Over the last few days, I have transformed danielgreene.com into a blog. I resisted doing a blog for quite a while for several reasons. Blogs can take a lot of time to write and maintain— especially when there are a lot of comments to monitor. I didn’t know anything about the software I would need to create one. Most important, I was afraid that once I got started, there would be no stopping me from saying absolutely everything on my mind. I was afraid my candor might get me into trouble.
Then I had a talk with Will Pate, Community Ambassador for the Flock Browser, who said, “A professional blog is a great way to gain recognition in your profession.” It suddenly dawned on me— of course I don’t have to say everything on my mind! Of course it doesn’t have to be personal! A blog can be professional! Sure, why not? That one sentence from Will was all I needed to hear to open my mind. I had already been wanting a more interactive “Web 2.0” website. I wanted people to comment on my posts, comment on each other’s comments, blog about my blog, add me to their extended friends’ network, add “trackback” links to my blog, etc. Now the question was: what sort of blogging system will I use to “power” my blog?
Well, I noticed that Will had a web site with his name as the domain just as I do, and I noticed that his was “powered by WordPress.” I checked into it, and found out that my host, pair Networks, supports WordPress on its servers. Other than the few extra dollars I have to pay pair Networks per month to upgrade my account, WordPress is free. I also chose it because it allows me to have danielgreene.com host the blog natively, rather than having to host it somewhere else like BlogSpot or LiveJournal. I like the fact that it is customizable, and I don’t need to have any navigation bar at the top advertising the blogging system.
Now, when I go to YouTube or Flickr, I can actually click on those “Blog This” links and blog them. And I can right-click in Flock to “Blog This” anywhere on the Web!
Daniel Greene 
Comments welcome