tampaBLAB is back

Well, to be sure, it was never really completely gone.  And it was only super-goofy for a short period of time.  And of those who knew of its existence, it could be argued that they never missed it.  But I may be getting too far ahead here.

For the uninitiated, TampaBLAB was a creation of Brett Glisson of Addled Brain fame, another blog that also disappeared for a while.

In one of those “wouldn’t it be cool…” discussions, I mentioned to Brett that I’d like to see a website that simply published all local bloggers’ efforts.  He made that happen, and called it TampaBLAB – short for Tampa Bay Local Area Bloggers.

At the time, a big bunch (150+) of local bloggers signed up and upon publishing at their own site, saw their words of wisdom automatically generated on this other BLABby website.  Readers of TampaBLAB got the first few sentences of an article, and could magically (by clicking a link) be transported to the originator’s website.  Readers saved time by going to a single blog collection, bloggers saw increased traffic from BLAB readers, and all was well in the local blogosphere.  But then, tragedy struck.

Ok, maybe not tragedy, but sh*t happened, and Brett was unable to give the BLAB all the attention it needed.  It began to look a little haggard.  I offered to take it over.  But then, tragedy struck again more sh*t happened.

And the BLAB sat.

And sat.

Bay area blogs came and went, while BLAB just puked up article after article from the existing roster of bloggers.  No new blogs were added, and abandoned bloggers were not deleted.  The database began piling up with year old posts from bloggers who were no longer blogging, and from sites that no longer existed.  It was beginning to be quite the junk drawer.

And then the site got hacked.

That straw broke the camel’s back, and I enlisted the help of our good friend John Fontana to get the thing revived and back in shape.  And did he ever!

Go look at the layout of the new, improved, TampaBLAB 2.2, and then leave a comment here, telling John what a great job he did.

Now, if you are a blogger, go read about how TampaBLAB works, submit your blog to TampaBLAB, read the TampaBLAB admin blog, put the BLAB on your blogroll, and please consider writing a post about the website.

If you are one of those who like to read various local blogs, you may save time by finding all of them in a single place.  At least go check it out, and if you find it to your liking, please consider adding TampaBLAB to your list of reading materials.

And as always, we welcome your opinion and suggestions on what you see there.