It's official now. My newly created witness is smoothly running and signing blocks! At the time of writing this post already four blocks got signed by the witness. This number was only possible by the early support from some of you. By some of you in helping me getting the witness running, or others by giving me the well valued witness vote!
Solving the Last Hick-Ups
In the last few posts I've been updating you on my journey of the setup. From renting a VPS, getting SSH access, to installing the HIAB. The HIAB Docker setup made the install easy and hassle free. Nevertheless, I managed to make a mistake and after a long wait, missed the first block that was assigned to the witness. Some investigation showed used the wrong signing key. A simple reset of the wallet and adding the correct keys did the trick and since a few days the witness is signing blocks.
Already at this early stage I got the support from a number of Hiveans by receiving the well needed votes. This bumped up the voting rank and sped up the queue time. Without these votes I would probably be waiting for the first block now.
Call for Votes
With running a witness comes the need for votes. Cause, in the end, it is the votes that keeps a node running. Or, keeps the blockchain healthy and decentralised if you want. If you believe in maintaining a sound list of diverse witness nodes a vote for my witness could be worth considering:
Vote for My Witness
Why Vote?
While many of you know the principle behind the concept of Distributed Proof of Stake (DPoS) and how it works for hive, I think it is good to reiterate that using all and regularly reviewing your votes is good practice. The regular witness update post by 
- Witnesses ensure the safety and proper functioning of the blockchain network
- Voting for your trusted witnesses will help mitigate 51% attacks
- Voting for witnesses costs you nothing, it does not use your vote power or Hive Power (HP) and you can vote for up to 30 preferred witnesses
- You can change your vote at any time
- If you don't know who to vote for, you can choose another user as your witness proxy this means you will automatically vote for the same witnesses as the user you have chosen as proxy. Later on, you can remove that proxy and manually vote for your preferred witnesses.
You can easily review you witness votes on the main front ends.
To quickly get an overview of your votes for stale witnesses you can simply enter your username on this page: https://primersion.com/witnesses
Thank you for your support!