The Great August Rebloggening Challenge: Week 5 Check In

Home Site housekeeping Challenge

Hello Again! It’s time to check in on the Home Site Housekeeping Challenge!

And last week (Despite a blood test, a drive for a blood test that didn’t happen, an xray, an EKG, and … probably something else?) was pretty decent for me in the Home Site House-Keeping field!

So let’s see. I’m still in the process of putting up a new wiki, because nothing is ever easy, /woe, but I got several posts up on Patreon and on my blog here (even if three of the Patreon posts were the same Map of Cya’s Campground).

I got at least a baseline of Thimbleful Thursday update (2 scheduled posts, but I really wanted to to get at least 3/week to “Catch up” with the weeks I missed during August – since every week a scheduled post posts, making my buffer that much smaller).

Ditto for Patreon Xposts onto the LTA site. I made a landing page for the Border Banners setting,, added it to the Settings list and added Malina and the Border Banners to the Long-form stories pages.

I also added a few things to the Current Projects page – but now I’m looking at my menus and realizing that my whole menu system is a mess.

Home – fine.

About the Author – Also fine.

Ditto for Contact Me. Okay, half my menu is a complete mess.

I’ve got Settings and Other Writings and they really overlap. Settings has long-form stories nested under it and Other Writings has Patreon, Publications, Serial Fiction posted Elsewhere (all three being On Other Sites/In Paper stuff) and then… Giraffe Calls.

Also, the Other Writings top-level page duplicates the (out of date) list of serials on the Serial Fiction page.

And I haven’t added Current Projects yet…

So let me see.

Other Writings – needs a better title

> Patreon -This page needs a complete rework. Because it’s meant to be an index of posts on Patreon and it’s updated thru August 2017. I am learning that if I haven’t kept up with something, it’s a pretty good sign that I can’t regularly, so having that there is a no-go.

I still have getting some sort of crosspost up as a goal, but in the meantime, perhaps the Patreon page ought to be a description of my Patreon and a couple samples or excerpts?

>Publications – okay, this one is good, although the fact that it’s up to date really reminds me that I ought to, you know, work on stories for submission. There’s one missing, but I am hella torn about bragging about that one at all, so it may stay that way.

> Serial Fiction Posted Elsewhere – Oh hey, this version is pretty up to date. Okay, that can stay.

Title/Top Level Page Needs To Change – something like Writing Here or About my Writing or Stories on this Site or…

something to do with leaves?

Ideas?

> Settings

> Long-Form Stories

> Current Projects

(these three are still pretty good, but they’re mostly new)

> Giraffe Calls – I think I’ll keep this, even if I almost enver do the Giraffe Call anymore.

I have a Want More page, I have a commissions post – but neither of them are on the menu. They ought to be, oughtn’t they? And where?

~*~

Okay, I think that cleans that up, except the parts I’m not sure what to do with.

Oh, and I fixed my Tumblr’s to my Twitter (which at this point almost entirely exists for the tumblr crossposting) and fixed 300 queued posts of Tumblr to have the little blue bird of crossposting On rather than Off.

I still need to fix the wordpress crossposting to Tumblr, Twitter, etc.

Wow, I felt like I had a really productive web page week and now it sort of feels like I have 3x as much to do as I did a week ago!

So!

How is your website/blog doing?

How was your last week of website upkeep and/or posting?

And a challenge:

*Daily* Find a plug-in, a section of your sidebar, or a connection your blog doesn’t need anymore, and ax it.

*Weekly* Find something you can automate, and figure out how to automate it.

Blog On!

13 thoughts on “The Great August Rebloggening Challenge: Week 5 Check In

  1. *twitches* where to start… why do I insist on doing this on my phone? Anyway.

    Patreon – move it out of “other writings”, rename it to “Support the author”, and then that’s where your kofi link, patreon page link, stripe link, whatever, goes.
    If you have submenus, this is where your “Want more” and “Commissions” pages will sit under. Zebra and Giraffe calls also, possibly? I have forgotten how those work.
    Yes, I’m sure there is other writing under Patreon, but Patreon is generally known on the web as “money” stuff. If the free posts are not already crossposted to here, you should be prepared to lose access to it when they inevitably make another terrible business decision and you have to move off their platform.

    Alternately, you could use “Other platforms” (maybe a different word for ‘platforms’ – social interaction?), and toss links to twitter, tumblr, mastodon, patreon, whatever else, on there.

    I am undecided about Publications. It needs to exist, as a word and as a menu item and as a page, because it’s still how many people decide that someone is a “real author”. But what differentiates the stuff there, from the *years* of content you’ve already made available here and in various places all over the net?

    Settings is … now out of place, as a menu item. It absolutely needs to be in the menu somehow, but it doesn’t fit with the rest of the headings. It’s … a way for a new reader to approach your archive in a manner that makes sense; it has more in common with “Serial Fiction Posted Elsewhere” than “About the author” and “Contact me”. I’m not sure how to fit that in anymore. I guess the question is – should the menu be content-focussed, or navigation-focussed? There might be a way to do both, but I can’t think of how.

    • Hrrm. Hrrrm, that last question is a very good question.

      Content-focused, I think.
      you have a very good point about Patreon, thank you!

      Patreon posts aren’t ALL crossposted here, but I’m almost there (ongoing project) and I have everything saved and backed up in two other places, so I won’t lose anything when, as you point out, Patreon makes another horrible mistake.

      Maybe some day Publications will have books on it… 😀

  2. Overlapping a lot with what Kunama said, I’ll suggest …

    Bring “Settings” and “Other Writings” together under a single “Writing” heading, and put it right after “Home”

    “Writing” may want to include suggested starting stories, and should include “Settings”, “Serials” (regardless of posting location), “Publications”, and pages for complete Short Form and Long Form pieces (those need better names, and organizing Short Form may need sub-pages or folding or something, and maybe MicroFic gets an entry, as you already have a category for it?). Maybe also Fan Fiction, or maybe that gets filed with serials?

    Settings pages can point to the relevant material (tags, landing pages, individual story entry points, whatever’s suitable) whether that’s on this site or one of the others.

    Does “About Fanfiction” need its own top-level entry? I’d link that under “About the Author”, and next to your AO3 entry.

    I’m not sure whether to split out “Contact” and “Support the Author” into two separate headers, or make “Support the Author” a sub-section of “Contact Me”. “Commissions” should be linked from “Support the Author”. AO3 and wherever on mastodon (or …?) you’re posting tootfiction should be listed as places to follow you for stories as well as chatter. Paypal should be listed with kofi and patron (and commissions?) as ways to express appreciation with money. Giraffe calls and your love of comments (and a link to a comment policy page, if you have one — “no technical nitpicks without story commentary, please!”) and your want-more policies should get mentioned there somewhere. Social media for following your writing may want to be sorted out from social media for chatting with you? (If there is a single feed to follow that will get pointers to all your writing posts, I waaaant it.) If you have a preferred mode for getting private messages, that should show up, too. (The commissions page says LJ, DW, or a gmail address not otherwise appearing, so it probably wants updating?) Maybe your monthly theme polls should also get a mention?

    Your weekly prompt pages/feeds should get mentioned somewhere, maybe under writing, as you do write to them sometimes?

    The “Categories” in the sidebar should sync with this in some useful way …

    More coherent thoughts may follow later. 🙂

    • I can’t imagine trying to do overall suggested starting stories or an overall short-form story index, I think it would kill me.
      Microfic, yes, but the rest aren’t tagged as such

      OH A COMMENT POLICY PAGE that’s a great idea.

      Also mentioning the monthly theme polls!

      hrrm on Catagories – could use some more input into this one?

      • Fair, creating a complete short story index from scratch would be a ton of work. How about a “selection of short stories” page, to which you add new complete short-form pieces (or only the ones you really like) as they’re posted, and add occasional older complete short-form pieces either occasionally as a site-maintenance task, or at reader suggestion? Or make it a tag or category rather than a page, and similarly use it going forward and add it to older pieces when they catch your attention?

        I’m not sure how best to use categories, but they’re THERE, on every page, and they have the potential to be useful. Of the existing ones, many are ‘verses, some are storylines (indistinguishable from single-threaded ‘verses), some are content type, some are meta. The ‘verses and threads-in-verses are clustered, and I think that’s useful. Clustering the meta and content-type (conlang, worldbuilding) might also be useful? Can one search for things that are under multiple tags? Are there other cross-‘verse tags that might be interesting to some audiences, like demi-fiction or writing styles (epistolary) or genre or adult content or child-friendly content or “contains cats” (or other themes) or “creepy” or “upbeat ending” or …?

        • “Fanfiction”, “AU” (or “non-canon”), and “Crossover” might also make good categories, especially if one can search on multiple categories at once.

          (Babbling. I have it tonight, apparently. Slightly sorry, feel free to ignore.)

          • Babbling good! I didn’t even notice they were screwy till I started working on them, so the more commentary is good commentary.

            I’m not sure if you can search more than one tag at once – or category at once. Good question!

      • It’s a good draft! And it’s not crazy long, which I was a little worried about. Now it needs subpages! 🙂 (Halping, I know …)

        So, you’re keeping “Other Sites”. What do you want to get out of that header? Is that “sites you might want to look at if you want to follow specific threads”? Is that “find me on the social and/or supportive media of your choice”? (In that case I’d move those things to “contact the author” or “support the author”. Indexes of fiction posted on other sites? (That’s what the patreon page currently seems to be, and then the microfic page collects up tootfics …?)

        Please add Daxton’s story and the Edally Academy novels to the “completed” section of long-form stories. And possibly the Junie Kidnapped thread, though that may need more context. (More suggestions as I remember/stumble over then.)

        Suggested starting stories doesn’t need to be anything like inclusive. I’d suggest 3-5 short pieces and 1-3 long pieces that are finished and have good descriptions and are a decent spread across your work as suggestions for people who wind up here randomly, or who followed a link here and aren’t sure what to try or how to navigate.

        Do you still also have a Tuesday prompt thread?

        I’m torn about putting prompt calls and theme votes under “writing” or “contact the author” (and find “both” aesthetically incorrect, but maybe it’s practical).

        Do you want wording nits/suggestions/quibbles?

        • So, answering slightly backwards, the Patreon page is intended to not be an index anymore, since I obviously can’t keep up with it.

          Other sites – other places you can find my writing…

          Good calls for the completed long-run stories.

          Re. suggesting starting stories, this is reminding me of a suggestion Cal had – to put the no-longer-thread stories in Fae Apoc into volumes, starting with those that require no intro information to read.

          Tuesday prompts are for when I have Thimbleful scheduled ahead a year. I have 32 scheduled right now (which will go down to 31 unless I manage to do some Thimbleful before tomorrow morning) 😀 😀

          How about under Writing with a link on the contact the author page.

          Nits and suggestions and quibbles yes please. I want this to be as easy to manage as possible.

Leave a Reply to Kunama Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *