Over the years I have started a number of new blogs for myself. Sometimes I just wanted a change, and sometimes it’s just to try out a new blogging platform. This year I had the idea to start a community blogging project and that was a whole new adventure.

This week I had the opportunity to help my mother set up her first blog and there was a lot that went into it. My mother has always wanted to write, and with five kids she sure has a lot to write about. But that wasn’t the main reason that my mother wanted to join the mommy blogging craze. My youngest brother Philip is 10 years old and he is a special needs child. Seeing the power of the internet through me, she decided that blogging about Philip’s condition might help her find other mothers who’s children have similar symptoms.

I did some research to see how many blogs there were on this subject already. I found a lot of mom’s with children that had Autism, but Philip’s condition is different. Next we had to decide what blogging platform my mom would use. I decided that she should use wordpress.com because that would teach her how to use one of the most powerful blogging platforms out there.

Setting up the site was very easy to get up and running. The hard part came when we needed to choose a theme for the blog and tweak it to look the way we wanted. This included getting the sidebar widgets in order and setting up some extra accounts like a flickr and vimeo account so that my mom could post photos and videos of Philip.

Twitter integration is a must for any blogger. My mother already had a twitter, but writing this blog will definitely give her her own community to interact with. She can find other moms in similar situations and create her own community.

Right now the blog is still a work in progress and I have found some differences working on her blog using wordpress.com than my blog which uses hosted wordpress, but I think we will be able to work it out.

I have never really blogged about my family because it wasn’t my niche. Yes this is a personal blog, but I focus on talking about technology and social media because that is what I love. I hope that my mom will be able to find or create a community online that will support her as my brother grows up and I will be here to help her every step of the way.

You can check out her blog A Life Delayed and meet Philip.

Let me know if you know any great mommy bloggers that I should be reading of following on twitter.