It was January of 2006 that this whole NL BlogRoll idea was launched. I had been blogging on my own personal site for several months by that time, and was inspired by the number of other local bloggers out there. What started as just a personal collection of blog links, turned into this site, intended to not only promote all those bloggers, but also the corner of the planet in which I live, and love a lot: Newfoundland and Labrador, Canada.
There's been many ups and downs throughout the last decade, with some years having contests and 'Blog of the Week's', and other years being very quiet, especially in the later years. The site has gone through numerous renditions and expansions, adapting to new online technologies along the way, and sometimes being forced to. The original 'Blogroll' was an awesome service provided by a company/website simply called Blogrolling. This service allowed bloggers to add a simple script to their own sites which displayed the list of NL bloggers, sorted by last update (much like we have here now). When that service went offline, I was forced to either let everything crumble, or rebuild. Obviously I rebuilt - I couldn't just let it die - and thankfully Blogger added a widget which sorts blogs by last update - albeit, not one others could also display. Being a prime opportunity to expand, I also took this time to add all the categories to the site as well, an addition I think was worth it. A lot of work has gone into these pages over the years, but none of it was a chore to me. I love this resource, and I hope others get something from it too.
I'll always consider blogging to be the original social media, here before Facebook and Twitter became the normal way to share thoughts on the internet, and comment on other peoples thoughts. Many people still continue to blog to this day, evidenced by the hundreds of active links found below. The dormant ones often rise again too, as past bloggers decide to dust things off and write a post, much like this one today for me. It being a milestone of 10 years since this thing was created, how could I not write a post, right?
There are other motivations for writing this today though, as I added about 20 new blogs over the past few days, each in their own categories and applicable rolls. Some cleanup of dead links and dormant blogs took place too, but the main thing to note here is the newly added blogs, which I always enjoy doing. New bloggers are born every day, and I love it. Here's to another 10 years of collecting and sharing the many blogs local to Newfoundland and Labrador!
