[grapejam88]

Hi. I am no stranger to this forum and love coming here to interact with this group of colleagues. I will love continuing to come here because forums are a wonderful way to interact with each other on the real topics. To further my fun, I have begun playing with the world of blogging, a slightly different twist on topical matter and have noticed a surge of other nursing bloggers out there, some very humorous and some purely informational. Both styles, forum (such as this) and blogger, have their place in communicating between each other and cyberspace and hooray for those of us who are infiltrating the megabytes with our presence! Yeay!!! Do you blog? What is your site? I need connections for my site and would love to be able to offer traffic to your sites in exchange for tracks back to my blog. Anyone participating in this sort of writing? My site is

http://spaces.msn.com/members/javaju...Space.aspx?_c=

It is not purely a nursing blogger, but intended as a means of destressing after a hard day in the trench. I will be incorporating topics related to healthcare with occasional rants about my own experiences. Totally not competition for a site such as this. It is such a different world out there! Hey, nurses...let's have some fun!

[sbnursing]

what is blogging? hmmm maybe im just stupid...

[grapejam88]

A blog is a website, a little personal piece of the internet per se, that a person can set up to use sort of like a journal. The beauty of the thing is that you don't really have to have major writing skill to do it. A person learns as they go in some cases. Most free blog (stands for web log) sites are set up so that the person only has to provide a couple pieces of general information to get started and doesn't need ANY computer programming skill to have their own site. If you have clicked on my link you will see that the site is devoted to just about anything! Some people choose a theme and stick closely to that theme (such as just Nursing topics, politics, etc.). Others simply like to find things that might be of current interest and have a say. Then at the bottom of the "post" which is the no different than posting here, there is a place that says "comment". Much like a reply here. People reply to the posts and interact that way. It just doesn't show up threaded like here. Weblogs are fun! There are so many out there, so many different kinds and topics. I have links on my site to many devoted to nursing, student nurses and registered alike. Also general sites. Check some of them out. If you have no skill with writing, but think it mght be fun, it might be a good challenge!

[Warren]

I enjoyed your bit about the health benefits of chocolate!!

cheers!

Warren

[grapejam88]

Thanks Warren! I have been trying to discipline myself to go there either every day or every couple of days at the least and update the blog. I am trying to teach myself HTML code so I can host my site and actually use something better-designed such as WordPress templates. It is a work in progress, albeit very slow. I guess all good things to those who 1. Wait, 2. Have enough money to get them now, 3 Hire someone else to do it. I am going with #1.

[Warren]

I got a small website going for my business through Yahoo.com webhosting. I think mine was $20/month (you can see it at medibelt.ca) but cheaper ones were definitely available. The nice part is no html coding experience is needed (I have none). You can select templates and cut and paste to fit what you need.

Good luck!

[rogue]

Hi there... I'm new to this site, but not new to blogging. There is a huge network of nurses (and other medical professionals) out there who blog and read each other's blogs. Many of us have links to each other's sites. I suggest you check out Mediblogopathy (http://mediblogopathy.blogspot.com). She has a ton of links to other blogs. Check it out. There is also a nursing blog "webring." Have fun!!!