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Diardaoin, 07/Apr/2016
10 Years of IslayBlog.com
Where have the years gone? This Saturday it will be 10 years ago that I registered the domain islayblog.com on 9/Apr/2006. And while I'm not blogging here as much as I used to (the Islay Pictures photoblog has taken some of the attention) this blog is far from dead. But as I will be on my way to Islay for the Islay Walking Week on Saturday I'm writing this up now. Let's take a look back and some general thoughts about what happened with the blog over the years:
As already mentioned I registered the domain on the 9th of April 2006, thinking a dedicated blog about Islay would be a good idea after having visited Islay for 8 years then. I had been blogging in a more general form (and with some interruptions still do, you can find the most recent incarnation of my personal blog at the ‘new’ Ministry of Propaganda) since June 2001 and had a dedicated Islay section on my first website since 1999, so I wasn't entering completely new territory. While admittedly it took me until May 2006 to fully launch the blog with its first post I did hint at my intentions before leaving for the Islay walking week 2006 (and the WayBackMachine even has what first appeared as a placeholder until I could go live).
I settled on a design fairly early on and have only made a few fairly minor tweaks since then, I still mostly like it, also I like consistency and recognisability (is that a word?). Blogging to me is to a large part about linking to other sites and interesting things (for this blog about Islay and its neighbours) on the web, I think I've done a fairly decent job of that. Many of those links will now be dead as sites have disappeared or moved, but many will also still work for many years to come. After initially not having comments due to a lack of technical capability I added a comment system later. Some of these were lost when the service I was using initially was shut down. Hopefully the service I'm using now will be around for many more years to come. Comments and feedback are very important I think, I've had some very valuable conversations in the comments providing me with new insight and information.
I could try to pull together some statistics like the number of posts, but I don't feel that is really that interesting. I think what's important is that hopefully my readers enjoy what I'm doing here, that the posts inform, entertain and educate them, that they get something from them.
So this is also a thank you to you, my readers, visitors, commenters and more. Some of you I've met in person over the years, others I've only met online. Either way, it's great having you, without you there would be no IslayBlog.com.
On to the next 5, 10, 15 years?
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