apple widgets: Do You Remember Your First Blog Post? If You Do, You Could Win!

Saturday, September 13, 2008

Do You Remember Your First Blog Post? If You Do, You Could Win!

Do You Remember Your First Blog Post? If You Do, You Could Win!
Liz Strauss is holding the “Bring Back That ‘Brand New’ Blogging Feeling Event” contest and giving you a chance to win a premium WordPress Theme from Blog Design Studio and a copy of her ebook. Whether you win or not, it’s a chance to really push your blogging creativity. The challenge is to take a picture [...]

Liz Strauss is holding the “Bring Back That ‘Brand New’ Blogging Feeling Event” contest and giving you a chance to win a premium WordPress Theme from Blog Design Studio and a copy of her ebook. Whether you win or not, it’s a chance to really push your blogging creativity.

The challenge is to take a picture of something that shows that “brand new feeling” such as you feel when you published that very first blog post. That’s right, your first. Can you remember back that far? (I can’t ) Compose a one sentence caption and head over to the contact form to upload the photo and your contact information.

There are so many emotions tangled up with that very first blog post, how would you display that in a photograph? I’m fascinated by the concept and eager to see what people come up with. Bloggers are such creative folks, and the almost USD $4,000 value of the prizes is definitely an incentive.

I gave it some thought and here is my version of that “brand new blogging feeling event” dredged from the depths of my memory.

When I began “blogging” the name soon became “online journaling” as we ventured forth with the first web pages and websites in the world. We didn’t call them web pages back then. They were “homepages” and these were our “homesites” as the web wasn’t the Web but the beginnings of the Internet in those rough and tumble days. It was a new world, a new universe, and technology that was part of the rush into space. Since we couldn’t seem to push our government to support travel through outer space, we plunged into cyberspace along what would come to be known as the Information Highway. It wasn’t a smooth ride but this was the future and we were on board our virtual space ships, navigating by keyboard, mouse, and browser, ready for our grand adventure to seek out new life and new adventures. To boldly go where no Internet Connection would ever be lost!

I didn’t realize how far this galactic journey would take me, deep into the wilderness of HTML, web design, CSS, SEO, JavaScript, PHP, the rugged beginnings of WordPress, the stumbling steps of social networking and social media, tags, categories, comment spam, blog trolls…in a way, much like the journey in Zork, the original of the popular IF Games (Interactive Fiction) text-based adventure games. A rough journey of exploration and discovery, with a few trolls and grues to fight off.

There will be 50 winners choose to receive a premium WordPress Theme from Blog Design Studio and a copy of the ebook Insider’s Guide to the Conversation eBook by Liz Strauss.

There is also a bonus round. Be the first fifty to follow the directions exactly and submit “clever pictures” and you will be featured on her blog, Successful and Outstanding Bloggers with a link back to your blog.

Don’t forget that Liz Strauss is also the honoree of one of the most popular new WordPress Plugins, the Liz Strauss Comment Counter by Ozh WordPress Plugin, a nice addition to your blog’s sidebar. I wrote about it recently on my blog and on the Blog Herald.

Remember to submit your entry to the competition in order to participate and win.