I started DM Blog back in and in my first post, apart from setting a goal of blogging at least once a day, it was pretty clear that I didn't have a plan:
I have decided that this blog will not be specifically about music, though I'm sure I'll have a lot to say now and then on that subject. (Naturally.) Instead, this blog will be about whatever occurs to me at the moment. The other "sides" of Daniel that you seldom get to see...
"...this blog will be about whatever occurs to me at the moment"?
That's not a solid plan at all! I actually did know why I wanted to have a blog, I had a lot of different topics I wanted to write about, and I had a clear idea of what I expected to gain, but you'd never know that from reading my first post. I did a much better job of explaining my intentions on the third anniversary of DM Blog:
When I started my blog, I had a couple things that I hoped to get out of the experience – I wanted to have the opportunity to work with HTML on a regular basis (yes, all my posts are written using raw HTML and without any visual editor); I wanted to have a place where I could express my thoughts and ideas without having to hold back; and most importantly, I wanted to improve my informal writing skills... I've definitely come a long way since then!
Now fast-forward four years from then to and you'll see that my expectations have significantly changed. I now work with HTML (and CSS, JavaScript, PHP) on a daily basis and I know it quite well, so you could once again say that "I've definitely come a long way since then!"
. In fact, I've even written a couple articles with sample code (all of which get tons of traffic), if that's any indication...
I also got a new DSLR camera back in and DM Blog has complemented my photography hobby by becoming a place where I can post some of the photos I take. And somewhere along the way, I decided to create a new category dedicated to restaurant reviews which also brings a lot of traffic, but more importantly, it's kept me interested and actively engaged in both photography and blogging.
I know that blogs are typically better when they're specific and focus on only one topic, but I'm glad that I've been able to adapt and change DM Blog into many things over the years. Sure, it must be a little odd for regular readers to see a blog post about food, another about technology and then another about dogs, all in the same week, but it's super easy to to only one topic or category that interests you. My life is very diverse and not about only one topic so I'm glad that I didn't over-think things and force myself into a corner by creating a blog that was only about one thing... In this case, not having a well-thought-out plan was actually a good thing – go figure.
Which brings me to the title of this post...
Michelle has toyed with the idea of having her own blog for quite some time, so a while back, I purchased munchybar.com for her. She too has a lot of different things she wants to blog about but it's the commitment to constantly creating new content that has made her waver. (Not to mention all the time it takes to update and maintain the site, moderate comments, etc.) But more recently, she's been a lot more enthusiastic about the idea and asked me to get her set-up finally. So earlier this week, that's exactly what I did.
After spending a couple hours getting the domain set up, installing WordPress, installing plugins, creating a custom plugin and theme for her, optimizing performance, adjusting settings, and all that jazz, something finally dawned on me... Only after I was completely finished and had things ready-to-go did it occur to me that maybe it would be better to just create a new user on DM Blog, rather than creating a whole new blog for her.
Apart from the obvious disadvantage of having to start fresh with no readers and without any significant traffic at first, creating a whole new blog for her would also mean that I'd have an additional hosting account to manage and a separate installation of WordPress I'd have to maintain. I'd be the one installing updates, I'd be the one customizing features for her, I'd be the one designing and maintaining a theme for her, I'd be the one... You get the idea.
Also, adding her to DM Blog and letting her write articles on here instead would lessen the pressure of having to constantly create new content since there'd be two of us contributing to the site. It would take some pressure off of her, but it would also take the same pressure off of me... And people could still to only my articles if thats what they wanted, (or only to hers). Win-win? I liked the idea much better and when I ran it by Michelle, she did too.
So DM Blog used to mean "Daniel Menjivar's Blog" but now it means "Daniel & Michelle's Blog". How convenient. (You may notice that in this post, I haven't referred to DM Blog as "my blog" anymore.)
Michelle is starting out like I first did, wanting to gain exposure to HTML (amongst other things). Now-a-days, it's an in-demand skill that everyone should have and many kids already have it mastered by the time they reach high school... On DM Blog, the visual editor is completely disabled (there's only an HTML editor) and all of the quicktag buttons for automatically inserting HTML (like <strong> <em> <a> <blockquote> <del> <ins> <img> <ul> <li> <code>) have been removed to make room for my custom short codes, so Michelle is definitely going to learn a lot very quickly. (Of course, I'll be editing the HTML in her posts until she gets the hang of it.)
I remember when I first started blogging I didn't know what to write. Not because I didn't have anything to write about, but because I didn't know what to write about first. But obviously, you don't need to have all the answers right away – DM Blog has changed and evolved many times over the years. Having Michelle contribute articles is perhaps the biggest change in a long time, but I'm really looking forward to it and I'm mostly looking forward to seeing how her posts evolve over time...
Michelle will be contributing her first post in the next couple days – it will be the next one after this one. And she'll have the honor of having written the 300th blog post on DM Blog! It would be great if you could post a comment on her first post to make her feel welcome...
One last thing – I should probably mention that I've already added the author's name below the date on all posts so you can know which one of us wrote it. And once Michelle publishes her first post, there will also be much more prominent author information displayed at the bottom of every post, just before the comments. There should be no question as to which one of us wrote it...