What I Enjoy About Themed Posts July 11, 2019

Updated to add links to each website where possible.

I didn’t realize how much fun the themed posts would be when I first started doing themed posts. I am including the themed posts that I do on an irregular basis – Museums, Ship/Boat Museums as well as the 1 – 2 themes per day during the week. I knew I would learn a lot about places, buildings, etc. as I researched each theme. I also found new places that I was not aware of.

Here are my themes (taken from this post – https://upsdownsfamilyhistory.wordpress.com/2019/06/25/my-2500th-blog-post:

I have some topics that are posted on different days: Forgiveness Sundays, Gaming Sundays, Mississippi Mondays, Kansas Tuesdays, Tombstone Tuesdays, Featured Vlogger of the Week (usually Wednesdays most weeks), Weirdness Wednesdays, North Carolina Thursdays, FindMyPast Fridays, Featured Blogger of the Week – on Fridays, Space Saturdays; DNA Saturdays (new). I may add a few more daily topics. Museums and Ship Museums posts tend to be scattered throughout the week unless they are related to Mississippi, Kansas, or North Carolina museums or ship museums. For Find-A-Grave Rules/FAQs/Forums clarifications, those will fall during the week most of the time as there are so many clarifications that aren’t covered in the Help section.

Early on, I started with the following list of sites that I checked out – feel free to use it or create your own list:

Atlas Obscura: https://www.atlasobscura.com/

Discord Channel: I will have to hunt for this link

Eventbrite: https://www.eventbrite.com/

Facebook (website, general search, or blog page): https://www.facebook.com this will vary by website or blog if they have a Facebook page.

Flickr: https://www.eventbrite.com/

Foursquare: https://foursquare.com/

Google Maps: https://www.google.com/maps

Historical Marker DataBase: https://www.hmdb.org/

IMDB: https://www.imdb.com/ (if movie or TV related)

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/

Linked-in: https://www.linkedin.com/

MySpace: https://myspace.com/ (not used much, but some sites use it on a regular basis)

Official Website: varies

Only In Your State: https://www.onlyinyourstate.com

Pinterest: https://www.onlyinyourstate.com

Roadside America: https://www.roadsideamerica.com/

Snapchat: https://www.snapchat.com/

Soundcloud: https://www.soundcloud.com/

This Is My South: https://www.thisismysouth.com/

Trip Advisor: https://www.tripadvisor.com/

Tumblr: https://www.tumblr.com/

Twitch channel or search: https://www.twitch.tv/

Twitter: https://twitter.com/

Vimeo channel or search: https://www.vimeo.com/

Wikipedia: https://www.wikipedia.org/

Yelp: https://www.yelp.com/

YouTube channel or search: https://www.youtube.com/

Later, I would use my least favorite search engine and do a search on whatever object, building, museum, etc. that I chose for that day’s theme choice. In an unusual twist, I found new sites – some local, county, regional, or government sites; as well as other sites that were more broad or narrow in scope.

I try and do a mix of funny/silly, serious, interesting, and tied to the topics my blog focuses on. For example, Roadside America (which includes Canadian provinces in addition to U. S. states) – https://www.roadsideamerica.com/ on its main page has random locations: 8 that change more or less weekly, Field Reports; and Latest Visitor Tips. It’s nice to learn about some unusual or out of the way places that I didn’t know about. In traveling as a child, long before the Internet was a thing, Dad would find places like Wall Drug in South Dakota.
For videos, YouTube has the most, but sometimes I will find Twitch.tv, Vimeo, Instagram, or Discord may have videos about what I am posting about. At times, I won’t find something using one of the various sites I mentioned above. Yet, when I do a browser search engine, I find something. I ran across a case where Roadside America didn’t list under the state, but a search on my least favorite search engine turned up an old Roadside America article.

There are times when I am not expecting to find a lot, but as I dig through the numerous sites, I find a lot. Then, there are other times where I think I should find a lot and I find very little.

While I have three states (North Carolina, Kansas, and Mississippi) as theme days, I also look at other states, territories, and countries. My Ship Museums tag: https://upsdownsfamilyhistory.wordpress.com/tag/ship-museums/ that includes non-U. S. ships and locations  outside the U. S.