5 Years, and counting

lsw-x

It’s all the rage in the blogosphere to celebrate Blogiversaries. What IS a blogiversary? It’s the anniversary of your blog, of course!

Today is my 5th year blogging here at lisasabin-wilson.com. Five years – how old does that make me in blog years?

To celebrate – I’m giving away 5 autographed copies of my soon-to-be-released book, WordPress For Dummies. One book for every year I’ve been blogging here. More about that later, though.

Actually, I’ve been blogging on this domain much longer than that (more like 8 years), but my archives only go back to October 28, 2002. Why? Back then I was using Movable Type with a Berkeley database setup. Berkeley – no, really! I didn’t know, back then, that when you go over your space allotment on your hosting account – – a Berkeley database eats itself.. becomes corrupt and there is no restoring it. My host, at the time, didn’t know a THING about MT and told me that the database could not be restored.. and, of course, I didn’t have a backup (duh!)… so about three years of archives were lost to the wind.

Of course, we’re talking sometime around 1998 – 1999-ish – I was building static HTML web pages (before it was called ‘blogging’, I guess) and then copied all of those static HTML pages into MT, once it first came out, and started blogging away – this was back when MT was free and WordPress wasn’t yet a gleam in Matt Mullenweg’s eye. (Well, maybe it was – I just didn’t know it).

I cut my blog designing teeth on Movable Type – creating MT templates and rebuilding…and rebuilding…and rebuilding. WordPress came along and changed things for the BETTER.

So, with the archives I was able to restore… this blog starts with a post I did about Purple Mums and a patient I took care of back then. In the last 5 years of this blog I’ve:

The past 5 years have been quite a ride. Today, I’m grateful for quite a lot of things in my life. I have the usual speed bumps in life, as to be expected, but, overall – I’m pretty happy and satisfied. Chris and I are going on 2 happy years of marriage. My kids are healthy and working towards making their way in life as they very quickly zoom through those late teenage years into adulthood. Over the past year, I’ve re-connected with my friend Tom, who has been a very special and good friend to me over the past decade (who makes sure I’m never low on the espresso supplies.) My friendship with Leanne has grown over the past 3 years – since we first met online in 2004. We’ve since met several times, face-to-face, and I’m proud and happy to call her my friend (I *think* maybe I’ve made it into her ‘long-term’ classification… though, I haven’t checked with her recently).

I guess I’ve kind of chronicled bits and pieces of my daily life on this blog for the past 5 years – it was kind of fun to go back through the archives and read stuff I posted 5 years ago and reminisce a little. If you haven’t done it recently on your own blog – I highly recommend it.

Now – about that book give-a-way!

When I look over the past 5 years of my blog, I used WordPress to power this blog for 4 of those 5 years. I migrated off Movable Type to WordPress 1.0.2 and have never looked back. Since then, through countless upgrades and an unreal amount of plugins and themes – the development of hundreds of client blogs using WordPress.. all the way up to present day, having written the official Dummies book on the topic of WordPress – – I can safely say that WordPress has really defined my blogging life here on this domain, and others. Could I have done it without WordPress? Of course (well, except for the book part) – but would it have been as much fun, as much pain and as exciting without it? Very doubtful.

Here’s the deal.

Make a post on your blog about how WordPress has helped, or harmed, you with your blog. Include plugins you use, themes you use, stuff you’ve learned, opportunities you’ve taken.. people you’ve met.

Doesn’t matter if your blog is 5 years old or 5 days old – everyone has WordPress War Stories, don’t they? Aren’t using WordPress… yet? Maybe you want to? Post your reasons why you’d want to migrate off of whatever you ARE using to the WordPress platform.

Bring it on – the good, the bad and the ugly. The more fun and interesting… the better!

Link to this post via a trackback between now and November 5th – and in the end, I’m choosing 5 random links from blogs and will contact the blog owner for your information on where to send your free, autographed copy of WordPress For Dummies.

Just my way of rounding off and celebrating my 5 years of blogging with WordPress (well, except for that first year…but who’s counting?)

5 years – 5 free books.

But what if 5 blogs don’t link to this post? I guess it will be time to wallpaper my office with pages from WordPress For Dummies, then, hey? Ha!

So, yea – – can I keep blogging for another five years? I guess only time will tell – – maybe blogging won’t be blogging by then. Maybe it will be something else, entirely. I’m excited and interested enough to stick around and find out!

27 thoughts on “5 Years, and counting”

  1. Congratulations on five or eight or however many years old your blog is! Lots of people don’t stick to it long enough, but I am so very glad that you have. I think you are just one of the coolest people out here and I treasure your friendship. Thank you for all the help you’ve given me with my blog. You are the best.
    xoxo

  2. Jammie – I’ve really met some cool people through this blog of mine…. you being one of the coolest. I’m trying to remember when it was I actually *met* you on here… I guess I’ll have to dig into my archives again and find out! Either way, I’m very glad we did meet 🙂 xoxoxo

    No, YOU’RE the best. 😀

  3. Hey Lisa. Happy Blogiversary! I can tell those 5 years are just exhilarating. Hehe! You deserve all these blessings, and much much more. I’m really fortunate to be part of E.Webscapes, thanks again for the awesome opportunity you gave me. 🙂

    I’ll help promote your book give-away. Congratulations! (*)<:-p

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  5. Congratulations, that’s quite impressive!
    I actually remember your blog before the archives here, when you were anonymous and referring to people by initials. Seems such a long time ago …

  6. That’s a fine accomplishment. Not everyone can honestly say they have been blogging for that that long.

    Sadly, I have never read your blog until today.

    How many keyboards have you gone though since you started?

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  9. Awww, congrats! You have really made a difference in the blogosphere (through your knowledge and your beautiful design). Plus, you always have something interesting to say! Thanks for all the great posts as a recap. Happy Blogiversary!

  10. I need this. Need it. Leanne needs me to need it so I can stop nag…er..I mean needing her so much. How long do we have to post?

    Happy Blogversary, Lisa. I am so thrilled to have met you!

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  12. 😡 I saw the news at Joni’s, so I joined as well. :d Congratulations on the 5 years. 🙂 There aren’t many bloggers I’ve seen who last a long time. 🙂

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  14. Congrats on the anniversary.

    I ordered that book back in sept. and now it’s out of stock already and I wont be getting it for another month. Makes me a sad panda. Good luck to the bloggers who enter though. It looks like an awesome book!

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  16. Lisa,

    What’s the difference between a PingBack and a TrackBack? I always thought they were the same thing but called different names from different blogging systems. I see it distinguished between the two above (and didn’t include my post title). I’ve never noticed a difference before today.

    Thanks!

    And happy blogiversary!
    Gary

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