New Digs

So? Whaddaya think?

This is what I have been working on for so long. I realize there are some flaws and missteps here and there - now you see why I have been messing with the tags so much recently! - but at least it's finally up and we can take it from here.

I still have a heck of a lot of stuff to get out to you, including the advance review of Image's Haze, some general discussion, and some PRs, but this is why things have been so slow. Now, all the blogs have new templates (except The Wording) and I am set to begin integrating them all into the site, which is the next big project on my list. But before all of that gets going, I have to do my taxes.

Yes, I have been putting-off doing my taxes for weeks now so that I could deliver this to you all. And also because my dad was supposed to help me but my folks haven't been able to get up this way as soon as they'd hoped to...

So, let's take a brief tour:

(This is not at all meant to insult anyone's intelligence, just to help - both y'all and me, because I like to think aloud.)

Most of the important navigation is up to the top there, right above the supah-new RSS feed icon - now you have no excuse not to subscribe! That, along with the nifty title pic, comprises the majority of the site-integration. Wasn't that painless? Well, if you visited in the last couple of hours, make that mostly painless...

Just under that is the new search feature, which allows you to search The Rundown - and only The Rundown! - for whatever you'd like to read-up on. Not only was that old Blogger Search bar ugly, it would take you to other blogs! I actually wouldn't have minded that so much, were it not for the fact that it often returned results from other blogs before it returned results from this one!!!

After that come some handy-dandy Feature Links - some are posts, some are features, some are blogs, and so on - and then, if you scroll down just a bit, you'll find the Archives. I chose a drop-down menu because I am going to excise at least half the tags in that list and once I do that, any other type of Archives list would be too long.

Finally, off to the right, you'll find the list of tags (finally!). That is your best navigational tool to The Rundown, proper. While the rest of the links and buttons help you move around the site as a whole, the Labels list takes you directly to posts on The Rundown that deal with whatever subject you click on. That's basically the "interior" navigation, as The Rundown now comprises an entire section of The Weirding - in addition to being the same ol' bloggy-blog we've always been.

If you need any help using the tags, try this article from Weird Ink. As for navigating through The Weirding... right this minute, that is pretty tricky and I know it; The Weirding is undergoing sweeping, dramatic changes all the way down the line - design, layout, structure, system, content - the whole shebang. However, once completed, rest assured that The Rundown and all the other blogs will be integrated quite well. It won't exactly be "seamless," since each blog is also its own animal and has its own "flavor," if you will, but the primary navigational system/structure - getting around on each blog as a blog, while still being able to click-through the overall site - will be apparent.

Now you see what I meant when I said that I was going to use the blogs basically as Content Management Systems within the overall site: The Rundown is now the The Weirding's Art & Comics section, Weird Ink is the Writing section, and so on. Pretty nifty, huh? If it helps, think about it as an online magazine - but not one of those actual "online magazines," because most of those suck.

So I have some tweaking to do on all of the blogs, but it's really late here and I have at least 230974247 other things to do. I may get more out to you tonight, but it will probably be tomorrow (later today).

But please, PLEASE, pleeease take just a moment to let me know what you think - it really helps! You don't have to sign-up for a Blogger account - you can sign-in with your WP, AOL/AIM, LiveJournal, or OpenID account, leave a name and connect it to your profile on another (or your own) site, or stay anonymous, you sniveling cowards.

I mean, you sniveling cowards please.

Thank you... won't you?

© C Harris Lynn, 2008