Blog Introduction

Blog : from-ireland.net

Introduction

A friend said to me last night  that I should have a blog, and I laughed and replied that I had a few of them over the years and that now, sometimes I post pages on from-ireland that I label ‘blog pages’.  After our chat I was trying to read a book but it kept coming to my head, “OK, what will I do?  Will I research the net for where I could host a blog, will I check out Google+, how about Linkedin?  How many other sites are there where I could have a blog?”  Loads of questions.


Woke up this morning (25th March, 2016) and said to myself, “Jane, just create a ‘blog index’ page on from-ireland.  Load up all the posts you have labelled ‘blog’, take the url’s and create a Blog index page.  Then, tag the link to that page on to all your county pages and hey, you have a blog”

I do have a Facebook page under my name Jane Lyons, attached to that I have a page called Irish Genealogy.  Irish Genealogy is tagged as the official Facebook page for from-ireland.  Then I have a mail list called Y-IRL created in 2001.

The last few years have seen mail lists pretty much die because of the introduction of Social Media Sites.  Facebook (FB) is grand BUT I can make a post (send in a message) and FB will tell me how many people it has reached.  Take for example a post I made about Haemochromatosis on Thursday night 24th March, today that post has ‘reached’ over 9,000+ people.  It had been shared 90+ times before I looked at it today BUT next week I will receive a message from FB telling me that Irish Genealogy had 300+ visitors last week.  Logically I can’t see how those figures equate.  If I leave them even as I have them here then they are divisible *but* how on earth do 300 visitors, ‘reach’ 9000 people?  I freely admit that I am *hopeless* at maths!

from-ireland began not just as a genealogy website but as a site where I wanted to teach people about our history as we learned it.  I wanted to include our culture.  I wanted to include everything I liked about Ireland.  I live in Ireland.  Times are that I talk about something which is not ‘genealogical’ and times are that I get a negative feedback about this.  Times are I receive emails and messages of a negative frame re from-ireland.  Thing is from-ireland is not a business web site, it is a site created by one woman who had an idea back in 2001 when there was nothing (website wise) coming out of Ireland.  from-ireland then seemed to become a website that concentrated mainly on gravestones (2011).

I’m putting dates on the newer posts, but, generally speaking, the list begins at the bottom and works its way up