Why Do I Blog?
Posted on April 21st, 2007 by Anthony
I’ve seen this question floating around the blog-o-sphere for several months now. It’s what’s called a meme. One blogger writes a post that addresses a certain question or subject, then they pass it on to five others to do the same. Now it’s my turn as Shane over at Zoomstart has tagged me.
So, why do I blog?
This question has come up in my own mind occasionally. I think my reasons are ever-changing actually. Here are a few things that led up to me blogging…..
- After flipping through Dave Taylor’s, Creating Cool Websites, I decided that I wanted to learn how to build a site from scratch. I immediately built myself a homepage (embarassing), and was instantly hooked on trying to create something on the computer…..that anyone could access. I think I was looking at someones Blogger site and decided that looked interesting, so I checked it out!
- I set up a blog and linked it to my homepage. After I played with blogger for a while, I learned of Wordpress.com, and liked it much better, except for the fact that you couldn’t edit the CSS.
- After keeping my personal Wordpress.com site going for a few months, with posts that no one would find interesting other than myself and maybe my immediate family, I decided to try and install Wordpress on my own hosting plan.
- After having a hard time figuring out what I was doing, I finally realized how all the pieces fit together, and realizing that others had the same problems………after spending some time on the Wordpress forum. At this point I decided to write a tutorial, How To Install Wordpress with 1 and 1 Hosting. This tutorial brought a lot of traffic to my site, so I guess I was hooked from there.
As far as the question, Why Do I Blog?, I would have to say it’s because I feel like I’m sharing with others while at the same time, benefiting from it myself. I’m using it to:
- be part of a large community
- pass along information that I think might be helpful to someone else
- try and develop better writing skills
Here’s who I’m gonna pass this on to, if they may be so interested:
April 21st, 2007 at 1:29 am
Hey Anthony, it’s working!
You’ve got a nice, easy to read writing style (although, secretly, I come here just to see the BMW pace car photo in your header!) lol
I liked the 1and1 Wordpress article. Great idea. I use 1and1 myself. I’ve found them to be pretty good so far. And I really like the webstats in their control panel.
April 21st, 2007 at 10:42 am
Thanks!
Yeah, those racing photos are awesome! I just recently got permission from the photographer to include them with this design if I were to offer it as a download…….which I will probably do if I decide to use a different one.
I agree about the stats on the 1and1 control panel as well…..it’s pretty detailed.
April 21st, 2007 at 1:15 pm
Great post and thinks for passing it on to me. I’ll have post my reasons later on.
While I was reading this it made me think about the first website I built with FrontPage about 7 years ago and lets just say I hope that its never seen again.
Have you had pretty good luck with 1and1 hosting? I have been having some issues and I may be looking for a new host.
April 21st, 2007 at 1:58 pm
ClarkeW,
As far as 1and1 goes, I have no complaints. I can’t really say how it compares with others, because it’s the only one I’ve ever had. I’ve had my plan for probably a year or so, and have yet to have any issues.
Look forward to reading your “Why I Blog” post.
April 22nd, 2007 at 6:44 am
Thanks for the tag Anthony, I’ll see what I can whip up in the next few days
April 22nd, 2007 at 2:30 pm
Your welcome John. You have a great site, and I look forward to reading all the “why’s” behind it!
April 22nd, 2007 at 9:46 pm
I’ll post my reply here rather than do so on my own site.
I started blogging in 1999 because I didn’t see my distant friends very often and it was a way to keep them informed on whatever silly thing I was doing. Another reason I did it was to serve as a bit of a journal of my thoughts; I figured it’d be weird in the future to see what I was thinking on a certain day in the past. Third, I can talk about whatever silly, limited thing I want and if someone gets something out of it, great. If not, no big deal. As a huge computer geek, my wife notes I’ll ramble on about things that might only appeal to a handful of people, but those posts get me email or comments so sometimes people find those things useful.
April 22nd, 2007 at 10:26 pm
[...] it looks like Anthony tagged be with his post on “Why Do I Blog”. Actually this is a really good question, [...]
April 23rd, 2007 at 11:10 am
Hey Brian,
I don’t think I had even been on the internet yet in 1999……and I sure had never heard of a blog. You’ve been involved for a long time.
April 27th, 2007 at 3:55 pm
It’s been about 13 years since my first foray on to the Internet. My first Internet experience was logging on to the (ancient) mainframe at Ole Miss at Weir Hall from an old VT100 “dumb terminal” in the summer of 1994 and using Gopher to browse MTV’s website (back when it was run by Adam Curry). By the fall I had discovered UNIX and was running Linux at home off and on by early ‘95.
April 28th, 2007 at 1:48 am
I would assume that you are very well versed in all things Linux…..?
April 30th, 2007 at 4:26 pm
[...] on the heels of the Blog Apocalypse meme created by the Urban Monk, I now find myself tagged by Anthony at Antbag as part of the “Why I blog” meme that is also going through the [...]
May 11th, 2007 at 11:12 am
[...] couple weeks ago I was tagged by Anthony Baggett to answer the question, “Why do I [...]
February 3rd, 2009 at 11:58 pm
Love the site! I think everyone that starts blogging starts with a blogger blog, and then after a little research they hear about how great Wordpress is and convert. At least that is how it was for me and every other blogger I know, but I will say that I still have a blogger blog around just for kicks.