New website

Considering the number of times I have tried to create my own website or blog, it’s surprising that I feel excited at the idea of writing the first entry on a new website.

But that’s it really. This is a website and not a blog, and it looks so much better than the ones I’ve had before. Plus I can do loads more with it, although it will no doubt take me a while to get used to all the features.

When one of my friends found out about one of my previous blogs he said, “I wouldn’t have thought you were arrogant enough to believe that anyone cared what you thought.” I suppose it was a bit of a backhanded complement. But it did make me think about why I wanted a website, and so I hope the rest of this posting goes someway to explaining it.

I do have opinions on lots of things, and although no one might care what they are it is good to feel that you can get them off your chest. The great thing with the internet is that you can these thoughts of your chest but at the same time you might also find out that someone out there is interested in them and it starts a discussion going. The readership of my website is probably restricted to the handful of people who know me and those people who might not know me but know the name because of my involvement in politics. When I had my first blog I was astonished by the number of people who I bumped in to at Lib Dem events who said they knew about me because they’d read my blog. I was also pleasantly surrprised by the number of people who said they’d read my posting on such and such a topic and agreed exactly with what I’d written. I also though found out from bitter experience how things you write can be used against you and in my case used to criticise the Liberal Democrats. That is why I have become very wary of blogging. It would be a huge exaggeration to say that I was at the forefront of Lib Dem blogging, but I was certainly in the first tranche, but I also abandoned my blog at exactly the time when it really took off and started to look slightly less geeky.

So if I want to make my opinions known, why am I changing to having more of a website than a blog. The reason is simple. My life is more than just politics and I want to have a website so that I have a way of publicising those things. Genealogy is one of the things that has led to a huge boom in internet useage and so I want to take advantage of that by having my own website where I can write a bit about my own family history research in the hope that I will make contact with others who are researching the same people or places that I am. I also enjoy photography and although I don’t have a decent camera I have started my own profile on Flickr which shows some of the photos that I’ve taken recently. But I want to link my photos to everything else I do and so having one website that is the point to access everything else I do seems logical.

There’s lots more I could write about why I want this site, but I hope I have given a bit of a flavour. The problem that I have always suffered when I have had previous websites or blogs is that I start in great enthusiasm but it then peters out as I find I have less time or get bored of endless writing. But another benefit of a website over a blog is that it is more flexible and isn’t just about changing content but having decent static pages too. With WordPress I can also link in to things like the Lib Dem Blogs aggregator that will mean that I can make contact with other Lib Dems easier whilst filtering out my ramblings about things non-political.

There’s quite a bit more to do to it in terms of content and at some point I’d like to give it a better URL. Bht here it is and long may it be of interest to someone and not just me.