A Redesign Update

If you missed the news last week, I’m redesigning the blog. You can find the basic redesign and my notes about it here. I spent all weekend re-categorizing posts so I can use the categories to build menus once I change the theme.

I am down to 120 or so posts to review, so maybe an hour or two of work left on that. The categories are close enough to being finished that you can use the pull-down menu on the sidebar to see what I’m doing with them.

Fall Break Music, and #FeministFriday Announcement

The quality is not as good as my usual picks, but I’ve always thought of it as a quintessential autumn song. It seems appropriate for the turn of the year. I have several updates for you.

The Feminist Friday Project wraps up for 2014 at Part Time Monster this week. I’ll have a post about what we’ve accomplished, what the project means to me, and my plans for keeping it alive. It’s my most important project. I’m starting it back up in 2015 unless support evaporates or unless some catastrophe takes me out of the social media game entirely. That is a promise.

I’m ending it a week earlier than I previously announced because I have a window of opportunity to engineer a truly amazing run of blogging next spring and summer that will benefit both the Feminist Friday Project and two dozen or more of my friends. If I want to take that shot, I have to spend my time over the next few weeks putting a lot of things in place to make it happen. I’m sacrificing a week to put us in a position to take it to the next level when we start it back up. And I can’t believe I’m writing this. Thanks, everyone for your friendship, your trust, and your support. Here are a few other things you need to know.

• HUGE announcement coming. If you follow us on Twitter, you might have seen the leak last night. If not, be sure and stop by tomorrow. It delights me, and I think it will delight you as well.
• I’m on fall break, so I am making one last social media push this weekend. Nothing as big as my Social Saturday Pin-and-Tweet Fests. Details at Just Gene’O tomorrow, and those of you who are actively engaging with me on several networks do not want to miss out on it.
• You may have noticed that we did not post on Tuesday this week. It’s a rare occurrence, but you’ll see more odd days where we don’t post for the next little while. Mostly Mondays and Tuesdays, I am thinking. I’ll explain in my Blogging/Social Media post here on Sunday.
• Contributor posts will continue. Photoblogging will resume shortly. Everything else is on hold until I get the planning for Spring to the point that it’s all done except the writing.

I’m going to get the Feminist Friday post taken care of so I can be sure it’s done. I’ll be around on the social media for a bit after that, but it will probably be late.

That’s all. Thanks again and have a great week!

🙂 🙂 🙂 Smileys all around. 🙂 🙂 🙂

Brainstorming: Better Blogging

photo by Gene’O

If Just Gene’O were further along, I’d post this there. Since it’s not, I’m posting it here and running my Tuesday Texture at Just Gene’O. I’m thinking about what to do with this blog through the end of the year and I’d love some feedback on the ideas I’m tossing out here.

First, we have to get through the end of the month and still be posting the first week of November. That’s a must-do because I’m planning to wind up the Feminist Fridays, or at least my official role in them for 2014, at the end of that week. November 7 is also the one-year anniversary of this blog. The season finale of Doctor Who is the Saturday after, on Nov . 8, and we must finish the season. It will be the third season of television we’ve blogged, and the first we’ve blogged both here and at Part Time Monster. It’s important that we wind it up in good order. Lots of future-stuff is riding on it.

I’m thinking of doing a near-shutdown sometime after that. I don’t mean going away entirely, but cutting back to a couple of posts per week, re-thinking the design, and revamping the pages a bit. The reason I’m thinking of doing this is because I know how long it took to move my personal blog to Just Gene’O while keeping up the rest of the schedule. Way too long, is how long it took.

Since our traffic receded to pre-summer levels almost the minute we stopped posting three and four times per day here, I’m not concerned with taking a big hit on the page views. I’m especially not concerned about December because December is going to be bad no matter what we do, and we’ll get a bounce in January. So it makes more sense to me to put the time into things like design, reorganization, and stockpiling content in late November and early December than it does to put it into everyday blogging. So, my questions for feedback are:

© Gene’O 2014; photo by Vicki, 2013.

1. If you were redesigning this blog, what would you do to improve it?
2. Have you ever walked away from your blog for longer than, say, three full weeks and then returned? If so, how difficult was it to get your traffic back?

I’m also considering posting publicly for a new contributor or two. Doing that has its pitfalls. I’ve hesitated to do it up to this point because I haven’t felt a real need. But I’m thinking that along with the redesign, the blog needs one more regular blogger. Anyone ever had any success with recruiting regular contributors from the blogosphere at-large?

A final thought. This is more a puzzle for me at this point than anything I expect help with, but opinions are more than welcome 🙂  Just looking at what multiple posting every day did for our traffic over the summer, I’m asking myself this question:

Say I have six posts in a given week and that’s all I can do. Do I post them once per day, Monday-Saturday, or do I post two per day on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Saturdays?

I don’t know the answer, but I am curious about it. I am also wondering how different the last year of my social media life would have been if I’d branded myself a pirate instead of a sorcerer.

Arrr, Mateys!

Related articles

• Arrr, matey! You’ve been impressed onto a ghost pirate ship! from Moebius Adventures Games
• Arrr Matey! It’s Talk Like a Pirate Day!
• Arrr Ye Ready to Make This a Great Year, Matey?

Weekend Music – Leonard Cohen with a fabulous band

This is truly awesome. I have no idea whether I’ll be able to resume my regular blogging schedule next week or not. I’d hoped to get back to it this week, but the time to sit down and actually blog just never materialized, so I’m not making any more promises until I have a week’s worth of posts ready to schedule. I’m pretty sure I’ll have a coffee post at Just Gene’O tomorrow, though, and Will will have a Doctor Who review here tomorrow.

Sabina questions the value of the Bechdel Test in the Feminst Friday post today.  Head on over and chime in if you’re in the mood for discussion. If you’ve not checked out Victim to Charm, you should look at some of the other posts while you’re there. Sabina runs a sweet blog. You can also find her on Twitter @VictimToCharm.

And happy Talk Like A Pirate Day. ARRRR, Mateys!