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[Misc., not news] Blogging Mama, 1 Year Old!

| Jan. 15, 2019 241 views  |  Comments are off.  

The only non-news type of post here. Happy 1 year to the blog! This is a post on some thoughts and reflections.

Looking back

One year ago on this date was the official public release of the blog… at less than 10 views a day. I only spent 2 days learning the basics before jumping into blogging. I didn’t know what I was doing, nor what I was getting into.

In fact I crashed the site so badly that I restarted the site twice, before things made sense.

It was so rushed that the site name wasn’t even thought out that thoroughly, especially since this was meant to be a graveyard of my Discord news posts on the PDX Discord server, and I just wanted something ridiculous as the name.

At least a lot of people refer to this as “PAD Protic” or “Reni blog“. Works well too I guess.

The first banner on the site. That pack of Tamadra was the selling point of the site… It actually took me 30 minutes to draw. You can also tell I was bad at font choices (and still am).
If you remember this, you’ve been here for super long… This was the design back in January 2018.

Over the year I got more and more attached to the site, and decided to pick up website design and coding again, just to make it more usable. I still suck at it, but you can definitely see progress over this year of exploring.

Basically version 2 of the site that stuck around the longest before the current one, with guerilla schedule on front page.

Them feels

As I already mentioned in the 2018 Rewind post, I expected the blog to die with PAD by now. The blog started with a lot of people asking me things like these:

“Why are you doing this, the game is dead?”

“You are insane, the site will not last for 2 months”

“Who cares about JP news anyways”

“You should make a NA-based blog (since my main account is on NA server)”

Well, I survived, and the site is going stronger than I ever expected.

To be honest, if I didn’t have a lot of support from the Cate, chu2, Kennori, Paulo, and the PDX team (especially Flandre and Upc), I don’t think the site would’ve survived. The whole blog started as Blogging Mama, but it’s now more like Blogging Mama & friends. I’m forever grateful to be working with these amazing bunch.

Lots of late nights, lots of screaming from overwhelming news (like that 16 posts in a day last month). Posting at an average of 54 posts a month, and at 653 posts total in a year. It’s been an eventful year!

I also never thought there would be a guerilla schedule up on the front page, ever. That was my dream for so long, and chu2 made it come true! We are actually trying to see if we can do more… stay tuned.

Some fun stuff

This was the original plan for the New Year theme. I dropped it because I got too hungry looking at that kotatsu pudding…

The end?

You wish. Year 1 ended with 922k views on the entire site, and I am not giving up like that. It’s great Japanese practice for me, and I’m still enjoying this crazy learning experience. I hope you all have fun watching me and the team have fun too! 🙂

Now to another fun year of translations and news!

P.S.: Yes that’s part of my Tamadra collection at the top! It expanded, and there will be a post dedicated to them soon.

Published by Reni

Site owner, PDX moderator, Miru Bot/Tsubotki admin. Always Pikapika and Tamatama. Still struggling with Japanese. NA main (Rank 950+) with JP alt (Rank 960+). Super busy transitioning to her new job and moving. zzz

16 Replies to “[Misc., not news] Blogging Mama, 1 Year Old!”

  6. Thank you and your team for all your hard work! I found your website by chance when I was searching for Japanese PAD related news, and now I come here everyday to read up. I’m happy to see it was a great experience for you. 🙂

    1. Hi daily reader! Thanks, I’m glad the site helps. I’m definitely having fun even though sometimes it gets stressful! It’s rewarding though. 🙂

  7. I’m really glad you decided to go through with this and even more so that you allowed me to take part in contributing to the site!

    It’s been amazing to see how the site has changed and I feel honored that I had a front row ticket to see changes happen before you implement them and watch first hand at how hard you work on it all.

    1. Still loving your quote: “I went to bed and some crazy stuff happens to the site when I wakes up”! That was exactly how the countdown timer happened overnight… haha.

      I’m glad you enjoy it too Ken, it’s been crazy and we’ll have even more fun this year!

  8. Happy birthday, Reni blog! Congrats to you Reni, and all of the many contributors and supports of this great site! :3

  9. The people of PAD that follows your blog appreciates it! I personally love the translations with pictures and find it nice just to read through. KEEP IT UP

    1. Okay I’m glad I’m not the only one – It just doesn’t feel the same without pictures! I love fether’s translations on Reddit (and we’re good friends), but sometimes it just feels different.

      Thanks for support!!

  10. I would have long-ago quit PAD without amazing resources like this. Keep it up! (And see if you can get a kick-back from GungHo, you’re making them a lot of money!)

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