As I approach the year mark for my website (September), I decided to look over my website to see what things I liked or didn’t like and see how I want to move forward. The timing of this coincided with Google announcing that they had done some major upgrades on their blogging system this past year. This made me look back to the start of my website.
I originally started off doing a blog. I wanted to do a blog that was able to talk about life’s little anecdotes about being a military family, all of our little travel adventures, and of course FOOD! When I originally looked into doing a blog, there were two aspects that I did not like…(1) I wanted to be able to insert my own pictures as a background and (2) I could not have separate pages on my blog for each of my blog topics…I didn’t want them to blur into one giant hodge podge.
I liked the idea of having my own website as I was able to set it up the way that I wanted. The one catch to the website and the popularity that it grew was that it ended up not being my initial intent. I had requests for help and advice…so, instead the main focus went to ‘tips and hints for military families.’ I didn’t mind helping others…I love to help others. The catch was that I felt that my focus needed to always have a military angle and if it didn’t then I felt guilty. I found myself writing more informational pieces than free flowing writing that still had my voice in them…even I will admit that some of them were dry to read, but they were definitely informational!
As I was looking now into where I wanted my website to take me, the news headlines had me heading back to Google and their blogs. I also saw the carefree blogs that my friends wrote that were taking off so well…as I read blogs that were started after mine, I had almost a tinge of jealousy at the fact that my friends could just write on whatever they wanted. They were having so much fun and yet my website had turned into a job…especially with all of the extra maintenance that it took to do things like clear out inboxes with thousands of posts of spam.
I decided to give Google’s blogs a second look. When I checked out their updates, I found that I could insert my own photo into any of their layouts. Even though they added extra permanent pages that you could put on the blog, I didn’t find a way to link blog posts to the individual pages. There may be a way and I just didn’t see it, but I did find my own fix. I have decided to do three separate blogs based upon my original intent. This also goes back to my post a few weeks ago about priorities and taking back my life.
What does this mean for this website? Over the next couple of weeks, I will be setting up the following 3 blogs:
Our Army Family Life- This blog will be life’s little anecdotes about a day in the life of our Army family. The topics here are whatever pops into my head that day…it can range from kids to things around the house to stuff dealing with actual military life. While there will be the tips and hints that happy in normal everyday life, I do not intend for this to be a self help blog giving all of the answers for military family. What it will do is give family, friends, and any on lookers a glimpse into our life.
Our Army Family Adventures- As a military family, we have the opportunity to travel and see places that we may have not otherwise seen. As a family, we make a point of getting out and enjoying whatever area we are in. This blog will feature the places that we see (or have seen) as well as little travel tips when they come up.
Our Army Family FOOD!- As I jump back into the world of blogging, I cannot leave my love of food behind. My food blog will feature recipes worth sharing, new foods I try, and reviews of places that I have eaten.
By dividing the blogs, it allows readers to continue following me in the areas that interest them. Not every blog will have a new post every day, but by writing on what inspires me it will actually prompt me to write more because I will have my voice back and enjoy writing again. The Twitter and the Facebook page will remain. The Twitter may begin to get more updates that coincide with the themes of the new blogs and the Facebook may also gain some conversation questions making it more interactive.
As I set up each of the blogs, I will transfer some of the articles from this website so that they are still around for reference. I will post the links for the new blogs as soon as each is ready for viewing. This website will be around until September at which time I do not intend to renew the hosting for it.
I would like to finish this out by saying thank you to everyone who follows the blog. It is all of you who have made this website a success and I hope/welcome you to continue to follow over at the new blogs. Looking at the past 10 months by the numbers, we have been visited by over 8,000 different people (which the computer only tracks those who allow tracking; so, there can very well be more people) from 61 countries. These numbers are small in comparison to the major websites that we are used to, but it is definitely not bad not for my home grown 10 month old website. My only regret (haha) is that the one state in the United States that I did not get a visitor from (or at least not one that registered in the tracking system) was Vermont.
Thank you again. I will be posting the new links soon.
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