Getting a web “presence” is not as easy as it is claimed. Good advice told me, if I wanted to have any hope of finding a market for the new books I am developing, I should start a set of blogs to grow a community of people who share my interests. The good advice was to not have a wide variety of blog posts all in one thread. I have at least three separate interests, so I am wrestling with how to have blogs threads clearly delineated. I have just discovered that separate addresses (URLs) make everykthing easier. It is a case of beating my head against a (software) wall or going with what the software tools make easiest. WordPress seemed easy (and free) and it claimed to have the most powerful tools so that is how it has gone.
The bad news is these addresses have to be purchased individually with a yearly fee of about $15, but the good news is that the web hosting fee can be a single low monthly fee for many URLs. As I get the bukgs out I intend to have four addresses (publishing; 8051 microncontroller programming–which I’ve had for a decade; Scripture revisiting; and sailing/boatbuilding). Now that I am getting the machinery turning, I expect to turn out regular blogs in each of the areas. Writing about things has never been a problem.
The third challenge is to get noticed by people who are interested…so far I am a voice crying in the wilderness! Thats fine for now since I don’t want people to try out a half-finished site and go on their way. Slowly starting is fine. I got connected to Rachel Held Evans’ blog site and she had just posted a piece about why she left church (the next day she posted why she returned to church, but that was less popular). Within a day she had about 200 comments and I think the number is around 500 by now, 4 days later! How on earth could anyone moderate such a flood of comments–especially since the comments branched off into discussions of their own with a serious dose of attack and counter attack?
So I intend to continue this discussion with myself until some others join in. My first web page (about my 8051 programming book) started about a decade ago and took about 6 months to be “found.” It settled down at ablut 150 “hits” a month. Back then I used FrontPage which made it easy to grow static pages, but had no idea of blogs. I lost track of how to update it, so it was unchanged for years. I hope to do much better this time!