Blog Questions Challenge

I’ve had the post that Dan did answering these questions marked as unread in my RSS feed reader since he published it, fully intending to do my own version but…I’m crap at actually blogging. Dunno if you noticed that.

Why did you start blogging in the first place?

I’ve always liked writing about things that happened (or maybe happened – I’m not much of a fiction writer but when it could be anchored in real life things, that seemed to be doable) – the first thing that I remember publishing on a computer was a newspaper written with a friend reporting on things as if our hamsters were doing it. There were also adverts in the newspaper for companies like Punn Lolly (obviously very related to the UK travel agent). It is absolutely cringe to admit this, but we were 10, and we had fun!

I joined the school newspaper in year 9/10 and became the co-editor by slight default, it wasn’t really as big a thing as I had imagined from TV and books, but it was fine, and I left before going into sixth form because it was more of a main school thing. I liked doing it, but writing unbiased articles in a neutral tone wasn’t as fun as just writing from my own POV.

I started my blog (although I don’t think I really realized it was a blog – I just liked writing about the things we got up to) in 2001 and although I’ve been off and on again with writing, I’m proud I still have it going all these years later. I’ve actually been working on getting the old posts into this WordPress database – password protected to protect the innocent (me, obvs) but I just want to have the almost complete history of my writing online into one place.

What platform are you using to manage your blog and why did you choose it? Have you blogged on other platforms before?

Back in the beginning, I started by writing each post in notepad and publishing as static HTML. That obviously wasn’t a great solution, but it was still around the time when Blogger was a thing that published to your own space and didn’t even allow people to comment on posts.

I think it was around late 2001/2002 when I was given a simple little Windows program that would allow me to write the posts, and would publish it as a very basic PHP wrapped file (to save time when I changed the layout a few times a month as we did back then!) pushing the oldest post off the page once there were more than 5 posts. My friend created a site that allowed you to put comments on Blogger and other sites (back when there were so many different options!), so it was a bit of a hack to get that working. (This is actually why I don’t have a complete set of all of the OG blog posts because it just trashed the old data – because back then, I don’t think we realized that the internet is mostly forever but sometimes you’ll need to do your own archiving)

In 2004 (I think?), I switched to WordPress. I think I read about it on a blog (of course!) and felt like something a bit more purpose built would be a good idea. I still think WordPress is a great option although I’m always looking at new options in case they’re better for me!

How do you write your posts? For example, in a local editing tool, or in a panel/dashboard that’s part of your blog?

I tend to write my posts directly in the Gutenberg  composing page in WordPress (I can hear some of you gasp at this, I promise I’m not a monster for doing so!), but really it depends. Currently, I’m writing this in Word because I’m on a plane back to Seattle and the wifi isn’t working because they’ve had to turn the entertainment system off and on again (insert your own Microsoft jokes here when this plane absolutely has some MSFT employees on it)

When do you feel most inspired to write?

Oof. I haven’t felt inspired tbh to write so much these days. I went through a period about 10 years ago where I was writing about anything I wanted but I was trying too hard to be like any other fashion blogger and chucking in a load of affiliate links. I then went though this whole phase where I felt embarrassed about posting anything, which only got worse after moving to the US – should I be trying to cater to my old loyal audience, or should I be trying to talk to the new ones? Or do I just stick my head in the sand and not write anything (yeah, you know how this one ends).

Covid/moving house only exacerbated things – where I would previously have gone to meet ups or organized my own, I was now filled with (even more) worry about meeting others, and after moving house, I didn’t know where to go!

Things have gotten slightly better over the last year or so, but it’s not really reflected in my publishing schedule.

Do you publish immediately after writing, or do you let it simmer a bit as a draft?

For the personal blog, I usually post straight away. When I was more inspired to write more than one blog post every few quarters, I would schedule them but that was more so there wasn’t an overwhelm of published posts. This post is being scheduled, because I wrote another post before this one (I KNOW! WHAT IS GOING ON. Maybe the secret to my productivity is long haul flights, which is a shame because I don’t intend to do that again for at least a few years)

What’s your favourite post on your blog?

After so long and so many posts, I can’t choose one single post, but the thing I find super important is being able to go back and fact check myself or be able to reminisce about an event. It’s why I am anti deleting content (just because you don’t see it anymore doesn’t mean it doesn’t still exist!)

Any future plans for your blog? Maybe a redesign, a move to another platform, or adding a new feature?

I’m still fairly happy with this layout – this header is at least a decade old though and I feel like I *should* mix it up a bit because it doesn’t fully reflect me…but to what? I’m not exactly artistic, and I don’t really want to use the g’damn AI’s (as it is often referred to in our house) to generate something shit.

I’m working on bringing in as many old posts as I can recover from the Internet Archive (a truly wonderful non profit who deserve more funding for the historical recording that they do) although that probably will be hidden from you! (soz not soz)

I’m still really happy with the Instagram import function I got set up – I can’t help but suspect that one day Instagram will disappear and the 15 years of posts I have on there will vanish. I imported all of my posts before archiving the majority of them last year because I wanted to clean up my Instagram profile because do you really need to go to Instagram and see a post of a cup of tea with a terrible filter? Absolutely not.

If you’re still a blog person, I’d love to see your answers!