Thursday, July 14, 2011

Two Blogs?

When I created my writers page, with my son's help, we created a blog thereon. Using the snazzy software from WordPress, copying all the posts from this blog to that new one was almost instantaneous. I haven't checked each post, but I've spot checked them, and found them to be correct, even to labels, even to the few images I use. Even the comments came over well, though I seem to have more comments on the copied blog than on the original. One of them must have a bad counter.

Since that blog went up on June 6, I've been posting almost identical content there and here. If I post here first I copy it there, and vice verse. I think I've had one post here that I didn't copy there, but I think everything I posted there I've copied here.

I don't know, however, if that's a good long term strategy. That blog is supposed to be for my writing career, not any personal stuff, not political info, not family or health stuff, not religious studies and Christian growth. All of those I've had on this blog, and have been copied over there. I don't have any posts I'm ashamed of, or ever unhappy with, but a reader of my writer's blog might wonder why I have Bible study type stuff posted, or information about great-uncles So-and-So who died. I may be deleting extraneous posts there.

I need to have a blog on my writing site, and it needs to reflect my writng activities. But, I don't want to lose "An Arrow Through the Air". First, I love the title, drawn from John Wesley's metaphor. I don't think I can fully maintain two blogs at the same pace I've been doing with this one. A thought I had was to make this blog the "complete" one, and the other blog the "writing only" one. That kind of makes sense, and the copying isn't difficult or time consuming. I suspect my few readers here want to see posts about my writing career, and probably don't want to be checking out another blog. Yet people who learn of me as a writer and search for me are more likely to find the other, and not also check out this one.

It's a dilemma—not an earth-shattering one, but still something to ponder.

And to seek input on. What about it, loyal readers? Shall I have two separate blogs? Shall I make An Arrow Through the Air a complete blog, and the other a writing posts only? Give me some feedback, please.

4 comments:

Gary said...

Any way to cross-link in an obvious and convenient way? A link button briefly explaining the content of each blog displayed in a prominent place makes the other blog just one click away. Then just post content to the appropriate blog. Or it would be cooler if you could show a list of recent posts for the OTHER blog on each of them. A click on the post item would jump to it. Now what are the technical capabilities of both platforms to permit this?

David A. Todd said...

That's a good idea, Gary, if I can figure it out. Both Blogger and WordPress have widgets you can add. I'll look for them.

David A. Todd said...

Well, that was a lot easier than I thought. Check out the RSS feed. And I've got one at my writers site as well.

Gary said...

I love it when a plan works out.