I launched Fascination Place a month ago today. So far, so good, I think! As you can tell from my posting rate, I’m enjoying writing for the new format.
It’s hard to be certain, but I think I left behind about half of my readership from Gazing Into The Abyss when I moved. I suspect a big chunk is due to setting up a syndication account at LiveJournal for the site since I didn’t want to have to keep manually posting over there whenever I updated, and many readers over there haven’t subscribed to the feed for one reason or another (possibly because they happened to miss the posts I’ve made there announcing the syndication account).
Anyway, hopefully continued regular updating will eventually pull in some new readers, and perhaps bring back some of the ones I’ve lost.
I really like WordPress (the blogging software I’m using), and there haven’t been many tweaks I’ve had to make to my layout (other than trying to make it look better in Internet Explorer 6). The next hurdle will be upgrading to WordPress 2.0.5 – my first upgrade of the installation. Hopefully it will be straightforward.
One thing I’m considering adding is a “Recent Comments” section in the right-hand sidebar, like what J.D. has at Folded Space. Apparently his readers really like it.
What do you think of the journal, now that I’ve mostly worked the kinks out? Is there anything you really like, or really don’t like?
You do realize that there is an add-on that allows you to pub to WordPress and dupe that to LJ? I use it all the time. And yeah, it’s a PITA to come over here from LJ for people. I don’t get many comments at the WordPress site, but tons over at LJ.
Yeah, I did know about that plugin. It wasn’t really what I wanted to do, though.
I don’t see that it’s a big pain to follow a link to the original site from an LJ syndication account. I do it all the time. Hyperlinks are what the Web is all about, after all. I think the issue is one of adoption (people subscribing to the feed), not technology. I’m not too worried about it.
Also — I’m using a plugin to show recent comments at Get Rich Slowly: Get Recent Comments. (p.s. I left a comment at Four Color Comics regarding Castle Waiting — summary: it had better improve because the first part isn’t very good.)
The type size is a little small for when I lie on the couch with the laptop on, um, my lap’s top. Maybe not excessively so, though.
I’m not a big fan of all the cyan and white.
I’ve been leery of pushing recent comments because Akismet isn’t 100% at flagging comment spam. I’m getting one or two false negatives a week.
If you do want to do that, it can be handled through widgets (as long as you’ve made this a widget-aware theme.)
This weekend I’m going to try deploying the OpenID authentication plugin so that people can authenticate against LJ or another OpenID provider to sign comments.