Nostalgia for my early days of blogging

A couple of weeks ago I celebrated seven years of blogging. Seven years! I never expected to still be blogging away, and I never anticipated how much both blogging and my blog would change over the years. It has made me all nostalgic for the way things were back in 2011, and so I thought I'd share some of the things that I remember. Were you blogging back then too? Perhaps I can take you on a trip down memory lane!

I was delighted when I was nominated for the Liebster Award! I did understand that it wasn't the greatest of accolades, but it did at least mean that someone else was reading my blog. I don't have my original post sadly, but as far as I remember you had to answer some questions about yourself, then keep the chain going by nominating other bloggers.

Another chain letter type blog post was the meme. The meaning has changed slightly over time, and back then it meant writing a blog post based around a theme. Someone would tag you to write a post, then you would pass it forward by tagging other bloggers. This sort of thing - Blog your heart out. I loved writing the posts but I was terrible at choosing other people to tag - I didn't want to burden anyone and I didn't want to leave anyone out! I've not seen one of these going around for years!

Blogs generally looked rather chaotic back then. There were lots of buttons and badges in the sidebar, patterned backgrounds, bright colours, lots of people using the same Blogger templates. There were very few professionally designed headers or graphics, and it didn't matter at all.

There were many more people using Blogger, and no-one was bothered about a blogspot.com domain name. People also used the fancy widgets that Blogger had to offer - like the word cloud to highlight frequently covered topics.

Everyone had a blog roll on their blog with links to their favourite bloggers. This is something that I really miss! It was a great way to find new blogs - if you enjoyed reading a blog then there was a fair chance you'd like the blogger's recommendations. Everyone also had a badge to grab that they hoped people would add to their blog.

There was much more emphasis on the writing, and the photography definitely took a back seat. Many photos were small, badly lit and with cluttered backgrounds, but it really didn't matter as people were following a blog for the text. I also don't remember any selfies - in fact there were hardly ever any photos of the actual blogger.

There was no need to maintain a presence across social media, and there definitely wasn't any scheduling of social media posts. I did join Twitter but no one was really promoting their blog on there, it was just for chatting, and adding your blog to your profile if people wanted to check it out. People tended to share posts from other bloggers as much as their own.

Connecting with a fellow blogger was all about the comments - you would comment to show that you'd read a post and if someone left you a comment you'd always go back and reciprocate with a comment on their blog.

You could write freely about brands that you liked and places that you'd visited without feeling the need to disclose that you'd paid for something yourself - collaborations and sponsored posts were much rarer.

I also remember everyone being obsessed with Page Rank - I've not heard anyone bother about it for years!

The way that I blog has also changed a lot too. I've come a long way, and hopefully I've made some improvements! This is how I used to blog:

I would often write a quick post with just a couple of pictures, sharing what we'd been up to that day. My blog was started to share photos with friends and family, and that's what I used to do. Now I worry that people won't find that kind of content interesting if they don't know me personally.

I wrote posts as they came into my head, and I never scheduled a post or thought further ahead than the next day.

I was always changing the design of my blog and trying out new templates. Now I'm just worried I'll break everything if I change one or two small things!

I wrote entirely for myself and never imagined anyone else reading. Quite freeing, although I must admit I did waffle on a bit.

I didn't care about image size, I just uploaded the pictures via Blogger. When I ran out space I moved to Photobucket, a decision that came back to bite me. I also didn't pay much attention to my photos, there were no white backgrounds and styled images.

I got to know other bloggers through blog commenting or on Twitter. It took me ages to add bloggers as friends on Facebook and it was exciting for me when I joined a Facebook blogging group and found other bloggers that I knew there.

There weren't as many people blogging back then, which made it easier to keep up with everyone. I feel so out of touch now when I see all the new blogs out there. I'm so glad that many of the people that I was reading back then are still around, and I wonder what happened to the ones that have fizzled out.

If you have memories of blogging over the years I'd love to hear them!