Beer and Blog Corvallis

We’re doing something completely different this week and joining forces with other awesome groups in Corvallis. Instead of meeting on our usual Wednesday, we’re going to be meeting this Thursday (tomorrow) at the OSU CH2MHill Alumni Center and LaSells Stewart Center from 5-7:30PM. The Willamette Innovators Night is being held starting at 3pm and goes until around 5:30. Afterwards, we’ll be meeting up with folks from Corvallis Young Pros, Salem Beer and Blog, and Portland Beer and Blog. Food and Beer will be provided at the location for free and parking should be free after 5 on campus as well.

The evening will conclude with Ignite Corvallis 2 starting at 7:30. Unfortunately tickets for Ignite Corvallis 2 have been all “sold out” but we may have another viewing room nearby.

Come join us tomorrow for an epic night of fun!

Special thanks to the Corvallis SAO Chapter for sponsoring and putting on this event!

Hang out at McMenamins on Monroe with local bloggers, enjoy a beer (or root beer), and have a good time! I’m going to try stick to having this at McMens just so that people aren’t confused about where we’re at. We’ll still go to other places but McMens seems to work the best for us.

See you there!

-Lance

We haven’t had something new on the blog in a long time and I apologize for that. Life keeps us all busy which is why I’m reaching out to you guys to see if you’d like to help me (Lance) out with Corvallis Beer and Blog.

The primary help I need is keeping this website up to date. Whether it means writing a blog entry every week or two, or maintaining other aspects of it. As for the weekly meetups I wouldn’t mind some help making sure that we’re serving the group in the best fashion. In addition, helping me organize bi-weekly talks and venues would be awesome! I’m not quite burned out yet on doing this, but it would be great to have more than one person doing this

We’re not going to meet today, but feel free to meetup if you want anyways! I’m still working on the location for next week so stay tuned.

Either send me a DM on twitter or send me an email if you’re interested in helping me out!

Thanks!

-Lance

Sorry that we haven’t posted in a while! We had a great turn out at Block 15 last week and still continue to see new faces every time we meet. We’re taking a week off and not meeting this week. With it being Spring Break, and so many other things going on, its nice to take a break from things. We’ll be meeting at Block 15 next week on Wednesday from 5-7PM like usual. No topic planned yet but I’m hoping we’ll come up with something soon! Let me know your ideas for the next meet up.

Don’t forget about Beaver BarCamp on April 4th. If you’d like to go make sure you register so that you can get a free t-shirt!

Tonight we have the pleasure of having Paul Stivers (aka @aquaGeek) and possibly Ben Potter giving a small talk about integrating videos on your blogs. You’ve probably seen Paul and Ben at the last several Beer and Blogs working on a site with videos and wondered what and how they’re doing it. Paul enjoys kayaking and wanted to create a blog with some instructional videos on how to kayak. Ben has experience creating videos and has always wanted to learn how to kayak so they decided to help each other out. With the help of Beer and Blog they’ve been able to get this going!

Come out to Cloud 9 tonight between 5-7PM to check it out! We’ll most likely start the talk around 6PM so you don’t have to hurry to get there by 5PM.

See you there!

We’re meeting at McMenamins on Monroe‎ from 5-7PM tonight. We’ll try and be upstairs. See you there!

We’re taking a week off and not officially meeting today for Beer and Blog. The next time we’ll meet is Wednesday, March 4th at McMenamins on Monroe‎ from 5-7PM. Enjoy the week off!

We’re meeting tonight at Block 15 from 5-7PM. This will be the last time we will meet on Tuesdays and will move back to Wednesdays. It appears that Wednesdays work better for everyone. We’ll take next week off then come back on Wednesday, March 4th at a place yet to be determined.

Its become apparent that having a stable and reliable location is important for this group, so my goal is to find a new permanent location soon. We’ve encountered some growing pains at Block 15, which makes it hard for us to go there reliably without being too big for them on Wednesdays. So far I have the following ideas for a new venue to stick to:

• McMenamins (on Monroe)
• Clodfelter’s
• Downward Dog (next to Cloud 9)
• Old World Deli (no WIFI though I think)
• The 101 (bar connected to Big River)

If you have more ideas, please comment on them! I want to ensure the group as a whole has a say in it. I still plan on making “field trips” to places like Fireworks, Cloud9, and maybe even Calapooia in Albany.

See you there tonight!

First off, we’re heading back to Block 15 this week and we’re meeting this TUESDAY instead of Wednesday from 5-7PM. The managers at Block 15 wondered if we could change to Tuesday to make it easier for them, so we’re giving it a shot. From the feedback on twitter, it appears that Tuesday shouldn’t be much of a problem.

RSVP on Facebook or Upcoming.

This week we’re going to have a small talk about hosting for the blogger that needs a little more than what the free sites give you. Most first time bloggers don’t need to worry about hosting, but its something good to hear about at least. Why would you need to move to a hosted setup you say? The simple answer is: total control of the website’s layout. Most free sites give you a limited amount of themes to choose from or lack a few specific features you may want. Hosting allows you to run any website application you want (provided the hosting provider supports it).

Portland Beer and Blog had a great blog post written for a the End Bloglessness in Portland last month, so I decided to copy some of it and post it here again! I haven’t personally tried any of the hosting companies below but I have a few friends that have (at least with Bluehost). Everything below is just an opinion and there are several hosting companies that are just as good as the ones mentioned below.

Hosting packages

When you’re starting out, your hosting needs are pretty simple. For sites that run with WordPress, you’ll need PHP and MySQL, which is fairly common. I recommend staying away from Windows based hosting because it’s usually not set up well for open source applications, like WordPress. Here are a few of the characteristics to look out for:

• Shared Server – This means you share your server with other websites. Sharing the hardware allows hosting companies to offer the accounts for cheaper. Sites with less than 100K visitors per month won’t appreciate the difference between a shared or dedicated server, so save your money.
• Unlimited features – Hosting has become an inexpensive commodity. Most hosting companies will offer you unlimited bandwidth, unlimited storage space, and more. The reason is that they know few accounts actually user their hosting features anywhere near the limits. Steer clear of hosting accounts that impose limits like 1 GB of bandwidth a month because there are enough
• cPanel, ideally with Fantastico – cPanel is a nicely done graphic interface for managing your server. Having it means you don’t need to use a terminal or Unix commands to do tasks like create an email account or create a database. Fantastico is a sweet feature available for cPanel that is an installer for things like WordPress. So to install a WordPress blog using Fantastico makes it a one-click process. Very handy for the new blogger.
• 24/7 domestic phone tech support – I know several big name hosting companies that offer 24/7 domestic phone support, so don’t put up with anything less.
• $10 or less per month – Starting out, you shouldn’t spend more than this or you’re getting hosed.

The further you go in blogging, your needs may become more complex. You might need more bandwidth, more servers, or more privileges. System Administrators and Programmers may want things like shell access or co-location, but these are not concerns for the starting blogger.

Here a few hosting companies that offer the above amenities:

• Bluehost
• Media Temple
• PowWeb
• DreamHost

There are some hosting companies that we don’t recommend, such as Go Daddy. They are in the business of upselling, so it’s confusing to work with them because you have to constantly turn down sales pitches.

We might be hosting our own End Bloglessness soon so stay tuned

We’re trying yet another new venue this week for Corvallis Beer and Blog by making at stop at Big River Restaurant & Bar. I hope everyone enjoyed Dawn Foster last week at Cloud 9 for her mini talk about Yahoo Pipes along with her presentation at OSU about Online Community Managers. Please share anything you learned!

We don’t have anything planned for a mini-talk/demo but feel free to let us know if you have any ideas. We’ll be located upstairs and to the right in Big River. There’s a happy hour from 5-6:30PM which includes $2.50 draft beer and $2 off martinis, house drinks, glass pour wine, small food plates, and pizzas. Their cocktails are usually $8.95 (or $6.95 at happy hour).They do have free wifi so bring you laptop and we’ll help you make your blog awesome! Bring ideas and questions!

The following week, we’ll be going back to Block 15 but will meet on Tuesday instead of Wednesday like we have.

• Facebook RSVP
• Upcoming.org RSVP

See you this Wednesday at Big River!