Flashback: The 2012 Blogosphere

What was the world of miniature wargames blogging like in 2012?

Refreshing gdmnw.com at the end of 2022 meant cleaning out the media library. Ten years ago blogging on independent or semi-independent sites was popular and tools like Google Reader and RSS meant that little people could run a website and expect to see a reaonable amount of traffic from people who were interested in what they had to say. While I was poking about in the background I found a set of screenshots made on August 12 2012. 452 of them. Literally hundreds of sites owned and operated by individuals or small groups and all posting about their interest in the hobby.

It was wonderful. Things have changed. But before I throw this stuff away, why don’t we take a stroll past some of the sites and themes of yesteryear?

One of the great community sites at the time is called From the Warp (dormant since 2016). That was a hobby blog with posts about miniatures and painting. But it was also the home of the From the Warp blog network. Aided by a distinctive and recognisable logo this was the best of the best when it came to finding other blogs talking about things I was interested in.

Inspired by their work I wanted to start my own network and the GDMNW Blogdex was born. I made a badge and started to look for ways to index the blogs I was aware of. I made a submissions form, and crucially, found a website which you could feed URLs and it would produce screenshots which could be downloaded for a few quid. We were up and running.