The istiquritconsultant.com re-launch is complete: the old business domain is now a personal tech diary — AI, Windows, Linux, self-hosting, and workflow notes, written by the same Md. Istiqur Rahman who runs Remote SEO Consultant, kept deliberately separate from any paid work.
Why This Domain Got a Second Life
Back in August, I wrote the full story of why Istiqur IT Consultant became Remote SEO Consultant. Short version: the old name described a person, not a problem, so the business moved to a name people actually search for. But istiquritconsultant.com itself didn't get shut down. I said then it would become "a personal, non-commercial tech diary," separate from client-facing content.
That wasn't a placeholder line to close out a FAQ. It was a real plan, and it's done. The istiquritconsultant.com re-launch has been live since August 24, 2026, running on a purpose-built site, not a leftover template with a new logo slapped on it.
I'm writing this now, almost two months in, instead of the day it shipped, on purpose. A "just launched" post written the morning of launch is a promise. A post written after the site has stayed up, taken a real post, and kept its newsletter growing is a result. I'd rather show you the second one.
What's Actually Live Right Now
The homepage opens with the line that explains the whole site: "Istiqur IT Consultant runs this tech diary — technology, AI, workflow wins and fails, Windows and Linux notes." No service pitch above the fold. No lead-capture form blocking the first scroll. Just an identity card and a reading list.
Six categories are structured and live, each with its own dedicated page — its own intro, its own themed game, and just that category's posts, nothing mixed in from the other five:
AI — practical tools, workflows, and experiments, judged on what actually works, not on launch-day hype. No posts live yet; this is the category I expect to move fastest once it starts.
Workflow Optimization — systems, tools, and habits, the wins that stuck and the ones that didn't. This is the category with the diary's first real post already live.
Windows — notes from running Windows day to day, the actual daily-driver kind, not a fresh install staged for a screenshot.
Linux — notes from running Linux day to day, same honesty standard as the Windows side: what worked, what didn't, dated.
Self-Hosting — real services on real hardware, what stayed up and what broke, from someone who actually has to fix it when it does.
Tech Journey — how a pharmacist ended up 18+ years deep in tech, the actual turns, not the tidy two-line summary.
Pick any category above, or see all six laid out together on the blog archive — one page, organized by category only, no tag-cloud guessing game.
The first published post lives in Workflow Optimization: "OpenCode Not Working: Why Both CLI & Desktop Died" — the exact error text, the one-field root cause, and how I fixed and verified both the CLI and the desktop app after adding five custom subagents broke both at once. That's the tone for everything else that'll go up here: something actually broke, here's precisely what and why.
One post isn't a content library yet, and I'm not going to pretend otherwise. What it is, is proof the format works: a real bug, a real fix, written down close to when it happened instead of reconstructed from memory months later. The newsletter already has 5,078 subscribers waiting for the next one.
Get the Next Post First
Real AI, Windows, Linux, and self-hosting notes — no pitch, no funnel, just what actually happened. Free, no account needed. Join 5,078 subscribers already getting it straight from istiquritconsultant.com.
Join the newsletterThe Brand, Explained Properly
Remote SEO Consultant got its own brand system in the rebrand (violet, the Ascent mark, Bricolage Grotesque). istiquritconsultant.com got a completely separate one, because a personal diary and a client-facing consultancy shouldn't look like the same product wearing two shirts.
The color is Signal Emerald — #0E8F5E as the brand green, #0D8557 as a text-safe variant for body copy, #123B2C as a deep support tone, running against a near-black #0B1215 dark base (the site defaults to dark) or a soft #F9FDFE light base. Every pairing is checked to AAA contrast, because a tech diary gets read at length, not glanced at for three seconds.
The mark is a ribbon bookmark — rendered in a "Clear Glass" treatment: blur, a specular highlight, a translucent tint, hand-drawn as its own SVG rather than reused from a shared component library. The idea behind it is simple and literal: a bookmark signals reading and returning to something, which is exactly what a diary is for. It was deliberately not built to look like an IT-consulting shield or a corporate badge.
Typography splits the same way the sites do. Headlines run in Bodoni Moda, a high-contrast serif that gives the diary a more personal, almost editorial feel than the Bricolage Grotesque used on the business side. Body copy runs in Hanken Grotesk. The whole thing is built to be read in long sessions, in a dark room, at the end of a day spent actually doing the work being written about.
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Subscribe — no spam, everHow It's Actually Built
No WordPress, no Webflow, no page builder. istiquritconsultant.com runs on a custom, hand-coded PHP site — content written directly in Markdown files, version-controlled, and compiled into the pages you're reading now. That's a deliberate choice, not a flex: fewer moving parts, no plugin update treadmill, no admin dashboard to secure.
The rest of the stack is unglamorous on purpose: Cloudflare in front for DNS and performance, a LiteSpeed page cache tuned for a fast first load, Google Analytics 4 for honest traffic numbers, and IndexNow so new posts get found quickly instead of waiting around. Fonts are self-hosted, not pulled from a third-party CDN, which is a small detail that adds up to a faster, more private page. Every release gets a real version number — the site you're looking at today is build 2.1.1 — so changes are tracked the same way I'd track anything I'd call engineering rather than tinkering.
One honest note, since this whole blog is about working in the open: I use AI tools throughout my workflow, as often as they're actually useful — the same way I'd reach for any other tool that saves time without cutting corners. I'm not going to walk through exactly how or where, the same way I wouldn't hand over a client's technical playbook. What matters is the result: a site I built, own, and can explain line by line if you ask me to.
Yes, There Are Mini-Games
This is the part I actually enjoyed building. Every category on istiquritconsultant.com has its own small, playable game, themed to that category's subject — not a gimmick bolted on for novelty, a reading break built into the site itself:
- AI — Signal Runner
- Workflow Optimization — Workflow Sprint
- Windows — System Defender
- Linux — Terminal Chase
- Self-Hosting — Uptime Runner
- Tech Journey — Duck Hunt
It doesn't stop at categories. Scroll to the bottom of the homepage and there's a full game of Breakout waiting. The About page has Journey Snake — eat each stage of an 18-year career to grow, which is a more honest résumé format than most. Contact has Catch the Signal, a 30-second reflex game: click the real pings, leave the red static alone. Some individual posts get their own bonus game on top of the category one, too — the OpenCode post has a second, post-specific game themed directly to that bug.
That's nine real, playable games across one small personal site. Each one runs lightweight in-browser (three.js), opens in a modal with a score HUD, and ships with on-screen controls so it works on a phone, not just a keyboard.
Why bother? Because "technical blog" doesn't have to mean humorless. A tech diary about things breaking and getting fixed earns a little playfulness, and building nine small, working games — six themed to categories, three themed to specific pages — is its own kind of craft, not a throwaway add-on. It's the same standard the rest of this site and this post hold themselves to: finished properly or not shipped at all.
What This Site Deliberately Isn't
The homepage says it directly: "It isn't a sales funnel: no pitch inside the posts." That line exists because the two sites used to be the same site, and the old one blurred that line constantly — IT-consulting service language sitting next to personal notes, with no real separation.
The SEO, GTM, and web-development work I do professionally is on remoteseoconsultant.com, full stop. istiquritconsultant.com links to it once, from an "About" and "How to work with me" section, clearly labeled as a separate, paid engagement — not something stitched into the bottom of a Windows troubleshooting post hoping you'll click through. If you're here for the tech diary, you get the tech diary. If you want the consulting work, that's a different, explicit conversation.
How the Two Sites Fit Together
Same person, two clearly separated surfaces, on purpose:
remoteseoconsultant.com — the business. SEO for SaaS, SEO for eCommerce, web development for small business. Client-facing, outcome-focused, where the rebrand story and release notes like this one live.
istiquritconsultant.com — the diary. AI, Windows, Linux, self-hosting, and workflow notes, written the week something actually happens, not batched into a quarterly roundup. No funnel, no pitch, no editorial calendar forcing out a post that isn't ready.
If you found this post because you're a prospective client, remoteseoconsultant.com is where you want to be. If you found it because you want unfiltered, dated notes on what actually works in AI and self-hosted infrastructure from someone who's doing it daily, that's istiquritconsultant.com.
Go Play Them
Nine real games, nine real places to find them. Here's exactly where each one lives:
- Signal Runner — a quick AI-themed run. Found in the hero banner at the top of the AI category page — the "Play" button sits right next to the page title.
- Workflow Sprint — themed to systems and habits. Same spot, same pattern: top of the Workflow Optimization category page, in the hero.
- System Defender — a tank-defense game for the Windows crowd. Top of the Windows category page, in the hero.
- Terminal Chase — a chase game, Linux-flavored. Top of the Linux category page, in the hero.
- Uptime Runner — themed to keeping services alive. Top of the Self-Hosting category page, in the hero.
- Duck Hunt — a straight arcade classic, Tech Journey's pick. Top of the Tech Journey category page, in the hero.
- Breakout — the one on the homepage itself. Scroll past the FAQ accordion near the bottom of the page — it's sitting right there, not hidden behind a click.
- Journey Snake — eat each career stage to grow. On the About page, in the journey panel next to the career story.
- Catch the Signal — a 30-second reflex test. On the Contact page, below the "what's worth emailing about" section.
Plus one bonus: the OpenCode post has its own post-specific game, themed directly to that bug, built into the post itself.
Frequently Asked Questions
What happened to istiquritconsultant.com after the rebrand?
It's live again, re-launched as of August 24, 2026, as a personal, non-commercial tech diary — AI, Windows, Linux, self-hosting, and workflow notes, separate from the Remote SEO Consultant business.
Is istiquritconsultant.com free to read?
Yes. No account, no paywall. The newsletter is optional and free.
How often does new content go up?
Whenever something real happens worth writing down — no fixed editorial schedule. The site is honest about that rather than forcing a post out on a calendar that doesn't match the actual work.
Does the tech diary sell anything?
No. The SEO, GTM, and web-development work is a separate, clearly labeled, paid engagement run through remoteseoconsultant.com — never pitched inside a diary post.
How much work actually went into istiquritconsultant.com and this post?
More than it looks like at a glance. The site itself is a hand-coded build with its own brand system, nine themed mini-games (one per category across six categories, plus three more on specific pages, plus bonus ones on individual posts), a versioned release process, and real infrastructure choices (Cloudflare, LiteSpeed, self-hosted fonts) — not a weekend template swap. This post matches that standard: every date, subscriber count, and URL in it was checked against the live site before publishing, not assumed.
Who is this blog actually for?
Builders and tinkerers running AI experiments past the first demo, Windows and Linux switchers who want current, honest notes instead of a decade-old forum thread, and career changers who want proof a straight line into tech was never required.
Read the Tech Diary
- Read the latest post — OpenCode Not Working: Why Both CLI & Desktop Died
- Browse the full archive
- About Istiqur Rahman
- Get in touch
- Read the rebrand story that started this
- See the paid SEO & GTM work on Remote SEO Consultant
The istiquritconsultant.com re-launch closes a loop I opened two months ago: a domain that didn't get retired, just rebuilt into something more honest about what it actually is.
