Family history across the seas

This geneameme is a response to a challenge set by Jill at Geniaus in celebration of Australia’s National Family History Month, August 2013. Thanks Jill for yet more blogging inspiration.

1. What are the titles and URLs of your genealogy blog/s?I have two genealogy blogs. My main (and inaugural) blog is Family History Across The Seas. The other, more recent, is From Dorfprozelten to Australia about the emigrants from that Bavarian village to Australia.
2. Do you have a wonderful “Cousin Bait” blog story? A link to a previous blog post might answer this question. The biggest round of “cousin bait” is the links for the Dorfprozelten families: there’ve been so many I started to feel like a matchmaker! Hence why I started the other blog
3. Why did you start blogging? Is there someone who inspired you to start blogging? I had attended a couple of sessions of adult classes about learning web page design, when I learned about blogging and decided it was for me. An early influence was Shauna Hicks and a great early supporter, with the first comment by Geniaus and supportive comments by Carole Riley. Thanks Shauna, Jill and Carole for your early encouragement!
4. How did you decide on your blog/s title/s?  One of my key interests is migration history, hence the combination of migration and family history in the title.
5. Do you ever blog from mobile devices? What are they? No, but I check comments and respond on my smart phone or iPad. I get my thoughts down so much faster typing on the laptop.
6. How do you let others know when you have published a new post? Through Twitter and directly to my followers on email.
7. How long have you been blogging? Nearly four years, come December!
8. What widgets or elements do you consider essential on a genealogy blog? A search facility, categories/archives and a “follow me” option. I think an “About me” page is important so readers can know where I’m coming from, as they say. I also have a “translate this” page because of my German interest-not sure anyone uses it though.
9. What is the purpose of your blog/s? Who is your intended audience? To document my families’ histories, to some extent my own personal history, and those of the extended groups I research. My audience: anyone who’s interested, though rarely my own family. I also publish my posts in a Blurb book so I can leave it for my descendants to digest later on.  I love the opportunity to shine a light on the Dorfprozelten emigrants as a collective rather than as individuals.
10. Which of your posts are you particularly proud of? Too hard….perhaps Wealth for Toil on the Railways? It’s like asking to choose between your children… Or maybe my Beyond the Internet series.
11. How do you keep up with your blog reading? Since the demise of Reader I’ve been a bit rudderless but either with Feedly or Bloglovin’.  
12. What platform do you use for publishing your blog/s? WordPress.com
13. What new features would you like to see in your blogging platform? The ability to isolate out the stats for every post, irrespective of whether readers hit the home page or that specific post.
14. Which of your posts has been the most popular with readers? I can’t easily tell this from my stats because it lists that day’s posts under “home” (or I haven’t figured out the right way to find it! feel free to enlighten me if you know how!), but this post certainly was a high scorer: V is for the Valiant of Villers-Bretonneux. It’s not the day I had the highest number of hits, but on that day the visits were spread over a lot of posts. Did Time Thief read my mind: this is her post today http://onecoolsitebloggingtips.com/
15. Are you a sole blogger or do you contribute to a shared blog? Sole blogger.
16. How do you compose your blog posts? I write my posts on Word and copy and paste then add images. The inspiration sometimes just “pops into my head” and is easy to write.
17. Do you have any blogs that are not genealogy related? If you wish please share their titles and URLs. I have a book blog, Bewitched by Books and one about the Top End of Australia (and travel) called Tropical Territory and Travel.
18. Have you listed your blog/s at Geneabloggers?  Yes
19. Which resources have helped you with your blogging? A wordpress site by Time Thief called  One Cool Site, Geneabloggers for linking all genealogy bloggers world-wide, Geniaus for linking and supporting Aussie geneabloggers and, most importantly, my fellow bloggers for their support and inspiration.
20. What advice would you give to a new Geneablogger? Just do it! It’s fun and you’ll make great friends world-wide.