WELCOME-Bloggers Unite!

Last night was the second (official) Cardiff Bloggers meet up held at Pica Pica in Westgate St.(It definately wasnt a Wetherspoons pub – I couldve got 2 pints for the same price a few doors up 😉 )

A totally packed venue with standing room only and a chance at last to put a face to some of the names from the Cardiff blogs and Twitter feeds.

Some were instantly recognisable whereas some others took a bit more convincing of that it was really them! I randomly kept asking people whether they were ‘VanillaLatte’ but never got to discover who she really was!

Ive never turned up to an event like this without actually knowing anyone and was a bit cautious about the whole affair but everyone was so friendly and open to chat about themselves and their blogs! It was like Speed Dating but without the obligatory awkward sex at the end.

The highlight for me was hearing Rachel from The Save The Vulcan campaign talk so enthusiastically about their plight to save the pub from demolition. Detaling how they utilised the internet (including Facebook and Blogs) to achieve this and just made it all sound so simple and obvious.

A great night of nerdy natter and blog banter was had by all.

So quickly a welcome to everone from the Cardiff Bloggers meet up last night and to add a bit more about my blog and how it works.

Firstly im not entirely sure whether I even like to call it a blog. To me a blog used to be something that only the Americans would produce where usually it would be an online diary of someone’s tales and woe’s. Usually pretty self-indulgent and never really my cup of tea.

I used to run my own website http://www.djleekee.com where I would showcase my mixing and dj skills. I used to code the html in Notepad and used to enjoy the buzz of creating the mixes, the html and getting in excess of 100,000 hits a month. It became so popular that copyright infringement issues meant that ultimately i had to cease the website.

I was one of the first Mashup Artists on the web launching in 1999 but have been there, done that and moved onto other media including video production now.

So I have videos over at YouTube and Vimeo, audio files at Soundcloud and Mix.dj, presence at Facebook, Twitter and Flickr and needed some way of intergrating all my content in one place.

Essentially I wanted to create a website that aggregated all my material in one place – and I found it in WordPress. Such a simple interface and the amount of widgets that they now have was exactly what i was looking for to get the best out of Twitter, Flickr and YouTube.

The best thing about using WordPress is that it doesnt necessarily jump out at you and say ‘Blooooooooooooog’ but used all the technology behind a blog to create a half decent looking website but with all the functionality of some much more indepth and detailed websites.

On WordPress there is a CATEGORY feature which allows me to put certain posts in certain places so for instance if you are only interested in posts that feature Cardiff then click the Cardiff Category and you only see posts that are relevant to that field. (Go on try clicking some of the categories above!)

I recently got a new HTC Desire mobile phone but even though a lot of forums have popped up online with people asking questions there didnt seem to be many answers out there – so I decided to start featuring Android Apps as part of my blog. This is currently listed under the Techy Category but i may introduce an Android category soon.

When posting links on other websites to my blog it’s incredibly useful to post a link to the dedicated, relevant feed so the user doesnt have to wade through loads of posts that are totally irrelevant to them. Hence i can link directly to the Techy category and post that in other Android forums to create traffic to my blog.

It really is amazing how people discover your blog and WordPress gives you so many details of where people have come from, what terms they searched, and where they went and if they clicked any links within your pages aswell.

Plug for WordPress over! So welcome to my bloggy website and hope you find something of interest or relevance! Im still relatively new to this blog world so will eventually get to grips with it all soon. Also im quite liking the range of stuff that I cover here – they dont always have to be subject specific!

Peace.