Mid Year Update - 2023 Edition

We are over halfway through 2023 and I wanted to provide a few updates on what I am working on since I have been receiving a few emails from people about it. I wanted to get into details on what I am working on now, what I plan on releasing in the next few weeks, and what the rest of my plans are for the remainder of the year.

AD CS on Windows Server 2022 - Web Version

I published an updated version of my original Building a Certificate Authority in Windows Server 2019 guide a few weeks ago. The AD CS on Windows Server 2022 guide is updated for Windows Server 2022 and Windows 11, and makes a lot of changes to the order in some steps and marks which steps are required and which ones are optional. The guide is still a work in progress, but it is fully tested.

I also did some cleanup of the original guide, which was migrated to my docs.mjcb.io website in late 2022. The original version of the guide that is still hosted on this website is no longer updated.

AD CS on Windows Server 2022 - PDF Version

When I originally released my Practical Guide to PKI with Windows Server - First Edition book I added a chapter at the end of the book which was a quick start guide that was meant to deploy a functioning Two-Tier Certificate Authority by using only the CLI. The idea was that after going through the contents of the book once, you could skip the chapters and just deploy the PKI as quickly as possible.

I ended up taking this final chapter of the book, made some minor changes to remove references to the actual book and released it for free as the Building a Certificate Authority in Windows Server 2019 guide. It is available on Gumroad, and like I said it is a free download.

Since I am working on the second edition of my book, I decided that I will do the same thing, but in the reverse order. I will release this version first, hopefully within the next few weeks. It will include all the updated details for Windows Server 2022 and Windows 11 and will be more in-depth and include more relevant details and screenshots.

The biggest difference is that it will most likely not be free this time. I am considering charging a small fee, maybe in the $5 to $10 range. I am not entirely decided on this, and I may change my mind when it comes time to release it.

Slightly off-topic, but still relevant to this topic. I have received at least a dozen emails in that last year about my decision to use Gumroad to distribute what is essentially a free guide. Full disclosure, I am aware that I can just distribute the PDF directly through this website. I chose to distribute the guide through Gumroad because I didn’t want the hassle of distributing it myself (this was something that I brought up on the first post ever made on this website). I also wouldn’t get decent metrics by distributing it through the website. By learning who is using the guide I have been able to make changes to the successor to that guide by including more specific information for certain industries.

Practical Guide to PKI with Windows Server - Second Edition

I ended up travelling a lot for work this year, much more than I had been travelling pre-pandemic. As a result of this I missed my original “deadline” of releasing the book in May. Whenever I travel for work, I don’t like to work on anything personal in nature. I need to be in a particular mindset to work on something like this, and when I am travelling for work it is not the best time to do something like this.

So, the only update I will provide is that I am still working on it, and I will hopefully release it later this fall.

Next Projects

I have already picked the topic for the next book that I am planning on writing. I am currently in the initial research phase and it will be a complete departure from my first book. It will be a technical book as well, but considerably different from what I have done before. I’ll start actually working on it once I have completed everything else related to the PKI topics mentioned above. At that point I will most likely not revisit the AD CS subject in an in-depth manner anymore, and I will talk more about that when I publish everything.

I will post all of my sources and research on my docs.mjcb.io website when the book is published, hopefully no later than the end of 2024.

Miscellaneous

I don’t really have much to say about the whole Twitter thing. I am fairly indifferent to it since I have never really used Twitter as a social media platform, and prior to the ownership changes in the fall of 2022 I had stopped going there for a some time. I had a Twitter account at one point which I closed back in 2018 when I purged most of my social media accounts, and I don’t think I ever actually tweeted anything.

So I am not affected or concerned, or even really care what is going on with Twitter, or X as it is now called.

Oddly enough the first time that I had ever heard of Twitter was way back in late 2006 or early 2007 when it was mentioned by Leo Laporte on TWiT. I was initially confused as to what he was even talking about.

I checked recently and I have three posts on this site that had embedded tweets, and last week I removed them and replaced them with screenshots. I am honestly not sure what it going to happen to that platform in the future, but there is enough link rot on the internet. I can at least preserve what was said in those tweets, even if the link to Twitter stops working in the future.

If you check out the source code on GitHub for this website, I have a folder for external sources. I try and put the sources of all referenced content on this website in case they are changed or disappear in the future. I will try and go through my existing posts and backup any existing external references as I can.