Saturday, July 4, 2009

Keeping Things Simple

When setting up a personal website, there are a lot of choices and decisions to make. Each decision will lead you down a path which will impact the time and energy you will invest in the future to maintain things.
My initial drive towards owning my own domain name was the result of several ISP changes I encountered in a short period of time. With each new ISP came a new email address that my family and friends would need to know in order to contact me. I wanted to have an email address that could follow me for the rest of my life. An email address that wasn't dependant on any ISP or company to provide. This doesn't mean I don't use other email addresses; however, I take advantage of every opportunity to make my primary address the one I use the most.
Once I obtained my domain name and set-up my email address, I then started to consider what type of website I'd want to create. Will it be about my family? My work? My interests? My passions? Or, some kind of mix? Since I was new to the world of blogging I decided just to start writing and then see where things took me.
Needless to say, I finally stopped blogging. It took me months to figure out which blogging tool to use, how to install it, and then find the time to write. The time and effort was not wasted for I learned a great deal; however, obtaining this knowledge kept me from taking time each day to actually post content. At this point, I figure I've spent more time upgrading and maintaining the blogging software than actually creating content. I need to keep it simple. I can do simple.
With the huge outbreak of social networking sites, it is now far easier to keep in touch with family and friends. I no longer need the blog to do this anymore.
So, my website/blog is experiencing a change. I'm not sure how it will end up, but I have a few ideas.
God has gifted me with a wide variety of talents and wired me with an extreme curiosity about a wide range of topics and issues. I love to figure things out and see how things interact with one another. So, a website that brings my life together in one spot would be interesting (at least to me!).  A site that shows my twitter feed, a blog, and other views into my daily life through other widgets and rss feeds might be what I'm looking for.
Regardless of where I end up I want whatever I end up doing to be kept simple. I don't want to spend my time keeping my website maintained. I want to spend it making a contribution.
I don't have all the answers, but I look forward to the journey of discovering a few of them.