October site updates!
- The Book Ring’s button and widget have both been updated. Due to the changes I am making with The Book Ring and the decision to fully self host it, it will no longer be hosted on Marigold Town. The Library I have established at Marigold Town is going to be turned into a bookish resource hub for the small web, which you can still find your way to The Book Ring from there, it just will no longer be the home of The Book Ring. I have touched a bit on this decision a bit more and my reasoning to fully self host The Book Ring here, if you’re interested. If you’re a webring member, feel free to update to the new widget button. Just be mindful that the links within the widget (aside from the button image) stays exactly the same, otherwise it will mess up the webring.
- The Free Speech Webring page, button and widget have all been updated! I feel like the new button is a lot more fitting, goes with the color scheme of the new webring changes, and the join page and webring page have been merged together, which I feel like will make joining a lot more simplified. I also removed the ‘About’ column next to the Webring rules column as it’s kind of pointless. If you join a webring then you obviously know what it is. I think I’ll just make a blog post down the road talking about webrings and have a little info link at some point to help anyone along who might not know. Kind of like what I did for RSS feeds. Anyways, if you’re a webring member, feel free to update to the new widget button. Just be mindful that the links within the widget (aside from the button image) stays exactly the same, otherwise it will mess up the webring.
- Added new members to the Free Speech Webring.
- Removed Resident Services and added a ‘smallweb’ subdomain to my website. Something I have been wanting to do for a long time is become a resource center for people entering the small web movement, and I think I could be much more effective at this by creating a separate space for this entirely, where as the previous ‘Resident Services’ section in town is more ambiguous and doesn’t really give people a clear destination of where to find these resources on my site, which I think finding these resources is important. You can now directly navigate to my ‘smallweb’ subdomain via the landing page on my primary domain. I’m excited for all the changes that will come with this section and I hope it will prove to be a valuable resource to the Small Web movement in the future.
- Removed my new Neighborhood Clique from the Resident Services section. Not sure where I’ll put it yet or what I’m going to do with it but if I keep hosting it, it will have to go into a different area of my site.
- My Library subdomain has been updated! I’ve changed the ‘Currently Reading’ section and submission form to now be for book reviews. With this change, the previous ‘Currently Reading’ posts have been removed. In addition to this change, book review submissions is now an exclusive feature for community members to incentivize joining the community and having member blogs featured on the landing page.
- I’ve imported all of my book blogs from my Cottage subdomain over to my Library subdomain as this is where my book reviews will be posted going forward. This will help populate the community’s activity feed as well as give some already published book reviews to sift through on the front page for visitors.
- Updated the Book Nook section of my Cottage subdomain. Since I have moved my blogs over to the Library subdomain, I no longer have my book reviews featured here. Instead, I’ve just added a few more personal touches, such as featuring my Amazon bookish wishlist, and personal bookish RSS feeds I’m interested in following. I’ve also removed the Resources tab from this page as it will eventually be implemented to Marigold Town’s library (and backed up on my Library subdomain should Marigold Town ever discontinue.)
- Added new neighbors to my Cottage subdomain.
That’s pretty well the majority of updates for this month. I might be forgetting a couple. I am also thinking about restructuring my webrings and their directories a bit so people can add themselves easier and there isn’t as much that has to be done manually. Not something I’m in a rush to do right now though.
Hope everyone’s having a great October and have a Happy Halloween!
