The old (TypePad) site is back, hopefully till Sept. 30th, and the URL is:
https://theonlinephotographer.typepad.com/the_online_photographer/blog_index.html
The new site is currently just a "Coming Soon" page but will be accessible once it goes live at
theonlinephotographer.org
and
theonlinephotographer.com
And by the way, don't worry too much if the new site is pretty rough at first. As I understand it, they're going to build it based just on my verbal descriptions and then give me one pass at fixing whatever I don't like. However, thanks to the 86 people who contributed to the GoFundMe a few days ago, I have enough moolah handy to hire a third party to go into it and fix up anything that's still not right. So we should still be able to get where we want to get to. It might not happen right away, but I'll keep after it.
It's going to look very different than the current site: pretty simple and plain. If all goes well it will just be a blog, on a white background. You might miss the yellowish and tan and earth tones of the old site, but I won't miss having to fill in the backgrounds of illustrations with the old background color. If you don't see something on the new site you want, let me know when the times comes and we'll see what we can do about it.
The tabs will be Home (the blog itself, which will be the landing page), Contact (a form—mostly people can communicate with me in the Comments section, as I'll continue to read all the comments), Books, Settings, and, possibly, social media icons. The Books tab will go to a Book of the Month page—I plan to journey to the Eastman Museum or some other good photo bookshop within striking range (even Boston or NYC) and look at books, and pick one that's worthy of our attention. Then on the books page I'll post a thumbnail image of the cover, the title with a link to Amazon, and a short review. I tried to do this for a while with a "Book of the Week" version, but it was too much work to do every week and I really feel I should see the book myself, the paper and the ink in person, before I recommend it. Besides, I should be up to date on at least some current photobooks, so the effort will educate me.
Settings will be for "mechanical room" stuff, Comment Guidelines, the RSS feed, recent posts, that sort of thing.
One big question is whether each post should have a "Continue Reading" button after a few paragraphs, or appear whole and complete right there on the main page. I know some people like just being able to read straight through without clicking around, but I think newcomers are put off by long posts and don't immediately "get" that there are other posts! So I'm leaning to an intro with a "Continue Reading" button at the end. Besides, that will help me to be more focused about writing ledes. We all know how I can get prolix (wordy) and take my time getting to the point. (I should also stop using words on the difficulty level of "prolix," which is used .01 times per million words and is unknown to perhaps 98% of native English speakers. The blog shouldn't be a vocabulary test).
As for social media icons, I don't understand them or how they work. Some people say if readers click on a social media icon (Facebook, Instagram) on a website, it takes you to their social media site, to allow them to share what they just read. Other people say the icons will take them to my (the writer's) social media sites. The former would be good, the latter not so much—my problem being that I don't have any social media accounts. I have enough work to do just maintaining and keeping the conversation going on TOP. So I'm not sure if the new site will have social media icons or not.
One thing that's long been a sore point is how illustrations are going to be handled. I'll describe what I'd ideally want and you see what you think. The second option is a real thing that I've seen in the wild, so it's theoretically possible.
What I'd like is two classes of illustration. The first would be a nuts-and-bolts kind of thing that imparts information but isn't aesthetic. That can just be a standard size that fits the width of the column or smaller and doesn't enlarge.
For aesthetic images I'd like them to click open on a whole screen such that the image is seen uncropped and surrounded first by a narrow band of white, and then on a background (roughly the proportions of an overmat) of Zone VI or Zone V gray. Then, if the image size allows it, a further click should enlarge it to 100%. The next click returns you to the blog. I'd make an illustration of this (a desktop computer with an image like this showing on it) except it's beyond my skills.
I have seen this in the wild, honest, and it's just right. I have my grail. We'll see if we can actually implement it on the new site. Wish us luck.
A final comment: many people know I'm an alcoholic in recovery (my anniversary was yesterday—35 years clean and sober), and a member of the granddaddy of 12-step programs, which must not be named because we don't represent at the level of press, radio, and films (and television and social media and ostensible photo blogs). I use the program as the basis for my spiritual life, and I've found that the more you put into it, the more you get out of it. It's been wonderful as an engine of personal growth for me. But here's the point: I never, ever would have gotten into it in the first place except that I had to. I'm an introvert and a loner and I go my own way. I'm not a joiner and I always had trouble feeling like I belong—even in the bosom of my own families, nuclear and extended. But alcohol left me sick, miserable, trapped, and desperate—so much so that I had to get help. It was that, or continue on toward a pathetic early death. I had tried my best to get well on my own and I just could not. So I was forced into my recovery strategies and programs by absolute necessity.
See the analogy? Back when I realized TypePad was going downhill, I tried ten times in the intervening years to migrate TOP to a new platform (if you go to theonlinephotographer.net you will see a two-year-old aborted try on Wix, which I futzed with for a torturous four hours and then abandoned). Each time I was driven into the rocky shoals of my ineptitude and gave up. So this is good for me, in a way. I'd never have actually finished this migration to a new platform, except now I have to.
By the way, I'm also thinking about doing two other new blogs, one about WFPB and one about electric cars. I have a lot of interest in both that remains untapped despite their regular intrusions into what is supposed to be a photography blog. So I might just spin those off.
It's been fun to think of things afresh. More news as I have it. Thanks for sticking around. This too shall pass.
Mike
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