Goodbye, Blog Roll. Hello, CMO Featured Mom.

Five and a half years ago (in early 2007), I began the Catholic Mothers Online blog roll.  I never would have dreamed that I would still be taking care of it in 2012 or that it would have grown like it did.

I remember those first anxious days after launching it when I worried if anyone would join.  I had felt that God put it on my heart to start the blog roll, but was still afraid of failure.  My lack of faith was unfounded, as the requests to join just kept coming in.  And, still, over five years later, they were still coming in on a regular basis.

Here’s the thing, however.  The online world is a very different place than it was in 2007.  For the last two years, I have thought numerous times about closing the blog roll to new members.  Each time I thought it, however, I also decided that we would do something more intimate instead of a giant list of links.  We would, instead, have a weekly feature with just one Catholic Mom blogger each week.

When I came very close to finally closing it down last year, it was Lacy from Catholic Icing who (during a phone call) told me that I absolutely couldn’t close it.  And, that Lacy, she’s one smart girl and I didn’t close it.  She told me how much it had meant to her in her early days of blogging, and also reminded me that I was the one who, with a little comment on her blog when she first started, that made her publish a full

feed instead of the partial one she was doing.  She told me that she figured if Angie from Catholic Mothers Online said it…

Did that make you laugh a little?  It made me laugh, anyway.

But, here we are, another year past, and my heart is still telling me that it really is time to stop adding links to the blog roll and instead to feature one Catholic Mom blogger per week.  So, I finally made that decision about a month and a half ago.  But, I did it quietly because I guess I wasn’t ready to make a big deal about it.  I took down the sign up form (though I will keep processing those requests I got before that point), put a note on the page to watch for something new and exciting sometime in August, and then sent out the interview form to a few people.

Later this week, we’ll have our very first Catholic Mothers Online Featured Mom Blogger. 

I’ll keep working behind the scenes to get people added to the blog roll that had sent in forms before I took the form down.  I will, however, be leaving the blog roll as it is now.  I will sometime cull through it to get rid of blogs that aren’t meeting the guidelines any longer.  But, I just won’t be making additions to it.

I want to thank everyone that has believed in the blog roll through the years.  I still love it, but I know that the best way for us to get to know each other more and really connect with other Catholic Mom bloggers is to do it in a different way.

I hope that you’ll enjoy the new feature on Thursdays each week (with a regular post from the writing staff still coming each Monday of the week).  I also hope that you’ll want to be interviewed for the feature.

Thanks so much,

Angie