An online education for Firefighters
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The RFFA website is a different story. This website began, for me, as a learning experience. I had never even thought of building a website. After all the blog is an easy to use interface that only requires a little bit of html knowledge to customize the look for what you want. Mike Rose had been the past webmaster of the RFFA website, and he had a good product. However with all of the work I was doing on the history and MDA, I wanted something more. So I began my first website. Those of you who checked it out early might have noticed that it changed look several times before I decided on the template we are using today. I do have to admit, I get a lot of help with the site using Macromedia’s Dreamweaver, which I just now noticed that there is an upgrade to Dreamweaver 8, sounds interesting.
The websites have grown too. I add a little bit here and there to the RFFA website. The Maurice Wiseman Project just recently made it’s debut. This project is a more in depth and focused project than the history, including timeline, which I had authored prior.
I continue to add daily to this blog. I am quickly reaching 300 posts and the blog is not even a year old. I constantly hear from local Firefighters who say the site is great and to keep up the good work. That is enough to keep me on track. I will continue to bring stories, photos, history, etc. to you.
I have been told it would be neat to get everyone’s picture, like Wiseman did up until the mid 90′s. I agree. If you see me at a station, ask. I usually have my camera. I don’t mind taking a few pictures. That is what we need to continue the history of the Department.
If you know of news that you think should be on here let me know, send my pictures. If you run a fire, email me a brief synopsis.
A little more technology…
If you are like me you have a home computer with bookmarked pages, or a favorites list. However when you are using a remote computer, at the station or wherever, you don’t have access to these favorites. Well now you do. Sign up for Delicious, an online bookmark site. You can add your bookmarks as you surf the internet. You can view my Delicious here. Although you should remember that it is public domain, so if you are into something kinda kinky, you might not want to add it to your Delicious.
If you would like to sign up for your own blog (FREE) or would like to set up an account (also FREE) so that you can post comments to this blog or others using a username then check out Blogger/Blogspot. It really is easy to use. There are all types of blogs out there like political/news blogs, family blogs, career blogs, personal blogs, Departmental blogs, City blogs, you name it, someone blogs it.
Some bloggers even make money off of their blogs through Google AdSense. Basically you get paid if your sight refers traffic to Google Ads. You can see the Adsense at the top of this blog. If you want you can check out certain Companies who place ads on Google relating to the Fire Service. At first I thought that this was a gimmick, but actually it works. It hasn’t for me, but other blogs out there are actually making money off of the blogs. Pretty neat I think.
Google has offered a lot to the blog community. You can now specifically search blogs using Google Blog Search.You can also search blogs through Technorati, which is basically a dedicated search engine for blogs.
There are sites who will count your page hits for free also. The one I use mainly is StatCounter. I just recently signed up for Google Analytics which is proving to be a great source for checking my stat’s. The one I use still and started with is SiteMeter. I found this to be a decent stat site, although I think that StatCounter has more to offer.
For picture hosting check out Flickr and Picasa (another product of Google).
I am sure that there are a lot of other things I use online that I just cannot think of right now. I have to say that thanks to the Just another Day in Roanoke Blog, I am kept up on the latest Technology. Keith, of Just another Day in Roanoke, also runs the Forgotten Roanoke website.
If there are any Firefighters or any body else out there who are thinking about starting a blog but just aren’t sure of how to start. Let me know, I would be glad to help you out. You can email me at FireFleitz@adelphia.net.
