Tactful Tech (tactfultech.net), previously Roy Can Fix IT (roycanfixit.com), was a fun project to showcase some of the stuff I saw in IT. Before this project was geared to helping people become tech savvy, it was used as a digital portfolio to land work as an IT pro. This project, Tactful Tech, is now part of Davis Tech Media.
Was Tactful Tech Successful?
If you’re anything like me, you’re probably wondering if this project was successful. Besides learning some great stuff, this project did in fact fulfill its original purpose.
In the early stages of Roy Can Fix IT (prior to merging with Tactful Tech), the entire goal was to serve as a visual representation of what I know. This was to get work and serve as a great reference in job interviews. This took place from the late 2000s to the early 2010s.
IT is very “what you know” and doesn’t offer a great path for potential, or at least it hasn’t for me. I’ve had far too many people be so dismissive of my experience and accomplishments just because I wasn’t knowledgeable in everything or at least a skill that is in demand that I don’t yet have but could easily learn on the job.
Roy Can Fix IT successfully showcased my experience and laid out a better representation of transferable skills. People remembered me and my website. I didn’t realize it at the time, but I basically created my own brand.
So That’s Roy Can Fix IT, But What About Tactful Tech?
Tactful Tech was basically a rebrand with additional content. This took place in the early 2010s. It was geared towards helping people learn basic tech skills (to help lower business costs and helpdesk queues) and entry level IT folks to learn their craft quickly. It started with Roy Can Fix IT content and go on from there.
This part of the project was fun but didn’t yield as many results as before. Roy Can Fix IT served its purpose and when I started to move into a specialized path in 2014, I moved on.
Tactful Tech wasn’t nearly as successful, but it did get up to 200 unique visitors a month. Not too bad for ONLY word of mouth and organic search results. No advertising and no SEO optimization whatsoever.
What About Best of Roy?
Tactful Tech and the old Bit Expanse project merged into the newly designed Best of Roy blog. The goal of this newly formed blog was to provide overviews and resources for information security, web applications, and other cool IT related topics.
This wasn’t just another tech blog. The focus was NOT on reviewing tech or rehashing tech news articles. Only perspectives and value adds. The plans included making useful documents and other tools you can download. Some downloadable content was behind a paywall but most content, including the blog, remains free.
I’ve always been a note taker and a list maker. Not only do I need to break things apart to learn but I’m willing to bet there’s someone out there who can benefit from my musings. As I learn and explore new things, I want to document them and learn them in such a way that I can teach them. If I can do that, I can understand a topic enough to be effective and bring value to my work.
I will try to be different than other tech, security, and general IT websites, but my main goal is simply to be better than the person (tech, professional, etcetera) I was yesterday.
So, was Best of Roy successful? It was more successful than the 3 web projects I merged into it combined. I was helping 3K users a month with helpful tech articles. But I still wasn’t hitting the mark. I needed to pull away from the personal brand and build more of a media company to house the half-dozen web properties.
What About the Old Domains?
Roy Can Fix It > Tactful Tech and the old Bit Expanse > Best of Roy > Davis Tech Media
- Bestofroy.com now redirects to davistechmedia.com.
- Tactfultech.net now redirects to davistechmedia.com/tactful-tech.
- Roycanfixit.com now redirects to davistechmedia.com/about.
What I Learned With The Tactful Tech Project
- More tech skills.
- Better interviewing skills.
- Positioning and branding.
- Better documentation skills (It turns out regular IT documentation makes for a boring website).
- CSS tricks.
- HTML.
- Bootstrap (amazing open source front end system).
- PHP scripting.
- Custom WordPress code, plugins, child themes.
- Divi Theme (migrated to Divi – also used builder and custom styling).
So What Now?
I merged this content with my main site, Davis Tech Media so I don’t have to manage separate websites. I created a special landing page to help commemorate this great project.
You can get to this special landing page by going to davistechmedia.com/tactful-tech.
This Tactful Tech landing page includes all old content that was merged from the original intent of the merged projects.
