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Does anyone here have a blog?

rchansen

rchansen

in the sweet tooth recovery program
Joined
Jan 1, 2014
Messages
1,503
Hello all you wonderful ladies and gentlemen...

I am thinking about starting a blog that is going to focus on my family search. I'd like to incorporate my love of scrapbooking as well. I really don't know anything about blogging. I know I'm going to use a free site (Wix, Blogger, WordPress...). Wondering if I am able to use some of the word arts from some of these kits as titles on my blog. Is that doable?
 
I have a super old one... lol! (http://thetypativescrapper.blogspot.com/). I stopped only since it was a lot of work, and after a few years I didn't enjoy it. I would spend time on the blog rather than scrap or something else. That wasn't fun for me.

I started it to share pages, and many of my tutorials, which are still there (though my images might not be anymore with the whole photobucket thing). I had a giveaway for RadLab years ago, and that got traction. Most viewed were tutorials and my busiest year was 2011, lol.

Since this is a personal venture, I believe you would be able to use products. I would read the TOU's to see if there are any rules that don't allow this. If you are unsure, contact the designer and they can steer you in the right direction.
 
Mine too died long ago! I enjoyed blogging but not many people followed it ... good luck with your venture @rchansen !
 
I loved mine when I kept it up. I still go back and grab journaling from it for pages. And I've thought about reviving it.

I agree with Jenn. Check the TOU to see if you are good. And ask if you aren't sure.
 
Only advice from here is don't use blogger. It is a pain in the ... you can make different pages,but it is a lot of work to set that up ,and blogger itself does not make it easy to edit between the pages. So most people finish up using it in its original form, which means that every thing gets posted underneath each other,that is ok if it is a daily,but by the time you have 200 posts, other people can no longer navigate to look for something ,it is just one long list of posts under death each other.. Have fun though,just think what you need before you set it up.
 
After having a self hosted WP blog for years I have recently switched to Blogger (I know this is unheard of but I had my reasons). I am pretty happy with Blogger. You can go all out if you wish and customize it to your heart's content or keep it as simple as they come.

If you go with a WP site which is not self hosted you have a lot of limitations as only with a self hosted one you get the benefits of everything you can do with WP.
 
I've blogged with WordPress for nearly a decade now.
https://michelekendzie.wordpress.com

Not so much this year. I've been distracted by things in my life and also have been ambivalent about whether I want to have a separate blog anymore or just share on my main website, which I host at Smugmug. http://www.michelekendzie.com Smugmug isn't as versatile for blogging, but it allows captioning and addition of text boxes to pages, so it's do-able if I decide I don't want to really blog anymore.

But I think WordPress is the best option for blogging. Whether free or self-hosted. Currently I'm using free Wordpress but for a year and a half around 2014, when I was seriously considering going pro with photography, I self-hosted a WordPress blog via BlueHost. It was certainly more challenging but BlueHost was as helpful as they could be and I loved the complete customizability. But even with free WordPress I don't feel very limited. They have hundreds of free templates, and more for a cost (I've always used free ones). It takes a long time to try them out until I find the "perfect" one, and there's always one little thing I wish I could change. That's why I've changed my template at least a couple dozen times over the nearly decade I've used WordPress. But there are a lot of options for customizing, it's pretty easy to use, and I've had pretty good luck with customer service at WordPress too.

Prior to switching to WordPress, I used Blogger. WordPress was a vast improvement. Of course, that was a decade ago and I've never revisited Blogger so I have little idea what they're like now. I do know that virtually every blogger I've ever come across, for whom I've learned what blogging host they use, it's usually WordPress. Wordpress is actively improving their interface all the time. It has changed a lot -- for the better -- in the decade I've blogged with them.

You can click on the top link to see my blog home page, or here's a link to just my scrapbooking posts.
https://michelekendzie.wordpress.com/tag/scrapbooking/

If you're curious about how it could look to share scrapbook pages at Smugmug, below is a link to my scrapbook gallery there. I use Smugmug as my second (manual) backup of all my images along with Backblaze, and they're an excellent option for sharing images, whether for hobbyists or pro photographers. Multiple privacy settings allow you to share parts of your Smugmug site with just certain people (with or without passwords) or keep some absolutely private.
http://www.michelekendzie.com/Digital-Scrapbooking

I'd be happy to answer questions in more detail about either Wordpress or Smugmug. I love them both. Especially Smugmug, which I've also been using for nearly a decade and is a family owned business with the best customer service of ANY company with which I've ever worked. :) As for Wordpress, since I've only blogged about 4 times since January, it might take me an extra minute to remember some procedures, but I'd like to explore it again because, as I said, I've been ambivalent about blogging for a while. I love writing (can you tell by the length of this post?) but not sure about the purpose and usefulness of my current blog anymore. In general, however, I have enjoyed having a blog.

p.s. As Jenn said, check the TOU about using digiscrap products for your blog. I have done so often, and usually they address online use. Once or twice, I even emailed a designer to ask, because she hadn't addressed it in her TOU, and I received friendly replies telling me to feel free. I've designed several headers over the years in the same way we create our forum siggies.
 
I blogged as a living for about five years and during that time, used both blogger and WordPress.

Blogger was fine at first, but WordPress offered more freedom and was exponentially more professional. I did use a self-hosted site, but the cost wasn’t bad. We hosted through GoDaddy.

Since it is just for fun, Blogger would work for what you are wanting to do. Wordpress definitely has a big learning curve.
 
I have one that I have used for various ramblings over the years. At one time I was on a CT and used it to showcase my pages. Mine is on blogger and I've just kept it there. I don't update it very often, in fact, my last update was 13 months ago. I don't like writing the actual post on blogger but I have found a free program that lets you write your post and you see what it looks like as you do it. It is called "Open Live Writer". After the post is uploaded, I do a preview before actually hitting the post button because sometimes things don't line up around photos. I then use blogger to fix that and post.
 
I've had a blog since 2008 and certainly don't do as much on it/for it as I once did. I still enjoy reading blogs and keep a list of the ones I follow on my blog. i've thought about giving it up but I still mostly enjoy it. I've definitely made it less detailed about my own life even though I do post my PL pages there. Like @bestcee, it's a great source for old stories for making layouts. btw, I'm still happy with Blogger and it does everything I want.
 
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