Introducing the 4sysops IT pro network

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Michael Pietroforte

Michael Pietroforte is the founder and editor in chief of 4sysops. He has more than 35 years of experience in IT management and system administration.

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The new features

These are the main new features:

IT pro network

• Site-wide activity page (blog posts, wiki docs, forum topics, profile changes, etc.)
• Microblog posts for all members
• Ways to follow other members (view only their activities)
• Private and public messaging between members

Wiki

• Members can edit docs in the Web front end
• Changes are logged in the document history
• Previous versions of documents can be restored

Of course, we still have the forum for IT administrators. More than 800 admins have registered so far. I hope that the new features will result in a more active community.

The member page lists all IT pros in the 4sysops IT pro network

Your 4sysops profile

If you registered before, you can use the same credentials to sign on to 4sysops. If you forgot your password, you can reset it in the log in dialog window.

I transferred your bio field and your avatar to the new system. You might want to check out your profile photo because the new software crops pictures differently.

If you don’t have a profile picture yet, you can use your webcam to take a new photo and upload it to 4sysops right from your profile page (if your Web browser supports webcams).

If you didn’t enter your biographical info before, you might want to do this now, so other IT pros can learn about your expertise. Just click on your avatar in the top menu after you sign in.

All your 4sysops activity appears in your profile

You’ll notice that you can do quite a few things in your profile. Your entire activity and that of your friends on 4sysops are documented here. You can publicly or privately communicate with other IT pros around the world and change your email notification settings and quite a few other things.

The IT pro network

In the future, I will post important news relevant to sys admins and DevOps in our new Activity stream. If you want, you can do this, too. You can also use this feature to link to your own IT-related articles that you posted elsewhere.

Or you could share one of your victories in your daily IT routine. Perhaps you wrote a cool PowerShell one-liner that you want to share with other IT pros. You can also post short scripts or link to admin tools that you find useful.

The 4sysops Activity stream logs everything happening on 4sysops

To link to a Web page, you only have to click on the link icon under the activity form field and then paste the URL. The page title and a short excerpt will be automatically loaded, because you may know them from other social networks. If you link to YouTube, the video will be automatically embedded. You can also upload images (click in the activity form field and then on the media button).

Post links and upload screenshots in the Activity stream

But please, don’t post pictures of your pets here. This feature is mainly for screenshots. The main difference between Facebook and the company is that on 4sysops, only IT pros can be members. So you can share the latest pics of your pub crawls on Facebook, but a cool PowerShell snippet would find a more knowledgeable audience on 4sysops.

If you want to stay up to date about everything happening in the 4sysops IT pro network, you can subscribe to the Side Wide Activity RSS feed. However, a better way is to regularly visit 4sysops, because then you have more options to filter content that you are really interested in. For instance, you can follow only the posts of your friends, display only the latest microblog posts (updates) or changes in Wiki docs.

The Wiki

At the moment, there is just one doc in the Wiki (free admin eBooks). We will publish certain types of articles, such as overviews and tutorials, as Wiki docs.

The docs can be edited by all 4sysops members. Thus, if you know of a good, free eBook for admins, you can just add it to the list. Or if you discover that a book is no longer available, you can remove it.

In the 4sysops wiki, IT pros can share their knowledge

Because all document changes are logged, we can easily revert inappropriate modifications. Whenever someone edits a Wiki doc, a corresponding entry will appear in the Activity stream. Thus, changes will be noticed.

You can also create new Wiki docs. Please make sure that the content is relevant to IT pros. The wiki is an experiment, and I hope this feature won’t be abused. If you are not sure that a doc topic is good, please contact me after you sign in. And if you are interested in sharing more of your knowledge and skills in the wiki, you can also earn money this way. Send me a message as well if this is something for you.

I didn’t cover all the new features in this post. I suggest you look around a little. Please share your opinion about the new layout and the new features in a comment below. Please also let me know if you discover a bug or if you have suggestions for changes.