This post is coming in a few days later than I had originally hoped, but that’s okay. 2008 was a very busy and successful time for me in regards to my personal work online, and I wanted to take a moment or two and recap some of the highlights and numbers.
Four New Sites!!!
With the launch of my largest site, Ka’anapali Dreamin’ back in 2007, I would have figured the majority of my time the following year would have been spent with upkeep and expansion of that site. Indeed, I put quite a bit of time into it, with close to 20 updates released last year, not to mention all the new content around our April ’08 trip to Maui.
But who knew I’d also be serving up 4 new websites in that same year, bringing the total of sites in my portfolio to 9. Here’s a quick recap of each of them.
- Maui Wall Candy – This is my online photo store powered by smugmug. While the Pro account that I’m subscribing to handles most everything for me, there was still a bit of customization to get the site looking unique, and it was anything but the traditional coding and markup process, either.
View Site – View Announcement - Kris Nelson Photography – This site is my portfolio site for my photography work, much like webnelly.com is the portfolio site for my web development. It was one of those that I decided to throw together in a matter of a few weeks and have been very happy with it.
View Site – View Announcement - kris.nelson – Shortly before completing Kris Nelson Photography, I came up with the concept for kris.nelson and literally launched the site in 3 days. It’s not a traditional website and bends a few of the standard site design rules, but I think it’s a neat little place to visit
View Site – View Announcement - Igloo Surfing – This little blog should have been the first site in 2008, but was put on the back burner almost the entire year. It’s a small blog featuring photos of our rabbits doing cute things and my attempted humor with captions.
View Site – View Announcement
While I have some site redesign and enhancement ideas for my existing sites, there are no plans for new sites (yet) in 2009.
Blogging
By the end of 2008, blogging finally became part of my daily routine, and I was very proud of myself. Setting small goes to start with, I finished the year with well over 200 posts on my four blogs, and in December I was averaging 2 a day. Here’s the breakdown:
- Ka’anapali Dreamin’ Blog – 136 posts
- Kris and Cindy’s Blog – 42 posts
- webnelly.com Blog – 28 posts
- Kris Nelson Photography Blog – 26 posts
Photos
With the launch of my Kris Nelson Photography site last year, photography, much like blogging, became a regular part of my life as well. As a result of our April ’08 trip to Maui and my renewed interests in everyday photography, I posted 1,900 new photos to Flickr in 2008. Checking the 2008 Archive calendar at Flickr, the biggest spike in April from our Maui trip, but the last 3 months really started to pick up in terms of frequency.
Twitter
It addition to making Twitter part of my Maui vacation in 2008, I’ve become a modest use of the micro-blogging service during the second half of ’08. I recently posted my 1,000 update on Twitter before the end of the year, and while I only have a handful of followers, it makes a nice balance. My Twitter updates are already integrated into kris.nelson, and I have a few ideas on future uses as well. Fun stuff.
Pretty Much It
That about covers the major highlights. There were so many cool things that worked on this past year, it would just be too daunting to list most of the smaller ones. The new sites are always fun, but the blogging, photos, and Twitter conversations I engage in daily are really what is making it exciting to share my life online right now. The web is such a great place right now, and I’m happy to be a part of it.
Here’s to bigger and better things in 2009!
