Today, August 5, I received my little twenty-year anniversary badge from WordPress.com.
Wow, things have changed a lot online since I first jumped on this platform. The internet now seems barely recognizable from the days when, as gier99, I first learned to code my blog Nightjar on Geocities.
Started on WordPress in 2006, my Okir blog1 is still up, though I stopped posting in 2010. I’ve created multiple blogs and websites here. I used one of my blogs blog as a space to draft and edit my poetry book Corporeal, allowing readers to comment publicly on what I wrote before I published it! Amazingly, the manuscript was published by Black Radish Press in 2018, despite the fact that I’d already posted much of it on my blog!
I’ve had idle periods, when I didn’t do much on my websites or blogs, or where I got frustrated with the platform, and left for awhile. These days, however, with all the predatory, corporate tech platforms and social media on the internet, I’m appreciating WordPress much more, despite its “faults.”
I live on a tight budget, and a couple years ago I trimmed my website of all paid plugins. I’m glad that I can do well enough without them, and I hope that WordPress continues to offer free options for folks like myself. In any case, I’m glad that I still have a presence here.
Oh, and I hope they finally make the Reader a little less clunky. 😉
Here’s a painting I did from 2016: “First the Seed.”
- “Okir” is a vegetal design motif from the Philippines. ↩︎
Jean Vengua 