Open comments
Sun 29th Jul 2007 by Ben Palmer.
Although creating the original version of this website was easy - I thought up the idea and designed it in my head during a 75 minute car journey to stay with my parents for the Easter weekend, and had the first draft created by Easter Sunday - the idea of a blog was harder.
I wanted to enable people reading the website to have a say in it, but shyed away from enabling comments in any form for ages. It wasn't until a night with a curry and bottle of wine with an old friend from school days that I decided: "Yes, a blog." To not untick the 'allow all comments' box wasn't that hard - it's a natural progression, after all what's a blog without comments?
What's the purpose of this blog? Well, there were many. It's a way, for me, of keeping focused on the website and campaign, it gives visitors to the site a small view into what drives me, and it helps me get a load off my chest (though I'm still saving most of that for later).
I hope some of it is interesting, I hope that there is something to learn from it, I know some of it has brought a tear to an eye more than once; Jessica's friends in particular have told me so.
However, back to the comments: I feared them initially, it would have been easier not to allow their addition, and I could have pretended that no one was reading me, but you are and the comments that are being left now drive me on - you only have to read them to see that.
I've received even more that have come by email, and sometimes I stumble across a mother/baby/pregnancy forum from my website logs, and the posts and follow-up comments there are heart-rending, beautiful, supportive and full of horror (although probably not meant directly for my eyes, so I keep quiet.)
Universally, there are stories of pain and heartache, of illness, of anger and most touchingly, of very sincere thanks.
Thank you.
