Four whole years – WordPress and me

WordPress.com just dropped a notification on me. Apparently, I’ve now been with them for four years today! While I was aware I’d made the move to WordPress in 2009, exactly when that happened isn’t something which has been uppermost in my mind, and so the notification came as something of a surprise.

I first moved to WordPress having been with Blogspot. I did so because WordPress appeared to offer a lot more in the way of options and layouts. By-and-large, I’ve been happy with the result. The software is easy-to-use, and WordPress.com provide a useful set of free themes and a range of tools to make sure your adventures in the land of blogging are as pleasant as possible.

That said, for a product which is so dependent on people liking and using it, the company is at times a little obtuse when it comes to introducing updates to the platform (where have we heard that before? :)), with changes often implemented in such a way as to bring out ire and annoyance in a good proportion of users. I have to admit, I’ve had the odd growl or two over the last couple of years!

Even so, I do like to platform and have found that blogging with it is rarely onerous in terms of using the tools – importing from MS Word could be a little easier, perhaps – but cut’n’paste gets me past the worst of issues.

At the start of the month I finally got around to responding to Strawberry Singh’s “Why do I blog?” meme. It asked a lot of very pointed questions, the last question of which asked, “So, why do you continue to blog?”, to which I replied, “I can’t stand going cold turkey when away from my blog .”

While that is partially true – blogging is completely addictive, after all! – There is also another reason, one I hesitated to give as I didn’t want it to sound egotistical or anything like that.

I continue to blog because people appear to find something of value here. And that, as much as anything else, has kept me sitting in front of the keyboard and rattling off posts. It’s also what has helped to keep me engaged in Second Life, be it trying to report on what is going on in and around the platform or logging-in and exploring the grid.

I can’t promise to be blogging in another four years (or whenever WordPress next send me such a notification, as this is the first I’ve ever received of this kind!) – but I can say thank you to all of you who have stopped by these pages over the last four and making my blogging a lot more fun!