Blogging

I demi blog on here.

https://www.expat.com/forum/viewtopic.p … 573#527221

Hah! To say that Fred has a blog is like saying Shakespeare wrote a poem or two. Fred's blog is far and away the best amateur pictorial record on the web - a labour of love for his adopted country. Magnificent! It's an ideal.

We lesser mortals must try not to be intimidated by it, and to do our own things in our own way and to our own standards. My advice for anybody thinking of starting a blog is: just do it. Get a friend to do the minimal tech work needed, and then just start writing. Don't invite comments if you don't want to.

Gordon Barlow wrote:

Hah! To say that Fred has a blog is like saying Shakespeare wrote a poem or two.

I went shade of red when I read that.
I've never been compared to the Bard before, and I'm still just some dude with a camera.

However, if it proves interesting to a few people, and perhaps even inspires someone to write/photo blog their corner of the world, I'll be happy.

I regularly write one blog about tea using Blogger (Google's blogging hosting, which of course is free), and I started a second to tinker with another subject (Buddhism, a long term interest).

It's interesting that in the world of blogging there seems to mostly be two options for hosting sites and template formats (really two different things), Wordpress and Blogger (and of course others, those are just the main ones).  Blogs can be listed under a main domain (like .blogspot) or separately, for a relatively limited expense. 

It could just be my impression but it seems Blogger is seen as inferior, as the easier, less beautiful entry-level format option, so it seems a natural path to start there and migrate to a Wordpress based blog later on.  The trend is for blogs to use white backgrounds, a good bit of pictures, and simple but non-standard text formats (although no actual font names come to mind; not whatever this text is, maybe Calibri).

As you progress (if you choose to) there is always more and more you can do with blogging, different ways to track traffic, improve the structure, add buttons and functions, increase readership, etc., on to eventually trying to earn a substantial income through advertising.  If you wanted to spend hours researching blogging there are tons of blogs about blogging, even groups talking about blogging, on Google +.  It seems a bit odd to me that the main subjects that seem to be covered are food, travel, and blogging itself.

I just read a blog on different tools one might use for blogging, not the same thing as templates, which are the formats for a blog, but tools to do other things, like work with graphics, or sharing functions:

http://www.teaformeplease.com/2015/01/7 … -live.html

I hope it's OK to do this... Here is my favourite blogger of all time http://yoursaucepans.blogspot.pt/  She is an Englishwoman who lives in the Dominican Republic with her Dominican husband. To say that she lives a drama-filled life doesn't do justice to that term. I post the link here because all of us can learn from the way she presents her stories.