I can’t believe I forgot my own birthday!
Yes, on the 18th December, this blog passed the one year mark. It’s hard to believe. As I go back and read over old posts, I can see just how far I’ve come in my spelling, grammar, and overall development of sentence structure.
Of course, this blog has become somewhat of a virtual playground for me. Over the past year, I’ve learned,
- to write better
- a fair chunk of CSS/HTML
- learned and honed SEO knowledge
- developed my design and Photoshop skills quite a bit (understatement)
- learned a bit about online marketing
- and among many other things, I’ve also made some friends along the way
Being honest, blogging has become a part of my life which I can’t see going away any time soon.
The beginnings…
You may already be aware, I started this site (initially at ArmensBlog.com), to keep family and friends informed of life ‘down under’. As it has been a personal blog, I’ve been free to write what I like, and have done so at liberty. As a result, I don’t exactly have thousands of subscribers and regular readers. But, that doesn’t bother me. We’ve had some really interesting (and frustrating sometimes) discussions over the year.
Regrets
My only regret, is that I didn’t start out with this current domain. As a result, if you go back over old posts, you’ll find that all the images are gone, and the internal links all point to the old domain. If they were timeless posts, I’d update them, but they’re not, so I’m not going to bother, at least for now.
In the next few days, I’m going to share my absolute favourite posts, and a few lessons I’ve learned over the past few months. For now though, I’ll just link to the most commented post of each month over the year.
January - Coffin Bay - An afternoon visit to a small, nearby village. I used PhotoBucket to host my images at this stage, and used their slideshow to show them. I soon changed this - 13 comments
February - Am I a Header? - A brief post, asking for advice on a new header image I had put together. The old one (made by a friend) had me adorned with blue hair, which I thought was a little inappropriate at the time - 20 comments
March - One Verse Destroys The Pre-Trib Rapture - A doctrinal post, dealing with the inconsistent, unbiblical teaching of a rapture of the saints, prior to the tribulation period, seeking to expose it with just one verse - 18 comments
April - God Tube - Christian Video Service or a Scam? - A forthright, sincere question about God Tube, while it was still in beta. The post was once ranked third on Google for “God Tube”, and as a result, it brought in many…’interesting’ characters. For the most part, they half read the post, and then left a silly response. Comments have ceased since I changed the domain - 30 comments
May - You’ll Not Be Hungry After a Harry’s Pizza - This wouldn’t be here, except for the fact that, two regular visitors began to use the comments section like they were on an Instant Messenger! - 46 comments
June - The Pre-Tribulation Rapture Examined! - I didn’t learn my lesson. A more comprehensive look at the false teaching of the Pre-Tribulation rapture. However, during the change of hosts, I lost nearly all of the post (God trying to tell me something?). However, I still think I have this post somewhere. I might look it out and update it - 18 comments
July - Romans 9 - Unconditional Election - A difficult topic to address in a post. However, you’ll be hard pushed to find any article which tries to explain the difficult portion of Romans 9, in such a concise manner - 24 comments
August - Make Websites Look Better With ClearType - A vital post for Windows XP users, equipped with screen shots to help you follow how to enhance your web browsing experience. Sadly, the screenshots were lost - 12 comments
September - A Whale of a Time - My limited video editing capabilities at their best. A video of our trip to the Head of Bight to view whales - 11 comments
October - Mellowed WordPress Theme - The main page for the release of this theme - 35 comments
November - Design: First Impressions Really Count - The importance of have a decent, usable, appealing website - 15 comments
December (so far) -The Bedrock Grid WordPress Theme for Charity - The release of my ‘premium’ theme with the $20 proceeds going to charity. A huge two copies sold thus far - 16 comments
Finally
You can see what topics get people commenting…any controversial Christian topic. Not surprising I suppose.
Prepare for more reminiscing over the next few days…
Do you forget to visit the blog? Get free updates via email. Or via RSS if you use a feedreaderWant to read other articles? Try these...
- Design Vitality Lose Credibility (And Possibly My Entry)
- Three Lessons RElearned In The Past Month
- Recent Developments And News
Want to pray intelligently for this preacher? Go here to learn more!
Added Commentary
By Nice from Thailand
on 20.12.07
Happy belated b-day!
I came to your site from http://iffect.net/ and comments you left on various blogs (design/WordPress related)
I don’t know why you changed from ArmenBlogs to this domain, This domain is quite hard to spell for me, and it’s longer
By Armen
on 20.12.07
Nice - Thanks!
Yeah, that was a brief try at a blogging about other things, but I just didn’t have the heart to continue it. However, I learned a lot from it, and made a number of friends.
Yeah, but I guess I just thought ArmensBlog was a bit naff. You only need to be able to spell ‘Armen’ in Google, and it’s on the first page
By Jermayn Parker
on 21.12.07
happy bday!
I enjoyed having a look at some of the older posts especially the Christian ones
btw just wanted to congratulate you on your blog design as its really nice at the mo and its a good job well done
By Armen
on 22.12.07
Jermayn - Thanks. Some of those Christian posts got interesting in the comments section.
As for the design, I’ve been thinking about reverting back to the old one, as my wife doesn’t really like this one. However, I’m using it to help promote the theme.
By David Airey
on 24.12.07
Hi Armen,
Happy belated birthday buddy! I just found your post in my feed reader (have over 1,000 to skip).
There’s a tip about image linking in my latest blog post, that would’ve really helped your missing picture situation.
Have a great xmas!
By aria-ayumi
on 26.12.07
though we dunno each other, still i won 2 wish happy belated birthday to you…
and… merry christmas … 
By Deron Sizemore
on 27.12.07
Congratulations on surpassing the one year mark! That’s a great accomplishment. I’ll be approaching the one year mark here in a few months myself. Like you, blogging is just something that I do now and I don’t see it going away. I’ve met so many great people and it’s opened a lot of doors as far as web design goes, that should I choose to pursue it, I simply need to walk through the door and take the next step.
By Armen
on 28.12.07
David - Thanks, my friend. I still might be able to resolve the image issue. It’s just whether I do or not.
Aria -Thanks. That’s very nice of you
Deron - Yeah, same here. It’s a powerful medium, there’s no doubt about it.
By aaron
on 13.02.08
Great looking site.
sounds like an interesting first year for you.
Haven't you got anything to say?