A bit of background: When I started my personal blog in 2007, the purpose was to stay in touch with out-of-state family. I started it on Blogger, it was free. However, in 2010 when I transfer’d to a self-hosted site using WordPress for the CMS, it didn’t go as planned and I still haven’t fixed the photos. The text moved over from Blogger, the photos did not.

… Someday, maybe. But it hasn’t happened yet. …

All my rambling is to reiterate to you the importance of a plan. Even with a plan – for as much as I Google searched before starting – I still changed my mind after the fact and wished I’d done things differently. 😊 Part of my mind changing was based on simple misunderstandings…so, I’m going to share what I learned here and hope it helps someone else.

I moved my personal blog from “borrowing” to “owning”. What I mean by this is – I started a free blog on Blogger; then a few years, many posts, and hundreds of photos later I decided I wanted more flexibility with my blog. I wanted to own my content (I’m not getting into the debate of who owns the content – I just knew I wanted to understand and change the backend workings more than what was possible for my current understanding level). However, because I don’t enjoy the tech stuff as much – it’s not overly pretty (and there are still MANY photos missing – they didn’t import when I moved from Blogger to self-hosted WordPress).

• Yes, I make do (no one reads those old posts anyway).
• Yes, I have continued posting and ignoring the way the older posts look (for 7+ years now, it just hasn’t been at the top of my priority list).
• Yes, I could do fix it. But why? This would use time/resources from our family and it’s too personal to build a business from, so I still write there as a (very public) online journal.

Something important to note: while this may be “YOUR” space, never think of it as private. Once something is online, it can NEVER be 100% deleted.

You, and you alone, are responsible for the words you say and/or publish. Just because you can’t see the people you’re “talking” to doesn’t make them any less of a person with feelings.

Please, please, please always remember – you can’t ever really delete something from the internet. Once you post/publish something, you can NOT control who sees it, saves it, shares it, or which database backed it up – this in turn, renders you incapable of EVER completely erasing something.

I don’t say these things to scare anyone – but to encourage you to be cautious and wise with what you publish. There is no harm in writing out your thoughts, BUT just because you write something doesn’t mean you have to hit publish!

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