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My blogging footprint

My history dabbling in the management and running of websites dates back to the turn of the century.

I had an S Club 7 fan site hosted on homepage.com. I was actually pretty proud of it. I had a wicked nav bar which changed colour as you rolled over the menu buttons (I stole the CSS off another site and tweaked it), a Bravenet hit counter, guestbook, photos, lyrics to every single song of theirs and MP3s for downloads.

Shit, copyright holders would have had a field day back in this wild west of content. I honestly don’t remember where I got all those image, music and video files that I linked to – presumably off various other S Club 7 sites without a thought to rights. That’s how things were.

I think I also had a Tripod site (simply because I recently got an email from Tripod – who knew they were still around?) and a Geocities page on which a friend and I posted parodies to songs that we made up during classes.

I occasionally blogged on Bebo, and in 2008 on a whim started up this WordPress blog here during downtime at my part time job. I picked WordPress because I liked the look of it better than Blogger (a good choice) and my username back before “musings” became passe, with my initial in front (twice for good measure. I have no love for e.e. cummings but I do think that’s an awesome moniker).

I’ve also got another two WP blogs – one I set up when T and I were flathunting in an effort to boost our chances, and one that’s not search-engine indexed that was meant to serve as my professional site, where I keep links to my best stories and such. Were I to get laid off, I’d whip that all into shape (possibly merging it with this blog to take advantage of its longevity).

But that’s not all. I’ve got a Posterous blog languishing, which was my first attempt at setting up a professional blog/website/portfolio, and lasted maybe two months.

And I’ve got my Tumblr, where I post photos from Project 365, reblog cool shit and share other snippets from life. I have to say, though, I’ve seen some awesome fully functioning websites built on Tumblr, and if I was starting from scratch today I’d be very tempted to make Tumblr my platform.

And slightly off topic, my writing itself dates back to the age of about 13-14, when I scored my first blogging gig (back before the word existing) writing an online “diary” for possibly the first women’s oriented online mag here. That, and all the other niche sites I went on to write for, have now gone through many incarnations and those words have been dispensed into the web’s graveyard, for which I am partially thankful.

My digital path is a bit of a wasteland. I should probably get around to cleaning up the litter of my abandoned footprints.

What does yours look like?

9 thoughts on “My blogging footprint

  • Reply addvodka February 29, 2012 at 13:51

    Awesome! When I was 15, I was a moderator for a big, all-girls forum and chat community. At the same time, I ran a terrible, silly, livejournal blog on which I rambled about my boring, 15 year old life and posted pictures of the things I wasted my money on.

    Other than that, when I was 19 I started, and bombed (due to lack of internet knowledge.. and knowledge of websites in general) an online store, wasting thousands of dollars This discouraged my online ventures until a year and a half ago, when I decided to start blogging on WLGYL! Yours is much more interesting.

  • Reply fabulouslyfrugirl February 29, 2012 at 14:16

    I also had a string of blogs, although my trail is not nearly as creative as yours. πŸ™‚

    I started blogging in college when my ex boyfriend moved away and I was stuck in a crappy internship. Then, I wrote about my travels as an exchange students, then I wrote a personal blog about getting over said ex boyfriend. Then, came a very short lived fashion blog, and a minimalism blog. Finally, I decided to start a personal finance blog to keep myself accountable πŸ™‚

  • Reply Fig February 29, 2012 at 16:00

    Mine sounds similar! I’ve been online for so long and in so many places I almost can’t remember where I’ve written things.

  • Reply Shilpan February 29, 2012 at 16:17

    Pretty interesting history. Blogging was in its infancy in early 2000. So, you should be proud of your early accomplishments on the blogoshpere.

  • Reply Sense February 29, 2012 at 20:22

    Wow, you have a long-lived online presence! Very appropriate, though, because you are now a journalist! I wouldn’t expect anything less.

    I was just thinking about this this afternoon–I’ve been ‘writing’ since I was old enough to put pen to paper. I paper-journaled until ~2003, then tried livejournal to whine about a breakup. That was quickly abandoned when it became clear that I was not emo nor hipster enough to pull it off. In 2005, I was all myspace and blogged there a bit about daily life stuff, mostly trying to be funny. I joined facebook in 2004 when I got the invite because of my university affiliation (they used to be Uni-only, and extended invites in batches to various college alumni/current students), but didn’t do anything on it until 2007 or so, when myspace turned into a wasteland. Of course, in 2005-06, I was conquering my debt and spending WAY too much time at work looking at PF blogs. Eventually, it hit me that *I* could start one of my own to track my progress. I never EVER EVER thought anyone else would read it. EVER (I’m still surprised when I get comments!). It is completely out of character that I didn’t keep it private, but I guess I felt that making it public would make me hold myself accountable in some way. I am glad I did. πŸ™‚ My blog is such a part of me now…and it makes my financial journey so much more fun than it would be if I were going this without it! Thanks for asking. πŸ™‚

  • Reply youngandthrifty February 29, 2012 at 20:40

    That is so awesome! LOL SSSSS club!! I loved watching them. Rachel (is that her name??) was so pretty.

    You have a huge footprint- The only footprint I ever had was going on ICQ.

  • Reply On blogging, identity and niches (plus a surprise bonus!) | Musings of an Abstract Aucklander March 16, 2012 at 07:25

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  • Reply Anne October 13, 2012 at 02:04

    Hi! First time visitor/commenter and I’m glad this is the first thing I read. Just the mention of Bravenet makes my heart flutter. LOL.

    I remember the fan pages like it was yesterday! My friend once hosted a Moffats (HAHAHA) fan site because we were huge fans and hoped the site would bring them closer to us (le sigh).

    I have been cleaning my online… clutter for the past few months. I have so much. Had I known that the internet would now be so public, I would’ve taken it easy back then!

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