Seamus K - Irish tech industry expat living in Sweden.

Tag: site

What is the plan?

A little while back I asked myself why I was not using this site. I love writing and interacting with people online. So why did I drift away from blogging? The reason is that of course all the action is with Twitter and Facebook. Its easy to do it there. But the trend there is for short shallow content. Which is fine. I would like to have a forum for longer deeper stuff. I like writing and this is a good place to do that. But I also want to keep up the stream of whimsy as well.

So the plan is to make this my first port of call for posting. Most of the time posts here will be posted on to Twitter and Facebook. And sometimes I will use the short nonsense here as well.

In the next week I want to do some testing of how the integration between the various sites work. So expect to see weird results. Then I have a load of drafts I need to clear out. Some of them are very weird (consider yourself warned). 

Along the way I need to clarify what this site is for. What is the voice here. Who do I want to talk to with it and how. I have a few ideas. Lets see if they coalesce. 

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Excuse the mess

I am playing around with some structure stuff. This will be cleared up later today.

The plan is to have a full menu with:

  • Blog – with everything, including my tech posts
  • Tech Blog – a category with just the tech stuff
  • Pictures – specific photo stuff
  • Travels – stuff from my world travels.
  • About page

I am debating a static home page. But I think the blog one will be fine. If you want to know what this is all about then you can click on “About”. Simples.

 

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sliabh.net – why am I back blogging

Working on the PC with crocodile and vodka tonic

Working on the PC with crocodile and vodka tonic

I had a few reasons for wanting to restart this blog. The first one is for fun. I enjoy writing, but I don’t get to do enough of it. In the last few years Twitter and Facebook had replaced this blog as where I was putting things on the internet.

Twitter can be fun to write for. But quite often you want a lot more than 140 characters.

Facebook allows you more words, but most people don’t read much more than is in a tweet. I saw a recent recommendation of picture and just 250 characters for the best engagement there! My Facebook audience is pretty restricted as well, as I have less than 40 “friends” and little interest in making my profile public.

I also would rather my content was fully public, on my own platform, than controlled by Facebook and monetised by them. They recently surveyed me on what I thought of their privacy options. I noticed that all the choices they offer only allow you to control what your contacts and the public see. You have almost no control over what Facebook do with your content (and it is yours) and activity. BTW I am a big fan of Max Schrems.

Then there is the thing about the social and engagement side. I am as guilty as the next person of occasionally obsessing about my likes, re-tweets and favorites. But that’s so shallow really. So I am going back to the basics – Am I enjoying writing. And are people getting some benefit from what I am writing. That is easily measured by site traffic, and people commenting on what they see.

The only other thing I need to sort out is work. My current role is a bit higher profile. And I have even been blogging for work. I want to write a bit about technology and the cloud world, but I am not sure whether that will work alongside some of the other content that will be here. A separate work blog may be needed as well.

For now the plan is to post something, big or small at least once a day. Few posts will be over 350 words. I will post on my usual eclectic range of interests – technology, history, sci-fi, current affairs, business travel, the places I get to visit at work, and reflections on life from someone whos own life is pretty non-standard 🙂

Anyway. It is good to be back!

 

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My site to-do list

Things I need to do to tidy all of this up:

  • Finish tweaking the theme (currenly using Hemingway) – Done  for now.
  • Fix the site settings, including checking:
    • Comments – Done
    • Spam filters – Done
  • Add an “About” page for the blog – to clarify why am back here – Done
  • Add an “About” page for me – placeholder in, er, place. I need proper content.
  • Add a side bar with some links – Done
  • See can I migrate the old posts to this site
  • Add a decent photo/image sharing widget – Done I think. I have added NextGen Gallery. Let’s see how it works later.
  • Social media integration – Twitter, LinkedIn, Google+, Facebook – Done. Sharing icons added.
  • Decide if/how I will use this for work
  • Add some permanent pages, and remove the current sample one – In progress.
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