Upwards of Three Hours of Labour

Setting up a blog is an arduous business. There are so many things to consider: what it’s called, how it looks, which sites to link to, what to write about. Tough stuff.

OK, so deciding what to call it wasn’t that difficult. Choosing a design did take a while, though: there are a lot of different themes to choose from. It took me about an hour.

Deciding on which sites I was going to put on my blogroll was fairly straightforward: I figured that the most sensible approach was to link to the sites that I read every day. But the copying and pasting, copying and pasting, copying and pasting that went in to actually putting the links up was a pain. It took me about an hour and a half.

Still on the blogroll thing, there is also the issue of link categories. I concede that my link categories are completely inadequate. I mean, there isn’t a really obvious connection between Normblog and Boing Boing, yet they both occupy places on my prestigious Other Things list.  But it was was the only way I could think to do it, so I’m not going to beat myself up about it.

Finally, what to write about. Of the many different blog models to follow, there were two that I was attracted to. The first model is the niche blog: a single subject pursued relentlessly and in detail. The second type is a less focused, more wide-ranging blog that allows a greater number of subjects to be addressed, but which, perhaps, lacks the rigour of the specialised site. 

As the tagline under the title suggests, I’ve decided to go with the less formal, multi-subject blog. And there are four subjects that I’m likely to  return to: Wales (and Welsh politics), politics, football and other things. Anyway, that’s the plan.