Welcome to Toni Taddeo's Tuesday 4 kept up in her memory.

This week the questions were supplied by Pamela Steiner... Here we go, let's talk about Blogging!

1.  Tell us about your blog.  When did you start blogging? I made my first official blog post in 2002. But back in 1999, I discovered the world of Country theme websites. This is where I met Lori, Melanie and Toni. I started my site through  Yahoo Geocities and used a drag and drop program. I had a lot to learn about using graphics and copyright and so on. Eventually Geo left and Yahoo and allowed us to do more detailed pages. I learned to do html so that I could do layers and place graphics how I wanted. I still have my website up and it is linked to the right. I have more than 200 pages that are listed at my site map. Many of those topics will take you to "cottages" that contain many more pages. But prior to the blogs, we had intro/welcome pages where we would share things and new pages we had done. We had guestbooks were people left comments and left a link to a graphics. We could even add background music. Later I got my own domain and changed my hosting services. It was such a great community! We would send each other gifts(graphics siggies(those cute things at the bottom of our pages) We exchanged birthday, anniversary and Christmas cards. We had adoption shops and more. We learned many new things. Then came Blogger and Facebook. Sadly it took many of our friends because those were both free. For some reason I could not link my pages to Blogger for Memes. Some people had a hard time navigating my inlineframe pages. That is where you have a list on one side. As you click on a topic the page appears in the middle. I got a Blogger page around 2009 but hardly used it. I missed being able to use my graphics the way I wanted. 

2.  What prompted you to begin blogging? Women started doing blogs at their websites so I joined in too. Some women went to Blogger for blogs though they kept there sites. Blogger started in 1999. I liked having more control of my site so I kept my blog housed on my webhome.  We shared about our families and celebrated occasions. When 911 hit, there was so much support and outreach. We shared pics of our family like this one. This was taken with my siblings and spouses at a family baby shower.

3.  What was your first blog about and why did you choose that subject/title?

I copied this from my first official blog post. The date is listed. It shows the HTML coding because that is how we all got to do our multi layered pages. I will leave a link to one at the end.

 <center><img src="blog/kleinroos.gif" width="43" height="17"></center>

<font face="tempus sans itc,arial,helvetica,sans-serif" size="2">

<align=center>Sunday July 28, 2002<br> Todays saying is: Don't give up.

<p align=justify> Hi there! I am finally getting to do a blog. This is more like a journal of what's going on in my life. I could not figure out the FTP thing and so I decided I can do my own journaling. bI want to thank God for giving me the ability to do "all things". I want to thank Him for my family and friends. Hugs, Susan  </p>

4.  How has your blog changed over time, and has it done for you what you hoped it would do in the first place? Blogging has changed a lot over the years. I tried Wordpress and did not like it. The key thing about blogging for me is making friends. Meeting people from all over. I still have several of my friends from our country days and I see most of them on Facebook. A lot of those friends are from other countries. They blogs/webhomes were unique because they had dual pages. English and the language of their country. Brazil, Mexico, Sweeden, Norwary, Japan, Austrailia and more. Many were graphics artist that sold their graphics so we could decorate our pages. They drew their graphics and did not use pixel art. 

Now the main focus is meeting and chatting with friends. Thanks to this computer. I have had 2 desktop computers and this is my 3rd laptop.

Here is a link to my Old Blog. There are links to my Hawaii trips.

Happy Summer!

I have had a blog for 17 years and a website for 19. The link is to the right. But the comment board is no longer working. I have also been busy with online camps and studies. During the summer we have the grandkids for several days. So my time at my website has declined. There was a time when there was a large community of people that had websites like mine using country graphics. There were lots of graphic artist making graphics to decorate our pages. We would all visit each other's web homes and signed a guestbook to leave a message. Later a tag board/comment board was added. Then came Facebook, a great social network that is free. So lots of my friend eventually let their webhomes go. I am a dinosaur. It is hard to let go a site that has more than 200 pages of journaling, vacations, birthdays, poems, holidays and fun things we did as a country friends community. I think it is time for me to make the move. So little by little I will be printing out my pages before I close my site down in a year because I had just renewed my webhost for another year.