miscellany

Some Spring Cleaning

I’m trying to do some morning pages every day, and sometimes those turn into blog posts, so you might be noticing that there’s been more password protected posts than usual. They are personal writings, usually about my relationship or about my personal psychology.

You can have access to the password protected posts if you want to read them. Just join the mailing list, and when you confirm your subscription you should get sent the password automatically. I usually send out a newsletter once a month that includes updates to what I’ve been doing and the upcoming events for the next month or so. (Sometimes it’s not as often as monthly. I try, though.)

In fact, the newsletter should go out next week. So even if you don’t care about the password, you can still sign up for it and receive updates from me once a month or so.

This is a kind of old theme that I’m using, but I love how simple it is. I’ve always meant to do some upgrades to the comment structure but haven’t gotten around to it. I finally separated out the trackbacks and pingbacks from the actual comments, you can see that in a post like My Slutty Little Girl if you want to check it out.

I also opened comments on old posts again, so if there are older writings you’d like to comment on, please do. This fixed the issue of the sidebar (did you notice that? It would be down below the main body instead of at the side on the old posts).

I still want to update this theme such that I can have nested or threaded comments, but I messed around with it this morning and I couldn’t seem to make it work. If you are a WordPress coder and are interested in helping me with this, I do have a little bit of money I could throw your way, and I’d really appreciate it.

Someone commented recently that they didn’t know there were new posts because I’ve left the What’s Happening in March calendar post at the top of the blog this month—I did that in February too. Does this matter to y’all? Do you notice? Is it helpful to have the updated schedule there all the time? Or is it in the way? I’m not sure it’s doing what I want it to do. Maybe it’d be best to have this in the sidebar, but I haven’t figured out how to automate that yet.

If you’ve got any other suggestions for how I can improve the site, I’d be glad to hear ’em. Leave them in the comments.

Published by Sinclair Sexsmith

Sinclair Sexsmith (they/them) is "the best-known butch erotica writer whose kinky, groundbreaking stories have turned on countless queers" (AfterEllen), who "is in all the books, wins all the awards, speaks at all the panels and readings, knows all the stuff, and writes for all the places" (Autostraddle). ​Their short story collection, Sweet & Rough: Queer Kink Erotica, was a 2016 finalist for a Lambda Literary Award, and they are the current editor of the Best Lesbian Erotica series. They identify as a white non-binary butch dominant, a survivor, and an introvert, and they live outside Seattle as an uninvited settler on traditional, ancestral, & unceded Snoqualmie land.

5 thoughts on “Some Spring Cleaning”

  1. Ali says:

    I actually don’t notice the what’s new posts because I use a reader. I’m always surprised to see them when I drop by.

    It’s actually because I use a reader that I so rarely comment, a behavior I’m trying to correct now that you’ve pointed the trend out. No more lurking! :0)

  2. Babs says:

    Glad to know I’m not the only one who was missing new posts. I tend to visit the site each day, along with a number of other sites, and every time I stopped by, I was all, ‘Oh crap, same ol’ what’s going on in Feb post, and nothing new.’ So yeah, might be good to figure out a way to divide the ‘What’s going on’ thing from the other posts in a way that’s more clear. Or just make it a sort of ‘just under the header’ headline, if that makes sense. You could then link the end user to what’s actually going on in that month on a different page. Love the blog, as always, no matter how you format it. :-)

  3. a. says:

    I have also made the mistake of thinking “What’s New in March” at top meant no new posts. I thought of it as my error to correct, but if you have a formatting workaround, all the better.

  4. Sinclair says:

    Thanks all, I appreciate that feedback.

    The purpose in having the monthly event post at the top is that I’m trying to group the events together into one place, but still have them obvious and promoted, so that I don’t have to clutter up the blog with the details of events (and over-promoting them). Plus, aside from my events, there are some great events that other folks run that I want to mention too.

    But maybe this just isn’t working. I’d love for it to be in the sidebar, though that might get a little buried. I’ll play with it.

  5. Kyle says:

    It’s hard to keep the look clean and readable when you’re including so much content. I think you balance it well – you put a lot of information into a small space and it’s still understandable. I’m a fan of white space, which is hard to find in a lot of blogs these days.

    Not sure what to recommend for your Monthly events. Another sidebar item might work, I guess placement is the challenge. You’ve got so much going on with sponsors, and your events and such, I guess you’re a victim of your success ;-)

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