2009 And Away

Posted by Stropp on January 15, 2009

The cool thing about taking a little time off from blogging -- that's what I call it anyway, not slacking... nooo -- is that you get the chance to think over things a little and can view the blog from a different perspective.

I asked myself a few questions over the last couple of months. Some of them, aside from deciding what I wanted for lunch, were:

• Should I keep going, or just wrap this thing up?
• Is this blog successful, is it achieving what I'd like it too achieve?
• Where do I want to go with this thing?
• What's this thing growing on my face?

Okay. I didn't ask that last question, there's nothing hairy or warty as far as I can tell, but the other questions and variations of them were contemplated. As I said, nothing like a bit of down time for navel gazing.

So onto the answers.

Yes. I'll be keeping going for the time being, in this format. A few other fellow bloggers have recently, or in the past year, either called it quits or have made some serious changes in direction. DM Osbon re-tasked Sweet Flag into Construed for instance. I did consider doing the same myself, I even have the domain registered if I decide to go that direction, but if I did it would be less of a hobby/personal blog and more of a big project type thing, and it's probably something I'd like to partner with other bloggers. At the moment though, it will be business as usual.

One thing I think I will be doing though, is looking at upgrading the theme.

During the first year, Stropp's World had three themes. I was never really happy with any of them. Then at the end of December '07, I activated the current theme. I was happy, and still am to a certain extent. However, I'm feeling the theme has gotten a little tired, and today started looking into a new one. This time I might actually get one developed -- I did try that before with less than spectacular results -- it might be worth actually paying someone to do something well, that I'm only average at.

Success, like beauty, is in the eye of the beholder, and Stropp's World is successful to a certain extent. Success in blogging is measure by the readers you attract, and I know that I have a decent readership. Blogging is also perhaps the domain of a show off, bloggers don't write for empty stadiums, they want crowds as a rule. So while I consider my blogging a success, I'd always like to be more successful.

Where I go from here, I hope will help grow Stropp's World, but as I said above: I'll be retaining the current writing format for a while.

Blogging year resolution #1 -- Post more regularly. Yep, I say this every year, but I think it's important to reaffirm from time to time. I'll try to get through the year without missing a three month block. But at the same time, if I find I'm in a period where I don't have anything to say, I may not say anything.

I'd also like to see if I can get the forums running this year. My attempt last year sort of failed, dare I say it, epically. Definitely needs some thought and planning to re-attempt. A good place to start would be to find a WP plugin that integrates Wordpress with the forum software to make a seamless experience. There's something like that for Twitter too I think.

Ultimately, by the end of the year I have the somewhat conservative goal of doubling my readership, and the number of RSS subscribers which is currently around 270.

More than anything else though, this year is going to revolve around enjoying the MMORPG experience. There are a lot of good games out there, and a lot of games on the horizon. I don't think we're in a MMOG golden age yet, but we're only a few years away.

Happy 2009.