This past week I’ve been carrying out little tweaks, and running into a couple of problems with the website that I’ll have to deal with soon. When someone makes a comment they are led to a page with a list of errors. I’m not sure if this is because I need to approve comments before they’re visible, but I’ll see what I can do. There are also a list of warnings at the bottom of posts about accessing array offset- I’m not sure if they were caused by me updating the theme, so I’ll need to look into that too.
I’ve been focusing on small things that improve the navigation and visibility of the website, like including an archive of posts by month for PUB 101 because I realized it may be a bit tricky to see my progress through the course without a timeline. I linked my website in my social media profiles, and I think it’s directed some more readers to the website because users have increased in the past couple of weeks.
I’ve also been thinking about ownership of content with the readings we were assigned this past week. I own this domain, but Instagram has the license to use the content I’ve posted under the Knitting After Hours profile. I caught myself thinking about the future of this blog as I prepared for course selection for next semester, whether I’ll feel motivated enough to keep it up. I’d love to continue with it because it’s a new mode of expression for me. It’s a place where I don’t need to align my writing with the style of an organization I’m volunteering for, or format my writing for an academic setting.
I was born at the time when the Internet had already been around for a while, but I didn’t grow up on the Internet. I got my first phone when I was 10 to call my mom and my dad for emergencies, and nothing else. I stayed off social media until my second year of high school. Even so, over the last five years with my small Internet presence I’ve become accustomed to giving up a certain amount of privacy in order to stay connected. A blog is something entirely different. This website’s purpose is not so much connection as it is logging my progress in this course and exploring my interest in knitting and related topics. I own what I put out on this website, and it’s a reflection of me.
I also gave some thought to Google Adsense, and decided not to install it. After testing to see where the ads would appear on my site, I realized I don’t like the idea of having things that I didn’t create on here.
I want to build and continue this website. I hope to write knitting patterns at some point, and I would love to be able to use this website as a way to list them for download rather than using a platform like Ravelry. I also think it’s good for me to detach a bit from the expectation that I give up ownership when I put things out on the Internet.
