Introducing… Reader Meet Author 2.0

February 4, 2007

If you’ve been following along, you already know that the past month or so has been a little rough around here. Between downed Internet service and power outages, I’ve been a little less chatty on Reader Meet Author than I normally am. But the down time has also made me realize something: I really do love my little corner of the web here. And I’ve been neglecting it in so many ways and for much longer than the past month.

I’m happy to present Reader Meet Author 2.0 (yes… I’m a nerd… we know this).

I’ve literally spent countless hours over the past several days working on new features, new pages, and updates to existing stuff. Obviously there was a theme change. And no, it’s not the first. But it’s by far my favorite to date. Everything is where it’s supposed to be behind the hood so it makes modifying and tweaking things much easier. That’s what I’ve been looking for. Besides… it’s much more “Web 2.0″-ish than my last theme. If you don’t know what that means don’t worry. It’s one of those esoteric phrases that doesn’t really mean much of anything concrete. It’s supposedly all about interactive features, communities, and big, bold looks. Or something like that.

I completely re-wrote the Contents page. It’s my new favorite page on the site. Give it a look. I can honestly say I think it’s the easiest way to find stuff that I’ve seen on any blog. But I’m a little biased. I’m still moving things around and getting all the posts filed away under the best place, but it’s ready to go now. Let me know what you think and if I’ve missed anything that could make it better.

There’s a new tab called “Derick“. It’s a pretty cool page that will eventually say a lot about me. Right now I’ve got some of my photography and some of my favorite music on it (including videos). I’ll be adding more in the future. I want visitors to know more about the person behind the words here. And not just the typical “about me” crap that you find on most blogs. I want folks to know about some of the personal things that make me tick. That’s what RMA is all about: discovering what makes us all tick. So I figured I’d share a little more about myself and what I enjoy.

I also want visitors to have more ways to interact at Reader Meet Author. Before, you had to wait for a post to appear about something you wanted to talk about. But now there are several outlets for everyone to have a say and strike up conversation. I’ve added MyBlogLog (which has actually been here under the hood for a while). If you’re a MyBlogLog user you know what that means. If not, follow the link to the community in the MyBlogLog box at the bottom of the sidebar. It’s basically a way to build communities around blogs and see who’s visiting your site.
And speaking of communities, I’ve also created a Google Group for Reader Meet Author. It’s simple to join and it lets anyone and everyone strike up conversation about anything… post or not. It’s got a discussion board, file sharing, and even page creation tools. We can talk about anything there. And I’ll be integrating it into Reader Meet Author. Maybe a good conversation will start over there that I need to post about or comment on here. I’m really excited about the possibilities.
You might also notice a little one line remark with an asterick ( ) icon under this post. I’ve finally added inline asides! It gives me the ability to post small, one or two line posts without having to expand it all out into a full-fledged entry. I played around with adding the ability to post one liners and small comments like that for a while with the old theme. And even with this tutorial (made specifically for the old theme I was using) I couldn’t get it to work because I really don’t know much about the coding of WordPress files. But I’m certainly learning… because I was able to do it with this tutorial using this theme. I did use the Open Switch tutorial to style the look of the comments. So thanks to the authors of both tutorials. Between these inline asides, Tids & Bits, and the normal posts… I should be able to say a lot more.

And that’s really the biggest change that you’ll notice from now on. RMA 2.0 will be all about expanding the frequency and scope of posting here. In the past, I’ve posted once or twice a week. I’m planning on bumping up the postage. And I’m also going to start writing about a broader range of topics. What I originally thought was a focus has actually turned out to be a damper. There are so many things that I’d have loved to write about here… but they just didn’t “fit the theme” of Reader Meet Author. So after much debating, I’ve decided to solve the problem by simply expanding. But no worries… I’ll still be talking about the same things I always have. I’ll just throw in a little something extra from time to time.

I think that about covers the changes. I hope you’ll enjoy them as much as I will. Nerdy numbering schemes and technical jargon aside… I’m extremely proud of where RMA has gone. If you’d have told me two and half years ago that it would have turned into this I’d have laughed.

Let me know what you think. Stop by the Reader Meet Author Group and say “hi”. And keep your fingers crossed that I didn’t break too many things. Because you know me… I always break something.

Update: I lied about having the inline asides figured out. As soon as I published this post they broke. Haha. But I’m still working on it.

Posted in Blog Related, Personal

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