SQLAuthority News – Milestone – 1400th Post and Why do I blog

I am very glad today that I have reached milestone of 1400th post. I was looking back to my journey which I started on Nov 1, 2006 and I feel that it has been long way. I have noticed a lot of changes in myself too. Earlier, I used to write a milestone post every time I reach either 1 million views or when I am writing the 100th post. I noticed that such “milestones” started happening quite often; so I decided to write about such milestones on every 100th post. Well, this limited the number of such milestone posts to a maximum of 4 per year approximately. In fact, this is very first monologue post for the year as I did not write a blog post like this when I reached the 1300th blog post, and also the 1200th blog post was on the last day of the last year (such a coincidence!).

In today’s milestone post, I will try to answer one of the most common questions I face.

I quite often asked that “Why Do I Blog?”

The main reason: it gives me satisfaction and helps me to learn. The other important reason I started to blog was that I came across lots of new information and learning materials. It was very difficult for me to remember everything. Primarily, to keep a log of everything and bookmark them, I started blogging .

Before Blogging

Earlier, I used to store the frequently used scripts in my Excel Sheet. However, very soon I realized that it is very difficult to main the Excel sheet after I had around 20+ different SQL scripts. The natural transition for me was to start having online html page, where I started to keep my bookmarks. After a while, I found this bit cumbersome as I had to manually update all the time links as well any modification in the scripts, and I had to go through the burdensome process of modifying the html and re-uploading everything using FTP. I also had one more problem: the difficulty in working with images.

The New World Of Blogging

Finally, I discovered the joy of the blogging. I realized that I could use blogs to keep my bookmarks. It was very easy and convenient to blog my ideas. The problem of searching my previously written blog posts still existed and I could not find my previous blog posts quickly. I also started to face another problem in my own blog: I did not remember if I had written on the same subject earlier as the number of posts had increased. Moreover, I also found out that  at times I had written more than one solution for a problem. I was absolutely getting lost in this muddle myself. I finally customized my blog with an Online Search option. Once I configured the Online Search option, I found it very convenient myself to find anything related to previous posts.

Here is the link to Search@SQLAuthority.com

Another issue was that I was unable to get the complete list of the all the blog posts I have written. Searching was important, but sometimes, I needed to see the timeline of the blog post as well the estimation of the blog posts. There was no such facility directly available out of the box in my blog. I immediately wrote a custom code for the same, and the same page now gives me good idea about the previous posts.

Here is the link to All Articles.

After Blogging

This is the most interesting part. The blog was started without any clear intention, but as a repository of the personal scripts and links. Online world is very interesting. I started to get few visitors besides myself and few of my friends. My blog started to get many comments and questions. I do my best to answer all the questions on a regular basis to date. There are many questions that are already answered. There is the main difference between a forum and a blog. In blog, most of the conversations are done on the subject, which is mentioned in original blog post. Every day, I get many questions and some good comments from readers. Many of the excellent and kind comments have inspired me immensely. I found some of the questions so interesting that I wrote blog posts on the same. This in turn triggered some excellent technical conversations. I never ever realized that I will write so many blog posts, and today, I am writing my 1400th blog post.

Well, here it is: today, I answer why I blog and how it happened. Another question I often receive is regarding the name of the blog. I guess I should discuss about this in another post.

Reference: Pinal Dave (https://blog.sqlauthority.com), Image Source unknown