The Blogging World

Since yesterday was my 50th post Beach Party, I decided that today I would write about blogging in general. I got into blogging this past winter through Terrie @ Terrie's Li'l Piece of Serenity, who is an online friend I met through a message board and Rate My Space on HGTV.com. None of my friends or family IRL have blogs or visit blogs, and they were always something I thought were kind of narcissistic, people writing about themselves, or trying to make some kind of a political point. I just didn't understand why the need to keep what would essentially be a journal, and then post it for the world to read. Of course, now I know that people blog for a variety of reasons, the main being to share ideas with those of similar interests, such as mommy blogs, crafting, home-schooling, home-based businesses, you know the list! Blogs are a great support for people who may not get this support IRL because of their geographical or physical location. It's virtual networking, on an enormous scale!

I began blogging as something else to do during the day. I have been on medical disability for almost 2 years, and I can't do a lot of the physical things I used to, so more sedentary pursuits like crafting & reading have essentially been filling my time. Then I discovered the message boards, where I was encouraged by people to share my foolish thoughts on books, crafting, TV, whatever, with a larger audience, to create a blog. Since I enjoy technology and have created web pages in the past, I thought I'd give it a go!

I spent quite a bit of time at the beginning on the layout & design, like most of us do. I wanted my blog to be visually readable, and easy to follow. I searched around until I found the code to add the third column to my standard Blogger template, and I wiggled the colors around a little. I made my own banner with some photos I had taken at various beaches. I didn't want a deep or tall banner that required people to do any scrolling before they could read the title of the first posting. One thing I had learned when I took a web design class was that people want information as soon as they click on a link; don't make them scroll for that first bite!

After it looked OK, I finally published a couple of posts about crafts, decorating, and books I was reading. I wasn't sure how search engines found blogs, so I did some research on that topic, and joined a couple of groups people could search, such as Blog Catalog and Blogs by Women. I found blogs I enjoyed, starting with Terrie, and followed the bread crumbs out of the decorating blogs into crafting, mommies, homeschooling, and home keeping. I am not a mommy, I don't home school, and I am a terrible home-keeper, but you can see how the trail goes! And, even though these things are not part of my daily life, I obviously have something in common with many of these bloggers, because we all are on each others' bread crumbs of blogs trail! It was neat to find people I remembered from RMS now out in the blog world ahead of me, including French, Picket, Rue, and others I may not have mentioned!

I found that leaving comments brought people to my blog, and asking questions in my postings b rought me more comments. Then I stumbled upon some nifty weekly events which encouraged people to visit others with similar interests, Vintage Thingies Thursdays, and The Simple Woman's Daybook. I find the Daybook a great way to start my week peacefully, and the Vintage Thingies is a lot of fun to see what cool old things we all have! I tried participating in the Sunday Salon book discussions, but I have recently been reading a lot less due to some vision problems, as well as obsessive blogging!
With my own real world getting smaller each day, meeting people online has been a blessing. I enjoy the contests & giveaways that many bloggers sponsor, and I try to publicize them when possible in my sidebar. I recently came across a fabulous blog for women, The Secret is in the Sauce! They have been doing 6 Weeks of Summer giveaways, and this week is the last one, a 4GB iPod! Last week it was a Sony digital camera! The neat thing about SITS is that it is a sisterhood where the members post the group logo on their sites, and always leave comments on sites where they see the logo. Also, the SITS main site has a featured blogger each day, which is another way of highlighting your own blog, or again, meeting other people.

So, these are my random ramblings on how my thoughts about blogs have changed in the past 6 months! I hope through this trail you may have found an idea or a blog that will interest you! Please let me and the blog owner know if you have!