I had a very successful Zoom session with a member of our local family history group earlier in the week. This member wants to start a blog and, as a more cautious soul than me, wants to be prepared prior to launching her blog.
Rosie (a nom de plume) had been doing lots of research on blogging and, prior to our session, sent me a list of questions to be answered. This was a most useful session as we were able to focus her learning on her needs. Rosie went away with many of her questions answered.
The session was also beneficial for me, I am the sort of person who often dives into tasks without much thought and when giving advice on blogging I suggest that others "Just do It". Working with Rosie made me realise that my trial and error approach to tasks doesn't suit everybody.
Going through Rosie's list provided me with an opportunity to reflect on my GeniAus blog which is steaming towards its 12th birthday. I have identified several areas that can do with a tune-up so, this morning I have been carrying out some maintenance on the Topics widget in my left sidebar.
As Blogger doesn't offer a Categories feature I use the Labels Gadget which allows one to display up to ten Labels/Keywords, as a de facto Categories component. When I blog I make sure that I always add one or more of the ten labels featured in the Labels Gadget to each of my posts. On looking at my ten labels I decided that they were no longer as relevant as when I set them up.
I feel that the labels I am now using describe the general themes of my blog. I have introduced two new labels in place of the retired "Family", one is Ancestors (soon to become Our Ancestors)for posts about deceased members of the family and one is Our Family for posts that refer to living family members. I am in the process of relabelling of posts that fit into these new categories. I also need to tidy up my up my labels for Blogging and Geneablogging, I can't decide which I prefer to use. I'd like to add an Events label so I think Libraries may be on the chopping board.
Your thoughts on this are most welcome.
Rosie (a nom de plume) had been doing lots of research on blogging and, prior to our session, sent me a list of questions to be answered. This was a most useful session as we were able to focus her learning on her needs. Rosie went away with many of her questions answered.
The session was also beneficial for me, I am the sort of person who often dives into tasks without much thought and when giving advice on blogging I suggest that others "Just do It". Working with Rosie made me realise that my trial and error approach to tasks doesn't suit everybody.
Going through Rosie's list provided me with an opportunity to reflect on my GeniAus blog which is steaming towards its 12th birthday. I have identified several areas that can do with a tune-up so, this morning I have been carrying out some maintenance on the Topics widget in my left sidebar.
I feel that the labels I am now using describe the general themes of my blog. I have introduced two new labels in place of the retired "Family", one is Ancestors (soon to become Our Ancestors)for posts about deceased members of the family and one is Our Family for posts that refer to living family members. I am in the process of relabelling of posts that fit into these new categories. I also need to tidy up my up my labels for Blogging and Geneablogging, I can't decide which I prefer to use. I'd like to add an Events label so I think Libraries may be on the chopping board.
Your thoughts on this are most welcome.
Hi Jill, I am too often tempted to dive in and think about the consequences later. I would be very interested in Rosie’s questions.
ReplyDeleteTagging or categories or labels are useful to help navigate to similar posts in my blog’s history. I have also tried to compile family indexes to help cousins navigate to posts about their branch of the tree.
Regards
Anne
Anne, I gave Rosie your URL as an examplar highlighting quality research.
ReplyDeleteThat is very kind Jill :)
ReplyDeleteI think the biggest concern I have about blogging is to do with living people. I tend not to write about living people nor people recently deceased. If I use photos of living people, for example my parents, I always check first - each and every time.
G'day Jill. Thanks for the SAG blogging webinar this morning.
ReplyDeleteRegarding your question about "blogging" vs "geneablogging" I am reminded of hints from a excellent website designer, Gill Andrews (https://gillandrews.com/homepage-clear-message-website-tagline-examples/)
"Ordinary but specific trumps creative but vague"
Now she was talking about website taglines, but I think the same applies here. I'd definitely go with the ordinary "blogging" because your hints and tips and experiences about geneablogging have a wider application that could help people doing all sorts of blogging.