Top Five K0NR Blog Posts from 2015

blog graphicAs we approach the end of the year, it is fun to look back to see which blog posts were read the most. WordPress has some great tools that make this easy to do.

The most read post on k0nr.com concerns the use of amateur gear outside the ham bands: Can I Use My Ham Radio on Public Safety Frequencies? Actually, I have two blog postings that cover the same topic but one of them is a bit out of date. They both get lots of hits, but I’ve linked to the one that is updated. This is a hot topic as many people still believe strongly that no ham gear is legal on Part 90 frequencies (read through the comments on that post). This is why I took the time to write about it, attempting to explain it and educate the ham community.

The second hottest post was quite controversial: Are Kids the Future of Ham Radio? I got a ton of feedback on this one. People either resonated with its message or just thought it was crazy. I wanted to start a discussion on the topic so I guess it met that objective. Although it is hard to have a discussion when someone says your post is ridiculous. (Disclosure: the original title of the posting was Kids Are Not the Future of Ham Radio, which I later toned down.)

It’s a bit sad that this next post is still so popular: Solving the Baofeng Cable Problem. There is a really frustrating problem with how the Windows driver works with certain USB interface chips. Many folks who went out and bought low cost Baofeng (and other) radios got totally hosed up by this. Hence, the need for and the popularity of this blog posting.

Mobile radio installations are always a bit of an exploration, so I try to share what I learn when doing one. People seem to appreciate this kind of article and often ask followup questions via email. For whatever reason, my 2012 Jeep Wrangler Radio Install post continues to be a popular post on my blog.

One of my classic articles is the FM/VHF Operating Guide, just some basic information to help people get started with FM and repeater operating. I update it from time to time and it gets quite a few hits.

Hey, thanks for stopping by k0nr.com. Best of luck to you in the New Year.

73, Bob K0NR

Comments Turned Back On

It seems that the comment feature on my blog was inadvertently turned off. I don’t know how this happened but it is now corrected. If you wanted to comment on recent postings, please come on back!

Sorry for the inconvenience. Thanks to Hans PD0AC for pointing this out.

73, Bob K0NR

Use WPtouch to Create Mobile WordPress Site

I’ve been using WordPress for my weblog for years now and just turned on a mobile version of the blog. The WordPress plugin WPtouch makes this very easy to do. It took about 5 minutes to get it up and running.

The WPtouch plugin automatically detects when the user is browsing  with a smartphone and implements the mobile interface. The user has the option of turning the mobile presentation off.

Highly recommended!

73, Bob K0NR

Tweaking the Blog a Bit

wordpress logoThis evening, I am messing around with the blog a bit. I recently updated WordPress to version 2.7, which is a significant upgrade. I am still figuring out what’s new.

I decided the old template had just too much blue, so I switched over to “Journalist”…nice and clean. Also, the main text column is set up wider, which fits most computer monitors better. Maybe too boring, we’ll see. It is soooooo easy to change themes in WordPress.

For several months now, I’ve been using WP-SpamFree which does an awesome job of keeping the comments spamfree.

I finally got around to adding a blogroll. It seemed like just another thing to keep up to date, so I resisted doing it. However, I noticed that my web page was getting lots of hits off some of the other blogs that had me on their blogroll, so time to return the favor.

73, Bob K0NR

Changing Over to WordPress

WordPressI am in the process of moving my weblog from Blogger over to WordPress to take advantage of the more flexible software tools in that environment. The blog will remain on the k0nr.com domain but under a different directory (www.k0nr.com/wordpress). The old blog files should remain in place, so that existing links are not broken. In theory, this should all be transparent to you, as I will redirect the existing URLs for the main blog ( http://www.k0nr.com/blog ), the RSS feed and the Atom feed.

But this is the worldwide web and there are computers involved, so something is bound to get messed up! Hang in there while I make these changes.

Eventually, I’ll port my web site over so that all of k0nr.com is under WordPress. That is likely to take some time.

73, Bob K0NR