---
title: "One Year On: Part 1"
date: 2004-04-22
author: "Richard MacManus"
categories:
  - name: "ReadWriteWeb"
    url: "/category/readwriteweb.md"
tags:
  - name: "2004"
    url: "/tag/2004.md"
---

# One Year On: Part 1

Here goes another self-referencing post about blogging. A couple of days ago I clocked up 1 year on this weblog, having started Read/Write Web on 20 April 2003, with an introductory essay called (of course) [The Read/Write Web](https://web.archive.org/web/20050210171059/http://www.readwriteweb.com/2003/04/20.html#a1). Looking back on the past 12 months, I have to say that weblogging has done me a world of good. It’s been my creative outlet, it woke up my previously-dormant writing genes, I’ve met a lot of interesting people, my critical thinking has improved and my [INTJ](https://web.archive.org/web/20050210171059/http://www.personalitypage.com/INTJ.html) imagination has prospered.

Pre-History

Actually my weblogging efforts started more than 2 years ago, in a short-lived weblog called *Modern Web*. I was just getting into reading blogs at that point – Dave Winer’s [Scripting News](https://web.archive.org/web/20050210171059/http://www.scripting.com/) was one of the first weblogs I read on a regular basis, also a New Zealand site called [Aardvark](https://web.archive.org/web/20050210171059/http://www.aardvark.co.nz/). I soon enough discovered that Dave Winer had created a weblogging tool called [Radio Userland](https://web.archive.org/web/20050210171059/http://radio.userland.com/). So at some stage in March 2002 I downloaded Radio Userland and began to experiment with this new (to me) web publishing form. I should mention that I wasn’t a newbie in terms of web publishing, as I’d developed a football picks website in the late-90’s. It was a dynamic site too, developed using ASP and an Access database. But after a couple of years I gave up the football picks website, because I wanted to do something involving writing. 21 March 2002 was the day I published my first “post” in my new Radio Userland weblog: [click to view screenshot](https://web.archive.org/web/20050210171059/http://www.readwriteweb.com/images/first_blog_post.gif).

In those early days I was experimenting and mostly used *Modern Web* to store quotes and links. I did the occasional paragraph of original thought, but in retrospect not nearly enough. My *About Me* page in this first incarnation of my weblog described my blogging as “an informal commentary”. That is, I was commenting on other peoples content and not truly creating my own content.

I abandoned this first weblog attempt on 31 May 2002 – a little over two months after I started. Something wasn’t clicking.

Read/Write Web is Born

A year later, when my Radio Userland license came up for renewal – I decided to give blogging another go. But this time I was determined to use it to write **original content**. After a bit of thinking, I eventually decided on “Read/Write Web” as the name for my new weblog. I was influenced by Dave Winer’s [Two-Way Web](https://web.archive.org/web/20050210171059/http://www.thetwowayweb.com/) theory and accompanying website. Also by [Anil Dash’s Microcontent Client](https://web.archive.org/web/20050210171059/http://www.dashes.com/magazine/backissues/introducing_the_microcontent_client.php) essay, the [Chandler](https://web.archive.org/web/20050210171059/http://www.osafoundation.org/OSAF_Our_Vision.htm) open source PIM (Personal Information Management) project, “next-gen websites” (as I was calling them back then), counterpoint music, XML technologies, and much more. When I was making notes for a domain name to buy, I noted that read/write means:

> “capable of being displayed (read) and modified (written to)” – [Webopedia](https://web.archive.org/web/20050210171059/http://www.webopedia.com/TERM/R/read_write.html)

It was perfect. I bought the domain name and then began to write.

*Coming up In Part 2: Highlights of the past year; plus plans for the future.*

*Originally published on ReadWriteWeb ([archived copy](https://web.archive.org/web/20020204040018/http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/001825.php))*