Yep, it’s one year ago today that I started blogging from this here site and looking back on things it actually feels like I’ve been doing it for far longer! I’ve really enjoyed writing articles every few days for the site, and I think it’s proved relatively successful.
I started writing on a Blogspot blog years ago and more seriously from about eighteen months ago, as it was quick and easy to set up and offered everything I needed to get a few thoughts out there. Last year, as I got more and more into it though, I started to realise that it wasn’t quite up to scratch in terms of design and certainly didn’t make it as easy as possible to find old articles.
That’s why I chose to set up my own website with a blog on it. It seemed to make sense, considering I had an interest in web development as well, and although I had some hiccups setting everything up (with this blog on a subdomain rather than on stevenkellow.com because of a setup mishap on my end) things have ran relatively smoothly since then.
One notable exception to that is that in August I decided to change things up and changed hosting providers for the site, which turned out to be a lot more work than I bargained for! Switching from GoDaddy to JustHost made sense from a number of angles, but I made the rookie mistake of not backing things up properly and had to basically rebuild my website from a database, which didn’t make for a fun weekend!
I’ve been really happy with my blogging efforts so far. I’ve had a few articles that have done really well through shares on Twitter, Facebook and syndication on other sites. It’s great to see the articles I’ve written getting recognition from wider audiences and even better to get some feedback on my thoughts and writing styles. This blog has been a springboard to writing for sites like Scotzine and for the university’s student newspaper The Gaudie, so it’s proven to be very helpful in furthering my writing experience.
I also find it a great way of collecting my thoughts on things and sharing them with people as well. I’ve managed to keep up a rate of posting at least twice a week for the whole year, which I’m very proud of and I certainly wouldn’t have imagined I’d be this diligent for a whole year when I kicked things off last October. I’m now sitting at 173 posts on site (with a couple extra Gaelic translations), with a good mix between football, politics, games, music, TV and film and a few other things too.
Seeing as the site for the blog here has barely changed in a year (while the main site was changed when I installed WordPress there back in August) I decided to give the theme a little bit of a spruce up this week and I quite like the new look. It’s based off the latest version of Edward R. Jenkins’ initial design, but I’ve made a few tweaks here and there to make it a bit easier on the eye, and added things like sharing buttons too. I hope you’ll agree that the layout is a bit cleaner than it was before, and that it makes articles easier to read.
So in wrapping up my short review of my year in blogging I’d like to say thanks to anyone that takes the time to read some of my articles. I know I write about a wide range of subjects, and surely not everyone is interested in everything I post, but it makes me happy to know that some people want to know what I think about one thing or another.
I’ve maintained a list of my favourite blog posts over the last year and if you want to get a flavour of my blog on the whole that’s perhaps the best place to start.
Here’s to the next year!