Two years ago, I began my initial attempt at blogging.
In 2005, blogging was a major buzzword in the tech industry. At that time, many considered it a fad. While blogging is still an important part of online culture, I think it has begun to establish itself as a more permanent fixture of web culture.
In the past two years, I have made several attempts to post regularly, but in each case I’ve only lasted a short while. I plan to give this another try.
I think part of the reason I’ve had trouble keeping up is that I’ve searched for perfection.
I wanted a weblog system which would stand the test of time… a formatting scheme which would be readable and convertible well into the future. Online systems like blogger store your entries in their own databases, and I was not confident that I would be able to extract them for archival in the future. I want a weblog to be accessible and transferrable to any future medium.
But for now, I think I have found a comfortable compromise. I host this site on my own server, and I can retrieve the posts as needed. Thanks to Wordpress’s popularity, I can be sure that there will be converters to other formats in the future.
Design is another reason I haven’t consistently updated my website. I haven’t been able to spend the time to create a design which truly represents me; I have modified templates to some success, but I had not found a design which I could consider acceptable for long-term use on my site. Part of my career exploration involves web design, so I would like to be the creator of my own site’s design.
For the moment, though, I am going to try to relax my standards, because content should be the primary base for any site. I can change and create a new design later; but I can start creating content now. I know how to script using Python and other tools; I can convert my site to any future system if I need to.
In terms of content, I have struggled with what type of content I want to be made public: Should this site contain only technological posts, in case I use it as I become more involved in the tech field? Would it be good or bad to include personal-themed (i.e. non-tech) content in such a site?
For now, I think I should use this site to represent me — as an individual and as as a professional. After all, it is named after myself; I may as well allow myself the freedom to create content related to all aspects of my own life. Separation of content can be done through categories in software — I can always separate or branch off sections later. The primary hurdle will be creating content in the first place.
I have considered creating varying “permission levels” for users who register at the site; for instance, I could set posts in a “family” category to only be viewable by subscribers whom I designate as family. I may play with these ideas later on — after all, I can change these settings at will.
With that, I begin another foray into the blogging world; perhaps I can allow this to become a more regular aspect of my life. Time will tell.
