’m primarily an engineer-type person and not a designer-type person (although I try), so I chose to use a theme for now…

That’s pretty much it. There are obviously more details to some of this, but that’s it a nutshell (cue Austin Powers curling up and screaming “No, this is me in a nutshell!”). If you get into a bind, feel free to ask for my help and I’d be happy to help out…