I am crossing a small milestone this month; it has been ten years since I started blogging! I had a blog before this in the late 90s, but this was primarily to publish lists of things (one of the first uses of blogs). Then, I started a history blog (history.net.au). Still, historical knowledge does not lend itself to blogging, partly because of the slowness (or significance) of historical debates and insights, and blogs are quick and informal (I needed help to think of what to say). Not that there is a strict prescription for blogging, but blogs are personal things, and historical narratives are anything but intimate at times.
http://cursivecontent.com/10-dos-and-donts-for-the-personal-blogger/
And the first blogging platform I used was the hosted version of Blogger. However, it was limited in functionality, so I installed MovableType; it had more functionality than Blogger but needed to be more straightforward and clumsy. It took too long to post anything, so I gave up. Then I discovered WordPress and have yet to look back. What an excellent piece of software it is, and it has travelled very well through major web-based innovations over recent years (and I like all the new cloud functionality that comes with the Jetpack plugin).
And it still surprises me that many of the academic population still think a blog is a home or a static formal document suited up for a firm handshake with a resume under the arm. There is nothing wrong with this, live and let live, I say, but there are better contexts for this sort of stuff. (…I am happy that you are doing well, but jeez, over and over again!)
And strange, the most influential post I ever posted (almost eight years ago) is titled What is privacy and why it is essential? It has consistently received the most daily traffic for the past six years. Maybe I should blog about privacy, but I am sure that blogging about one thing would get a bit dull (serendipity is much more fun)
So get out there in the electronic heard; learn through doing!
Leave a Reply