Yesterday I told you about how I got started blogging and took you through my floundering, accidental transitions. To say I didn’t have a 5 year plan would be an understatement. I even worried when Matt paid that hefty hosting fee for 3 years in advance. (You don’t have to pay that far in advance, but it was tax return time, we had the money then and the further ahead you pay the cheaper it is in the long run. Like buying in bulk, if you will.) I worried that maybe I wouldn’t stay with it. That maybe that was a massive waste of money, when we don’t have money to just.. waste. But that’s what I do, worry. And when I worry I freeze up. Which makes my fears a self-fulfilling prophecy. I know, I’m a nut job. Matt assured me it would be fine if I never touched the blog again, never used my hosting in any way, or if I just went running right back to Blogger copying and pasting every single post as I went (and as was the only option). He knows me. That reassurance that I could fail in the biggest way and it wouldn’t matter one iota was all I needed to keep going, and to even get energized about getting to design everything. Nut job, I tell ya.
Once again, as some of you have pointed out it does help to have a techy geeky husband who isn’t afraid to get into the behind the scenes nitty gritty, isn’t afraid to mess everything up, and then doesn’t mind explaining what he did and what I should do over and over until I.get.it. But you can still do it. If you so desire. There are bloggers out there who don’t mind answering your every “this is probably a stupid question” questions. Really. That was surprising to me. You can go to a blogger that you like their cool sidebar layout, their neat embedded YouTube videos, their pretty font (the way the type and letters look) in their header (the picture at the top of the blog with the title of your blog in it); and ask them how they did that. They may have a “contact me” button (button: little picture that you can “click” or “push” to lead you to another “page” or section of their blog) or an “email me” button or you may can just leave them a comment. What I’ve found is that most of the time, bloggers really do like people, they know they were once foreigners in this blogging land, and they’re kind enough to tell you what exactly they did. Sometimes it takes them awhile to get back to you (ahem, I would never do that, hello – waiting to answer how I clean the house with a one year until a year and a half later when the person no longer has a one year old.. ahem.. moving on.)
So, I told you to figure out who you’re blogging for (public or private falls under this) and if you want to go free or paid. Those two things determine which way you go next.
My suggestion for a trepidatious beginning blogger? Go with Blogger.com. They’re free, user-friendly, used frequently in the mommy-blogging world (familiarity is a good thing here) and if you decide that you are indeed sticking with this endeavor there are a million and one tutorials (step by step how-tos) on how to move your entire blog from Blogger to another platform, say, WordPress. I’ve been on both sides of WordPress (paid and free) and I have to say, I’m not a fan of their “free” service. You have limits on what’s actually free and I don’t like limits. I do, however love them in general, and plan to stay with their paid service from here on out.
Next up is deciding to go public or private. Did you know that you have that option? In Blogger you can decide to keep writing day after day and never have anyone see it. You can also decide to give permissions to certain people to see it. Why would you choose this? I know people who have/are adopting and sometimes the things they write are scrutinized by others. But they still want to keep a journal of their journey through the process. Maybe you want to write for the sake of working through a grieving process. Maybe you want to store up a lot of posts so that when you launch your site (have a “grand opening”) you look established. Or you can do what I did and put it all out there from the get go and “grow up” in the eyes of everyone. It’s all up to you.
If you do decide you are going public decide just how public you are going. Will you show everyone your face? Your full name? Your kids’ faces? Their names? Let me tell you what some of the bloggers I know do, what the general consensus online is, what I do and why. I have bloggers who share their own first name, but not their kids’ names and not even their kids’ faces. Pretty cool concept – you have to get creative with your pictures while sharing, but it’s a neat idea in my book. I have friends’ like me who have given general nicknames for their kids. I have friends who have renamed their kids online with real names, just not their kids’ names, friends who use their kids’ initials, and friends who use the terms Dear Daughter 1 (dd1), Dear Son 2 (ds2), and so on. Here’s why I chose what I did and my own personal opinion on those things.
I started out using my kids’ names. Because as I told you I started out blogging only to my close friends and family. But about a year in, I read a blogger who had a college student show up at her door one day (a complete stranger), though she didn’t use her kids’ names and didn’t readily give out her address the student had been doing a project for her class about internet predators. She had spent less than a day gathering information from pictures and stories about local stores from her blog to put together just exactly where she lived. The student was safe and just letting her know that it could be done. It scared me. That week I went and wiped out all names of my kids from the blog. I talked to Matt about it and though he wasn’t worried about random strangers showing up at our door, he didn’t like the idea of our kids’ names and faces being all over the place when they get older and that sort of thing matters to them. As Melissa, from A Familiar Path, says it’s not her story to tell, it’s someone else’s. And though my kids don’t seem to mind having nearly every detail of their little lives shared now, they may someday.
When I wiped the blog of their names and renamed them I had 3 children and was pregnant with our fourth. Therefore I had TheOldest, TheMiddlest, and ThePrincess (or as I call her more frequently now MyGirl), if you’ll remember BigMan named himself, and TheBaby is about to become TheToddler (maybe, but I haven’t decided yet, we’ll see). The initials seem impersonal to me, the “dd2″ stuff is confusing to me, and though I like the idea of renaming them all it seems like it would get confusing after awhile, my friends who do it say, yes, they do indeed accidentally call their children by their online names sometimes – that cracks me up! Is there anything wrong with giving out your kids names, calling them by initials, or doing what I do? No, it’s all up to you, your husband, and your comfort level. Just some things to think about.
As far as I’m concerned, I share my name and picture. I do have an opinion about this. I don’t care if you share your last name or even change your first name, but I want to see your smiling face. Like, really. And that’s not only me, that’s a general consensus among bloggers. We want to know who we’re talking to. Are you real? O are you a dude lurking around looking at our kids but naming yourself “KaterinaGirlyGirl12″? We feel more comfortable connecting with you if we can see you and think of you as the mom next to us in the grocery line.
Also begin to think about what your blog will be named. I didn’t. Amazingly I don’t have regrets. (I usually have regrets about everything. I’m not only a worrier, I’m also a regret-er.) You can change your name, but after you become established you’ll want to stay. You want people to recognize you. It’s called branding. Your name needs to be applicable to what you’re writing about, what you want to convey, and memorable. Can people remember it when they’re telling others about you? And is it already taken? Google it. Just recently I went looking and there are 2 other versions of Joyful Chaos out there. At least. Not cool. I didn’t research. But so it is, and I claim the only TheJoyfulChaos (with “the” and it all smooshed together as far as I know.) Then become that identity everywhere. Twitter, Facebook, your blog – it should all crossover, because you’re going for recognizeability, remember?
The pictures in this post have very little to do with this post short of the fact that, like my blog, it includes things that I love, things that surround me, things that mean something to me, things that tell a story, and they’re nitty gritty, dirty, real life – you know, in other words it wouldn’t hurt for me to dust once in a while.
I told you we’d talk about money in blogging, but apparently I lied. I got ahead of myself. I should know better than to make promises. (I’m a let-er down-er too, what can I say?) It’s coming, just not today.
So today’s takeaway is decide who you are. Much like the teenager you once were. Do some soul searching (and praying and discussing) to figure out who you are and who you want to be. An open book, a private publication, or something in between? And don’t be shy about asking others how, why, and what they do.
If you haven’t been following this series, be sure to catch Part 1 (How I Got Where I Am), and Part 3 (The Technical Side of Getting Set Up), Part 4 (What To Do and What Not To Do), and Part 5 (Making Friends and Money).
