There was a time I’d never heard of the word “blog”. That time ended back in 2002 when I came across this thread at Site Point Forums. Hmm, an online journal of sorts. So I tried out Blogger.com that people were recommending. I posted a few times, but it didn’t stick. And I wanted my own domain name.
So I bought statedog.com. It was name I started using in ESPN’s College Basketball Chat back in 1996 when Miss State went to the Final Four. Then I started using it on message boards. So it seemed like a good fit. I didn’t know what script to use, but I went with MovableType. It seemed like the stud at the time. I read some other blogs by now that were using MovableType. And it was free. But a bugger to install (it was Perl based back then.)
But to shorten the story, I set up a blog StateDOG.com using MovableType. I ended up running into some issues with MT. And tons of spam too. I converted to a new script called WordPress and loved it. But for a few various reasons I ended up stopping blogging. But I still had the itch. I picked it back up at ASmallTwist.com. I was able to acquire my own name as a .net so figured I must use it. So BlakeThompson.net started up as my blog. Lots of bouncing around for all my blogging, right? There were probably about five or six hosts too.
But this past week I was able to get everything together. I combined all my old blogs with my current blog. It took a few days of mistakes, broken databases, import issues, and upgrades, but I was able to finally get all the old stuff, ever way back to my first post on my own domain, here in the archives. Sadly the comments didn’t make the trip from 2003 to 2010. But I got the meat of the old blog. There are probably some broken links here and there. I know there are some missing pictures. And a lot of what used to be linked to might not even be in existence these days (blogs come and go, you know).
But sit back and look through some of the history. I know there have been some starts and stops. But my intent is to be here to stay. And I’d like for you to be here with me. So, is anyone still reading this thing?
Still reading. Your archives should prove interesting! Glad you persevered and we able to save most of it.
It’s funny looking through the SitePoint thread and the difficulties for setting up a custom blog…
I lost my old domain in a freak way, and though I think I have a text file back up of all the posts somewhere (at least i used to), I dont have it in any kind of format that is importable. It’s cool to see all your old stuff in one spot.
Still here Blake. Hope all is well.
<>< lynn
I've skimmed a little through my archives, but haven't taken the time to sit down and really read. But it's funny. And makes me wish I'd written more.
Jeremy, how many posts do you have in your old file? Would it be too cumbersome to manually cut/paste them, and then post date them?
Thanks, Lynn. I still keep thinking I'll run into you guys around town. How's the CLS board going?
I actually found all of my old comments too (I think). They'd gotten caught up in a queue somewhere.