Laurie, Good luck on your blog. It looks like a very worthwhile endeavour. One suggestion I would make is that you get a more stable email address for it, like a Gmail, Hotmail, or Yahoo account. If you don't want an extra account to check, Gmail can be set up to forward emails automatically to your main account. Your blog postings may be archived for a long time on Google and WordPress and if you change ISPs and leave Comcast, your email address will become obsolete. Another suggestion is to include links to the eBay auctions rather than just the auction number. It just makes it easier for people to check things out. If you need some tech help with this, write to me privately.
To everyone else, I would like to address a few things: 1. Privacy. Laurie is using WordPress, a well-established blogging platform. I have never heard of any problems with privacy and I have never experienced any. My WordPress blog has been going for over a year; I subscribe to other WordPress blogs and have not had any problems. 2. Email vs. blog. For those who don't want another site to visit and would prefer email notifications, as Laurie has pointed out, WordPress offers email announcements. 3. Alternatives to email and visiting the blog: RSS feeds. If you have a Gmail account (free and fairly secure) you already have access to Google Reader. The link is :https://www.google.com/reader/. You click the Add Subscription button, paste in the URL for Laurie's blog, and click Add. Yes, it is another site to add, but the beauty of it is that it handles any RSS feed, so you can keep all the blogs and news sites you visit on that one page. 4. Blog vs. Arachne: A blog is very different from an email discussion group like Arachne and it has some functions that Arachne can't duplicate. Photos are one example. Tagging is another -- Laurie has tags for specific categories like "lace for sale." Also, Laurie plans to post interviews, articles, and book reviews. Those are far more suitable for a blog than for Arachne because blog entries have permanent URLs, are picked up by Google very quickly, and allow comments, either moderated or not. There will be some overlap of content because both email lists and blogs are good for posting announcements. Email discussion groups have more active discussions because they allow discussions to happen in real time with a large number of participants (rather than subscribers who have to choose to receive follow-up comments about a blog posting). They both have their advantages and disadvantages and there's plenty of room in the lace world for both. Best wishes, Avital -- Blog: http://apinnick.wordpress.com Photos: http://www.flickr.com/photos/spindexr - To unsubscribe send email to majord...@arachne.com containing the line: unsubscribe lace y...@address.here. For help, write to arachnemodera...@yahoo.com
