Technology

Blogging Before Blogging was Popular

Anaxified Screenshot
Anaxified was a little ahead of its time and was really a blog before we knew what blogs were.

Blogging has become such a popular pastime for people on the internet. People are either reading blogs or posting their own. It wasn’t that long ago when this wasn’t the norm.

Before the explosion of social networking sites, people would frequent sites that they found funny and interesting. Some of these sites allowed the users to post content, comment on posts, and interact with other people, but it was pretty much on a site by site basis. This may seem trivial now because we have gotten so use to how blogs work, but this wasn’t as easy of a task back then. Now there is software already written, like WordPress, that basically handles all the technical aspects of running a blog. Before you had to pretty much write your own code to do the same things. So most sites also had their own feel to how things operated. There was nothing that really tied users from one site to the next.

One such site was Anaxified. This was a site created by the one and only Jesse Pulsipher. A few of you may remember this site and there were some of us that contributed our zany thoughts, stories, and life lessons on the site. There were a lot of fun times and the site had a relatively good following for a while. Alas, as with most things that aren’t a priority, Anaxified took a back seat and has gone idle.

As I’ve gotten more into my blog, Anaxified always seems on the back of my mind. I tried to go to it the other day just to see what state it was in. I was kind of wanting to go through some of the old posts and remember back. Unfortunately navigating through the posts doesn’t work anymore, but the front page still loads and so does some of the other pages like the About Us section. This got me wondering if Jesse had any plans to revive it or do something else with it.

So when I met up with Jesse last night it came up in conversation. It had been on his mind too. We kind of went over some ideas, but I told him that it would be cool to try to bring Anaxified back. I think it could be easily updated into the WordPress world and that he could easily add his own style to it because he is great at design. One of the concerns that came up was whether we could get people, whether it be new or the old crew, to contribute to it like in the old days. Would people be willing to simultaneously post to their blog posts and Anaxified and would people be willing to comment on the site itself? This is important because what would be the point if no one really went to the site and interacted there. Would people just see the link on their Facebook page and just comment there? I suggested with enough Facebook integration that people might be inclined to interact more on Anaxified itself and with the integration it could still share their comments and/or posts with their Facebook friends.

I don’t know if anything will come of it, but I thought it was a cool thought. It would be interesting to have one spot that could be kind of a central repository of everyone’s posts and thoughts. Plus it could be an outlet for some that want to get their ideals, stories, and thoughts out there but that don’t want to run their own blog site. I know this is kind of the premise of Facebook’s status updates, but that is really geared more toward quick and shorter information. I would be curious to hear what others think about it, especially those that use to contribute to the site.

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Fedil

I was originally born in Missouri, but traveled around most of my childhood. My mom finally got tired of moving while we were in Dallas, Texas and I have been here ever since. After high school I started college at the University of North Texas (UNT) and started working in the computer field. I currently work for JCPenney as a front end software engineer for their e-commerce website. Before this I worked for AT&T about 12 years and started with them in 1999 (when they were Southwestern Bell). I have many passions and I really love photography. Besides photography I also love sports. I not only like to watch it, but I also love to play. Currently my friends and I play indoor soccer and flag football.

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