20th September 2020
So it’s been a while since I last posted a blog. In fact the last one was way back in November 2019. If there are anybody out there who enjoyed reading them and have missed my scribblings, I can only apologise. I stopped, sorry paused, writing for several reasons.
It’s been a busy time for everyone in this new world. This, coupled with the fact that I have had several family members with illnesses, has meant that my free time has been quite restricted. This was the first reason and originated back in 2019. The other reason was that I was getting fewer people reading them. I am not the sort of person who tends to worry about vast number of readers, but unfortunately I was just getting one or two people reading my blogs. This was a little heartbreaking. For my well being I needed a break from it. I am not looking for hundreds of readers, but a fair number makes me feel happier that I am making a contribution to the autistic community. Also I was not sure why my numbers seemed to drop rapidly, although it could have been a number of things. Therefore I took the decision to take a break.
So why have I started now? Well the main reason was that I had to rebuild my website entirely when the web hosting site I used decided to drop the service. Therefore I had a month to find a new web hosting provider that I could upload my website to. My site on the original provider was very basic in its nature. It was a simple “design and build” based platform which meant I was limited to what I could produce. In terms of the blog pages, I could write blogs but I was limited to just a single picture at the start and each blog was posted on the site in chronological order. It worked okay for people reading the latest blog, but was very poor for anyone wanting to find information from past blogs. They were there, but you really had to hunt to find specific items.
The new web hosting is “Wordpress” based which means that I have more free range to design and organise my blogs in a much better way. On the new site I have categories to allow readers to find all blogs relating to a subject. So for example, there is a category called “Special Interests” which if the visitor clicks on, brings up a list of all my blogs related to that subject, autism and special interests. As well as this you can read blogs written during a specific month by clicking on the archive sections. It’s fairly self explanatory and I am pleased that I can now offer more options. This new layout and better format has given me a new enthusiasm to write new blogs, which is what I hope to do soon, along with the usual “Small Talk” videos.
I have a few ideas for blogs planned which are hopefully interesting and I am looking forward to writing them. The comments section has also been improved and if you wish to make a comment on anything you read then please do so. Likewise if there is subject that you would like me to write about from my opinion, then do not hesitate to let me know. As a taster, I have two new blogs planned, one on working from home, the other on humour…
It’s taken a while to transfer all my previous blogs onto the new website (about eight weeks) and I have had to learn a few new things to get the website to look how I wanted. They are all there though (minus a few picture files that were lost in transit) and are newly categorised for re-reading, so please feel free to have a browse and a read should you wish to do so. The categories are based on common autistic areas and I hope that they can be used by people to find information they are seeking. That’s one of the main objectives of the new website to provide a kind of “database” on autistic subjects from my point of view as a single person on the autistic spectrum. Thank you for reading and I hope you enjoyed it and that you will come back for more in the future!