What are reasons to keep an archive on your blog? We have categories and tags. An archive may seem a bit prehistoric or overkill, especially when they aren't search able and just sit there all static and growing old. Tony Briley started this discussion on the CMF Ads forum.

Reasons for keeping an archive on your blog:

• Web directories tend to list established blogs only, those which are at least six months old. An archive is where they look to find the age of your blog.
• Knowing the age of your blog establishes your credentials, your experience, especially if you are posting about web publishing related topics like SEO, blogging and making money online.
• Some readers prefer to read a blog which has some staying power, has passed the test of time and kept going.
• If people want to flip to a certain date in your blog they need an archive. For instance, to see what you were posting about a year ago, or what you posted on a holiday, or some other eventful day.
• An archive shows all the posts from the month on one page. You can do the same with categories but, not by date.
• Your readers can go back to see how you started. What your thoughts and plans and goals were right from the beginning of your blog project. Who was commenting then? How has your writing style, your way of expressing yourself changed? Also, have you changed the focus of your blog and the topics you cover?
• You may have undertaken a special project which readers would like to track back and go through the journey day by day, as it happened (through the archives). This is not just something for personal bloggers. If you post a series of posts on a topic they can also be read as an ongoing journey.
• I also keep an archive for myself. I like to skim back and see where I was, what ideas I had in the past. I don't look by topic (category or tags) cause that isn't as random as looking into your past by time machine alone. Often something I posted a couple of years ago inspires me for an update on the same topic or a completely new angle on what I was thinking then.

Reasons to get rid of the archive on your blog:

• Your blog is very new and you don't want to broadcast that.
• You want to cut down on clutter in every way you can and the archive just seems to take up more space than it is worth.

What's your opinion? Archive or not?

Many years ago I started a newsletter for writers online. I called it InkSplatters. It ran on the site that is now Yahoo Groups. (Does anyone remember when it was Yahoo Clubs for awhile and something else not even part of Yahoo before that?) The newsletter began as a spin off from a site my friend was doing called The Writer's Pen. We worked on The Writer's Pen together (he did most of it) but InkSplatters was all my own creation. I even sent it out with some of my own ASCII art as borders. Quite the fancy newsletter some days.

It lasted a few years. I was doing okay with it. I had over a hundred subscribers, then 250 and beyond but there was little feedback. In the end it was for that reason I decided to shut down the newsletter.  I know other online projects have ended for that same reason.

Publishing online can be lonely. There should be some kind of cute name for it. Like cabin fever for when you have been indoors too long and desperately must get outside, break free of the inside space. It became known as cabin fever for the pioneers who were trapped inside their small farm houses most of the winter, snowed in or just too cold to leave.  Publishing online is like that too. You keep posting, hoping to hear something besides the echo of silence all around you. No doubt that's why I tend to write with the radio or TV on in the background.

Still there is the urge to be that pioneer, to try something, to start something and try to make it grow. I still do it. I start things independently or I join up other sites and networks to start something as a smaller part of something big. But, there are days when I feel overwhelmed by the to-do list I keep building for myself. There are days when the cabin fever of online publishing gets to me. When I lived alone there would be a day when I'd realize I had not spoken a word all that day. I typed a lot, but spoke not at all.

I look at my work, this site and the others and it's so very quiet. The only sound is the TV or the radio. The comments that come in are like life rafts of communication. I'm not just talking to myself after all! There really are still people in the world.

Being inside too much also narrows your focus too much. Get out there, people watch or even talk to someone. Blow up your world again, remember what it's like to be really social, face to face. It may be a bit scarier than talking online but we all need that interaction too. A breath of life in our quiet publishing world.

When you get back online comment in a few blogs, randomly. Spread that breath of life around.  Yes, it's good for your blog stats but more importantly, it's really good for the blogging community too. Remind someone else that, just because it's quiet, doesn't mean there isn't anyone out there, reading, listening, maybe laughing at the right parts too.

How do you battle that cabin fever of being a web writer, an online publisher?

Word Grrls is about creative writing inspiration with the focus on writing prompts/ exercises. I've been writing on the web since 1998. I admit I can be opinionated (some claim eccentric and some are kind and say I'm wise) but I love web writing and publishing, particularly blogging. To me blogging is still about free writing and creativity.

I have been publishing Word Grrls with a daily entry since November 2007. Before that it was weekly. I'm used to having a publishing schedule and I like the discipline of having that schedule to stick to.

I would very much like to be part of 9Rules and the community here. Not only as a help in promoting Word Grrls but to be part of something bigger again. I miss working within a larger network of sites. People get a lot of feedback and push to keep going in an active community. I also like to be part of building something. I was an active editor at Dmoz.org for over ten years cause I enjoyed tidying and adding to the categories and finding new ideas and hobbies for myself.

I can't pick a favourite post. In a blog each post should be able to stand on it's own. Most people only skim the first post before they decide to read more or click off. I like my current post about the goldfish. It may be a bit dorky but it was what I thought about at the time I saw the baby goldfish in the backyard pond.

I don't know what else to babble on about. I've done more than a few sentences. I would appreciate to hear back from someone. I applied March 8th 2009 and was pretty disappointed when nothing happened and there were no updates on the 9Rules blog. I really hope 9Rules is going to revamp and start up again. Being part of 9Rules was one of the goals I had for this blog at the time I started it. :)

Do you remember 9Rules? It was a blog network, quite busy a couple of years ago. Then it seemed to drop off a cliff one day. It has since been bought up by SplashPress Media.

Once upon a time there would be a gush of interest each time they auditioned new blogs to join the network. I submitted for the last audition but that was at the time they faded away and I never heard a thing. But, now they are revving up again, hoping to regain their place as a network people want to be a part of.

I do. Mainly because I want to have other bloggers to talk to, to compare ideas, successes, failures and just know there are others out there who are in the same boat. You can add your blog to the submissions at midnight on October 1st, 2009. Yes, tonight.

Have you visited Blogs We Luv? I was interviewed at Blogs We Luv for my personal blog, back in 2008.

Put together your own answers to the ten questions and send it in for your own interview. Here are the questions so you can get thinking right away:

• Describe your blog in five sentences or less.
• Link us to one post from your blog that best defines who you are.
• What sets you apart from other bloggers?
• When and how did you first discover blogging?
• What is your biggest pet peeve related to blogging or the internet?
• Name one plugin, blogging widget, or service that you can't live without.
• If you could choose anyone, living or dead, to write a guest post for your blog, who would it be and why?
• How has blogging made you a better person?
• What are your tips for becoming a better blogger?
• Name one great blog that you read on a regular basis. What makes it unique?

Here are my answers:

Ten Questions with Laura of That Grrl

1. Describe your blog in five sentences or less.
A scrapbook/ junk drawer of things I create, write, think or just find interesting. Rural exploration photos when I have been out taking photos. Cartoon drawings to illustrate the blog mostly every day. Basically it is things I think of when I'm in the shower. Conversations I have with myself. Ideas I find somewhere else and want to keep track of to explore further. It's made of stuff I love, stuff that bothers me and just stuff in general. Kind of like life.

2. Link us to one post from your blog that best defines who you are.
Love the World -- Doesn't define who I am. There is no one post that does that. But it has some of the elements of who I am. I think there is too much in my head for any one post to contain it all.

3. What sets you apart from other bloggers?
I don't especially want to be set apart from other bloggers. With all the other bloggers out there I'm sure there are several doing the same stuff I am. I post for myself. I still feel the passion for web publishing that I first did over ten years ago when I began my first weblog. I like the ideas of diy web publishing, free journalism, creative CSS and HTML and having the freedom to do it all my way.

4. When and how did you first discover blogging?
Over ten years ago. I almost remember some of the first blogs I read. They were still new in 1996, most people had a webpage up if anything. Blogs were software which made keeping a site updated easier as your newest work would show up on top of the older work. They weren't all journal-like then either. People who knew code were doing wonders. The rest were trying to learn from the best of them. I remember being awed and amazed by those who created blogs back then, they really were feats of artistic and geeky genius. I was working more on ASCII art, newsgroups and IRC than blogging. My first blog was on Blogger though, I liked it even way back then.

5. What is your biggest pet peeve related to blogging or the internet?
Biggest peeve are the ads (and splogs which followed the ads). If anything is killing blogs it is monetizing and seo obsessed people who don't really create anything. All too often it is recycled, stolen or mass contributed content which lacks anything personal at that point. Splogs are like a huge clog in the drain of the kitchen sink and they spoil blogging by making it harder to find real blogs that would awe and amaze as they did once upon a time.

6. Name one plugin, blogging widget, or service that you can't live without.
Nothing is coming to mind. But it's always the widget that you don't even think about which is most essential and taken for granted. I couldn't live without Blogger itself. I love finding good avatar making sites, Blessthischick.com is my favourite at the moment. I like Firefox though lately it hasn't been keeping me logged in anywhere as it used to do. I like StumbleUpon and Flickr too, both services.

7. If you could choose anyone, living or dead, to write a guest post for your blog, who would it be and why?
No one. What would be the point of having someone else write a post? It's a personal blog, a way for me to hear myself think as much as a way to create something for others to view. To have someone else post would turn it into something else and then it wouldn't be me writing for me any more. I'd have to start another new one. :)

8. How has blogging made you a better person?
That's easy. Blogging kept me from going insane when I was alone in a foreign country and getting divorced. Not sure if it really made me a better person but it really did keep me from feeling completely alone and isolated with just all kinds of thoughts and feelings spinning in my head. It gave me focus and a place to put my feelings out there and get feedback from a few blog friends so that I felt someone was listening to me even if I was still in a room all by myself.

9. What are your tips for becoming a better blogger?
That depends if you really are a blogger or someone using blog software. If you really have the genuine interest in creating something go for it. Try new things and don't worry about the opinions of others. You should be doing this for yourself. Making your own footsteps into the virtual world. Don't go too far into the idea of writing for an audience, write for yourself or it soon becomes meaningless. You get burnt out when you really don't have anything of yourself there any more. If you focus on traffic and link backs to your blog instead of adding colour, ideas and thoughts you won't have anything of your real self invested in it any more. Readers won't find that interesting either.

Work on keeping your blog easy to navigate, organized, not too cluttered and keep it to a simple, clean layout. Also, make sure your colours and the font size don't strain your reader's eyeballs right out of their sockets. If you want to post every day but feel stuck a few days try a new way of expressing yourself: draw something, post a photo, a poem, write about a new hobby you are interested in, take a day off and do something new to write about, anything else you can think of that will fit into a blog post. Just like the old days when I wrote penpal letters and would think of new things you could fit into an envelope and mail acros the oceans, a blog is a format you can fit a lot of things into if you put your mind to it.

10. Name one great blog that you read on a regular basis. What makes it unique?
Had to think about it for a bit. It's a tie between The Useless Men and Blog U now. The Useless Men are fun to read but Blog U has been a great source for blog innovations especially when there was something specific I wanted to change or fix.