This morning those thoughts were on my mind as I opened up my blog to check comments. I love getting them. Most of them, that is. There is a subset of people who want to use comments to sell their sordid wares and a few of them found their way to my blog. I'm sorry if you were exposed to their messages. The comments were mostly imbedded deep into posts from past years. I'm not sure of the marketing strategy there, but there it is. I wouldn't have noticed it at all except that I clicked on the Comments tab on the left and they were near the top. They are deleted now. But now I'm alerted once more to the reality that this place doesn't clean itself. If I'm keeping it as a live blog I need to do some upkeep.
The biggest issue with this blog is purely it's age. If it were a child, I'd be expecting grandchildren by now. I switched from the earliest platform I blogged on to Blogger at the end of 2006. Over the last decade and a half I have deposited a ton load of information that is of little interest to anyone save myself. And I don't even look at it that much. And to top it all off my life has changed so drastically since I began blogging. I have grown, and changed. I don't really believe everything I put in those blogs anymore. And I just don't want it all out there anymore. A permanent public record of all my mistakes and foolishness doesn't seem so attractive anymore.
I don't want to lose blogging. It has been a big part of my life. I decided that the way to go with this is to make the posts I wrote before December 2018 private. I still have them and all the wonderful comments. I am just not going to share them anymore. December 2018 seemed like a good reset date; it marks the beginning of the journey I am on now.
Over the next week I will be making some tweaks to the template I am using. I've had it a long time and it's time for a few upgrades. Nothing drastic, but every new version of Blogger the template gets a bit more skewed and some things need to be moved around a bit.
Who knows, maybe the place will become respectable again.
I've done this too since 2005. Lots of history there, some great stories, some fun things, and some tragedies ... all posted for the world to see. I also had those strange comments added. I had to go the route of having all comments approved now.
ReplyDeleteI've been thinking of a new look for mine too. Maybe something very basic and simple.
I wonder if one could take all the blog posts and drop them into a book form. I doubt anyone but myself would want to read it.
But it would be like a road map of the past ... many years.
:)
Every blog needs a good cleanup and a fresh coat of paint every now and then!
ReplyDeleteGO FOR IT! can't wait to see the finished product!
ReplyDeleteI know how you feel Lisa. Back in February I started fresh. I just downloaded my entire blog to my computer and then uploaded it to a private blog. Once I saw everything had transferred correctly I just deleted all posts on my current blog and started fresh. It was very quick and easy to do. :)
ReplyDeleteI think you may have found the easy way to do it. I reverted everything I don't want to show to draft.
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