I figured I write an entry on blogging. It's inspired by BlogSavannah UnConference from Friday.

My kind of blogging is considered personal. I've been blogging since 2000, but have had a personal site since 1998. My first blogging service was Scribble.nu. It no longer exists, as far as a Google search is concern. I quit using it since it was so slow. At the time, I had a site on Geocities. I had a lot of static stuff on that site. I had some poems, pages devoted to our cats, and even a Richard Marx fan page But, when I found Scribble, I chose to use it. It was fun to have new content on my site. And back then, there was no such thing as a commenting system. When I quit using Scribble, I moved to Blogger. This was in 2001. By this time, I got my own domain. I could publish my entries to my own site via FTP. With Scribble, I was at the mercy of when its servers chose to work. However, Blogger had a drawback, too. If Blogger was down or hacked, I couldn't update my site.

Finally, in 2002, the latest blogging craze was Movable Type (MT). I jumped on that bandwagon. I could run MT from my own server. Still, if my server went down, so did my blog, but I had total control of it. Movable Type had just been launched a few months earlier and was in the earlier stages of the version 2.0. And as it developed, more goodies came out of the blogging world. Trackbacks! External blogging clients! You name it; I probably tried it. Some things were developed externally by users. Some were built into MT. Some things were built into other blogging systems.

I have tried the latest craze software, Wordpress. It is a great platform. However, I still use MT because at the time, I had better luck using an old blog gimmick with MT than I did with Wordpress. And what's that gimmick? Skins. Skins allow a reader to customize the look of a website. While at the moment, my default look is all peach in color, if anyone was sick of the peach look, they can make my site all plain and purple. Skins aren't as popular as they once were. In fact, it's been years since I made a new skin. But, I don't want to get rid of the ones I have because I like the variety.

And all the while, I still stayed a personal blogger. Most of my entries are about my life. Over time, I learned what I should and shouldn't blog about. If I'm angry at someone in real life, I learned to leave if off. Except with my siblings. I still rant about them. I know I shouldn't. Some days, I just can't help myself. But, mainly, I blog about the observation I make, the fun stuff in my life, and how important some people are been to me. I also talk about my depression. I am not ashamed of it. It is a part of me. Writing about it helps me get things off my chest. Also, I believe that my writings shows other people out there that they aren't alone. The same goes with the little writings I have on my sidebar. There are things in my life that I don't express on this blog. And if I do, it's in a cryptic way. The details are usually e-mailed to dear friends or written in a notebook, like my last entry remarks about.

I never thought I would be considered a top blog in Savannah. I still don't consider myself to be. However, I am probably one of the older blogs out there that still publishes.

And yes, my blog is simply titled ShawnAllison.com. But my last name is Latta. The reason my domain is what it is is that Allison is my middle name. I was 21 when I got this domain. I was very optimistic about getting married very soon. Well, it's been 7½ years now. I'm still not married, but I hope one day soon. Who, I don't know. I need to find a guy that loves me, soon. But, that's not the point. The point is the domain name allows me to adopt my husband's name and still be me. My last name may change, but I will always be Shawn Allison.

Now that I got that out of the way, I have many different tools and pieces of information besides this blog. I recommend the following things to help get your blog known and personalized:

• Last.fm - if you love music and want to share your tastes with the world. Last.fm is a great way of doing it. You download software that works with your media player. The software sends to Last.fm the names and artists of the tracks you listened to. Then, with a flash widget, Last.fm will display that information on a site. I don't have it on my site, but I do use it on my MySpace account.
• Feedburner - Most blogging clients publish a Really Simple Syndication (RSS) feed for a site. The link for the feed is usually shown by a symbol. Feedburner is an application that takes the default feed and republishes the feed. You can also combine multiple feeds into one with Feedburner. My Feedburner feed is my site's RSS feed, plus my Flickr feed. Feedburner also keeps track of the number of people using your feed. It's hard to do that with the default feeds.
• Flickr - you don't even have to be a blogger to enjoy Flickr. You just need to love photography. Flickr allows you to blog directly to your blog photos you took, and in some cases, photos other people took. I love taking pictures. I don't blog all of them. However, the ones I do helps me tell a story.
• Google Reader - This is the newsreader I use to read feeds. Now, there are other web-based newsreaders like NewsGator and Bloglines. Newsreaders are use to read the RSS feeds sites distribute. Instead of going to 15 different websites, a newsreader gives you one page or application to open. And in that one page/application, you can catch up with the latest from all those sites at once. There are also application newsreaders you can download to your computer. However, I recommend the web-based ones since you aren't limited to your computer to read a feed. You can read your feeds anywhere

And for Georgia based blogs:

• The Georgia Blog Carnival - I have never participated in this, but they found me and added me to the list. It's a bi-weekly entry hosted on various blogs keeping up with various things in the Georgia Bloggisphere. It also has Blogroll of many blogs found in Georgia.

And that's my geeky bit about blogging. If you have any questions, e-mail and I'll try to answer them. Now, if I can find a job now! I am a college graduate. I just need employment. My heart at the moment wants to move to Atlanta. Savannah is home, but Atlanta offers me what my heart wants.

[♪ Listening to: "I Want You to Want Me (Live)" - Cheap Trick]

Posted by Shawn at January 27, 2008 5:06 PM in Geek.