I wrote my first real post on this blog exactly one year ago today. This post marks the 473rd entry which means I’ve blogged roughly 1.3 times per day. Those posts have accumulated over a massive 6,700 comments. However, I’m not here today (actually, 2:01 am in the morning) to tell you the current status of this blog, you already know about that.
How It Started
As I’ve told others in blog interviews (see the about page for links), blogging for me began from pure curiosity for various pieces of blogging software. I had heard so many good things about WordPress back in July of 2005, that I decided to try out a copy on the local server running on a 1st Gen Mac Mini. I began playing with different themes, editing CSS here, writing PHP there.. it got addictive.
It wasn’t until I stumbled upon Michael Heilemann’s K2 theme (which was Alpha Four back then), that I knew I wanted to take blogging seriously. After having tried countless themes, K2 seemed like it was perfect. That same day I donated a few bucks to Michael’s cause and bought my domain name. To this day, my entire site has been based on some form of K2 or another. However, at this point my theme might be too hacked up to really be called K2 anymore.
What you may not have known was that I started blogging last August and had a good 40 posts or so until my Mac Mini called it quits and the hard drive died (I had still been serving off of it). That explains why my first post talks about migrating to Media Temple.
Why It Continues
So what keeps me going and involved in blogging every day you ask? You. I judge the success of each post by the amount of user interaction it sparks. It doesn’t matter if you agree with my posts or not, I absolutely enjoy receiving comments (except spam, Akismet++). User interaction on posts like this and even that are good examples.
I realize that many of you enjoy reading my content through RSS. That’s good and I wanted to say that I’ll always be providing full, ad-free feeds. However, I encourage you to minimize your RSS aggregator every once in a while and chime in on the conversation, or even start one up. That’s how I know if people are actually listening. Site metrics are one thing; actual, tangible involvement and engagement is another. How will I ever know if I got through to the 3,676 people that stopped by yesterday?
Without this vital interaction, this blog would have croaked months ago. As a sign of my appreciation, I will be making a post in the near future offering PaulStamatiou.com and PStam.com buttons. I ordered a few hundred but I’m not sure how many of you will respond. I don’t want to charge but when it comes to sending out more than a hundred, it would be nice to see a dollar or so per button. Anyways, I will worry about that when the buttons arrive.
Until Next Year
Thanks for a great year. Spread the word about my site and hopefully come next September 8th I can blog about how I have more subscribers than TechCrunch. :-) Oh and the next few days will be a bit slow – I have a microeconomics test, an information design project proposal, an interactive story to make in Flash for an interaction design class and a ray tracing program to write for my computer graphics class. (psst – join my facebook group)
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Congratulations, today is also the 40th aniversary of Star Trek!
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Congrats Stammy! Looking forward to another year.
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Congrats Paul !! I can’t believe it’s just 1 year, seems a lot more to me.
Keep the good “words” going.
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Congrats Paul, keep up the great content.
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Wow. I can’t believe what you have accomplished in a year. I know I have really enjoyed stopping by your site, commenting on flickr, and asking for help with wordpress or k2. keep it up, and start rolling out some schwag!
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Congrats Paul. Keep up the good work.
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congratulations!thanks for your woriking,great,i m recognize your blog via k2 tutorial.
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Congrats dude!
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Woah 1 year! I started just over a year ago as well. The fact you have achieved so much is incredible. Keep writing, I certainly enjoy reading!
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Well done Paul, you’re an inspiration. Not only 1.3 a day (ish), but consistently readable and interesting. Keep up the good work.
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Hi paul,
come upwith more tutorials and guides. good luck for the next year
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Congratulations buddy! I remeber the very first post that I commented on when I started reading your blog (the first tutorial you did on how to make headers graphics). When you post, you always give me an insightful way of looking at something that I hadn’t previously considered. IMHO, that’s the sign of a great writer and thinker. Thanks for putting so much useful information on Google. I’m looking forward to more.
Oh yeah, consider this an early request for one of those "PaulStamatiou.com" buttons!
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I rememver when you started your blog… Happy Blogiversary!
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Paul, you should create a little “spread” PaulStamatiou icon so I can place it at the bottom of my blog right next to the “I Flock” icon.
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Many congratulations Paul. I have been following this site for nearly your whole year and have found a great number of your post to be both informative and entertaining. So I thought I’d use this opportunity to emerge from the shadowy RSS realm and say thanks and congrats in person.
Keep up the good work and here’s to the forthcoming year. Cheers!
Congratulations Paul! I hit my 1 year anniversary a couple of days ago too.
Keep up the good work!
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Has it been a year already? Good work dude, here’s to many more.
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Even though I consider myself a new reader to your site, you can consider me a loyal one from here on out, keep up the good and and congrats!
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congratulations Paul! your blog is one of my first “to read” when I can get a connection to the internet.
Great work, continue to feed our readers! ;D
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Keep it going Paul. This is definitely one of my favorite blogs.
Congrats on your accomplishment so far!
Dimitry
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Congratulations Paul on what has become one my favorite blogs of all things tech. You Rock Stammy!
PS: Still want you on the podcast
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well done
And may you have many more….
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Congratulations, man.
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Hey Paul-
Congratulations! 1 year is a loooong time in the internet world!
I really enjoy reading your blog, so keep up the great work! I also like Victor’s idea of a PStam podcast!
~Mike
PS Any idea what is coming from Apple on September 12th?
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Happy birthday Paul, I’m not much for the tecchy stuff but your writing has been both informative and helpful in helping me keep up with the trends in social media.
Regards
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It has been great reading your stuff Paul
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I remember when you first started Paul. I sorta started with k2 around the same time, so it’s been good to watch your blog grow and mature over the past year. I must congratulate you on what you have achieved here. Keep up the good stuff.
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Hey Paul, Happy 1 year! I’ve been RSS-lurking for a few months now and I figured, in honor of your anniversary and as a result of you telling me I should, I would finally leave a comment. Thanks for providing such a great resource! I bought a MacBook yesterday (my first Mac ever). Your reviews and comments about it really helped in my decision.
Thanks again and here’s to many more years of great tech news and reviews!
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I’d love to see you have more subscribers that techcrunch…that’d be great.
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Nice work dude, I can barely blog for a month before I lose steam :(
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I wish to you success in everything you decide to do in the future. If you do it with love like you are keeping this blog, there is no chance in a million Na ta ekatostiseis!
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Yo Paul, congrats dude for this whole year. Viva PaulStamatiou.com
But one thing I wouldn’t agree is the CONVERSATION!
I mean how would you manage to talk to thousands here, because I don’t see conversations after the thousands or so comments but only reply back to thoughts after a post. The conversation don’t follow. I think you are not fault, we’ve got lives and so many other things to do apart blogging. But conversation on a big platform like yours, I don’t see that ;)
In fact I’ve learnt many so many many things from you and your blog and I also wrote about something because I was trying to understand the very thing behind it : would there be conversation behind a great big blog like yours?
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Stammy,
Congrats man., you’ve come far in a year. Hope you’re having a good semester as Tech and hope to see you sometime soon.
Phil
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Congrats, Paul. The thing I like best about this blog is that it is very professional and authoritative, while still being written by an ordinary guy- as shown by the fact that I feel like I can comment here. :)
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You rock!
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So your site is 4 days older than mine… I feel like they could be brothers, in a pseudo cyber-personification-surrealist sort of way. Plus, they are linked :)
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Awesome results in only one year!
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It took me almost two years to reach that high! Well that means that I only blog once in two days lol. Congratulations ;-)
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