So in rethinking my site (and if you’re reading this off adampknave.com, via LJ or RSS – take a look, the site is cleaner and tinier now) I started thinking about what I present and how.

One of the things I realized was that I have three main components to everything:

Prose/Comics – My writing. Free fiction is hosted here, information about stories, etc. The site is a gathering point for data on all my projects. Now the Bibliography page looks funky in the new site and I’ll get there this weekend, but that’s not the point. The idea is that the site exists to promote, expose and discuss my writing work. So it needs to have it and have it accessible and readable.

Blog – I enjoy blogging. Writing essays like this, or sharing a fun link, bit of news whatever it is. The blog portion of the site makes me feel connected to the world. It is also, through RSS, and LJ syndication, my broadcast point to the world. So it’ll also mention the writing, and refer over to it and promote it. This way the antenna goes up and the signal goes out. The blog portion of the site is often the first face, the thing that captures readers. So it is important that section be face-first and well-heeled.

Satellites – Here’s the one I had trouble defining for a while. Twitter, Tumblr, my various columns and other internet spots of presence that do not and can not live on this one site. What are they and how should they be treated? It wasn’t until the other day that I even realized what I wanted to call them. Satellites. They’re small points that aren’t attached to the main structure but circle it, leading people back (sometimes) and spreading the word outside of this one spot. So that’s my next move. Moving columns and side projects out of the bibliography section (where they never belonged) and merging them with other site presences in a new satellite section.

That way, when you come to adampknave.com you’ll see the first face, the blog, instantly. you’ll also get hints of the rest, and links to it. Clean and simple pointers that will lead you across all the different facets of what the site does in a simple and logical manner.

So let’s see. I’ve spent three days thinking about this, spent last night redoing the site, and have written a few thousand words on it. Now I have to just finish the work. In a year or so we’ll see if the thoughts stand when I adapt everything again, but I think they will. They theory has been growing, every year, to this place where it feels matured and right. We shall see.

Yesterday I talked some about why you should update your site. At the same time, Ariana discussed what your site does. As in what it is for. These two dovetail enough I wanted to continue the discussion I started yesterday.

I’m going to, quite obviously I would think, use my own site for this. I know it fairly well and it has all the problems I want to solve. Because when you’re redoing a site, and you’re looking at technologies to incorporate that maybe you’ve wanted a while, and a look that gets the right feel across you also can’t forget the most important part: form follows function.

I could build a beautiful site all about video blogging. Except that I don’t video blog (vlog, oh vlog how I do not like you as a term) at all so it wouldn’t help me much. My site needs to do what I need it to do. Which brings to question: what exactly is it that my site does, and, once that is known, does it do it well at all?

All right. So let’s look at adampknave.com and see what it does.

Huh. It does… way too much crammed into way too small a space. There’s a blog filled with both silly pictures and funny videos and essays like this and life rambles and humor articles. Then it tries to sell my books and comics. Then it also has links to my satellite things: twitter, columns, my tumblr (oh yes I have one, shhh) etc. Things that are me that I want to point readers to but are not, necessarily, part of the site itself.

So then what is the site? It’s a place to find out about me, as a writer, and also to … get everything else in the world. Why would someone coming to the site want to stay? The posts are scattershot, so maybe if they find a topic interesting they’d stay for a second post, until everything drifted off that topic again. Maybe they like the TV show parodies, etc. Well, all right, fine I need to admit and know that no blog I ever run will be a guided missile of purpose. It will always be the noise that falls out of my head. But separating the prose and the comics from that noise some wouldn’t hurt. Otherwise people come and they see everything at once and that can be a bit much.

Overloading visitors is never good. Simplicity is nice. Find out what they came for and give it to them. Let the visitor choose what they want to dig into and when. A controllable environment. Now, I have some ideas about that, and some of them may be outdated. A few of them are far above my abilities as a graphics person and coder.

But with some advice, and questions and a bunch of work I can pull it off. The trick, then, is to make sure that what I want to do is mobile enough to work as I move forward. Some things won’t be, of course, but the more that will the better. Less dead links out there the better. While designing this next incarnation over the coming months I will also be working, in my head, on where it could possibly go next. Now a lot of that will be scrapped when reality comes to play, but it doesn’t hurt to think about.

Finally, going forward, what will adampknave.com be? That’s the question, isn’t it? Well. It should be a hub for every aspect of my life online. A single source for everything I do, including information about my prose and comic projects, a blog/RSS feed for broadcast streaming purposes (and read Ariana, guys, if she doesn’t get to that one I know I will eventually. But chances are she will, and she’ll do it smarter than I will), consolidated satellite management and streamlined outreach management. One single place where you can, easily, find and touch and experience and explore every inch of any project I put in the public: from novels and funny images I dream up, right down to my 4am thoughts, if I want to share them. It should be a full data hub.

So what does your site do, what is it for and how can you make that come across better?

Something that’s come up a few times with a friend or two has been the idea that any webpage should hit a redesign roughly every year. That’s not a firm date. Some do it every six months, some do it every two or so years but the general rule of thumb is about a year. I’ll say this and in return I get asked why. My response has often been “Because.” which is hardly a response at all and seems like a lot of hand-waving. So, I thought I would dig into that why some, here.

The easy, quick answer is simply to keep things fresh and looking new. Which is true, sure, but overly simple. Everything redesigns. And yes a lot of it is to look current. Capabilities change. Graphics change. Sensibilities change. Audiences like to feel that the thing they are ingesting is fresh and current. Take NBC for example. Below are a bunch of the network’s TV logos and the year they put them into place:

That was an example off the top of my head. You can take any brand, or magazine, or publisher of books and see the same evolution for yourself. Branding adapts and evolves over time. Webpages are branding for things. Some of them are corporate, CNN, for example, and some are personal, right here, but they represent brands. As such they need to grow and change to reflect, even at a very basic level, that they aren’t standing still.
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So I fired up the Selectorbot 5000 and put it to work and soon enough it had an answer to who had won the Complete Farscape contest.

Ed Hickox has won himself a mess of Farscape. Woo! Congratz!

So Top 10 lists. Thanks for your help yesterday. I have a list of what lists I’ll do now, which is fun to say. Here they are, in no particular order:

Top 10 movies of the year and decade (two lists!)

Top 10 comics of the decade

Top 10 dumb/annoying things my cat has done this year

Top 10 TV shows of the decade

Top 10 internet sites I visited this year

Bonus list: Top 10 Top 10 lists of the year.

Bonus bonus list: One over at Mamapop I won’t reveal yet. (will run Tues Dec 29th)

I don’t know what day any of these (outside of the last) will run, so I guess we’ll find out on Monday. These lists are still subject to change. I don’t think they will though. I am limiting myself to lists that focus on the year or decade though which is why you don’t see “Top 10 toes in order” or something like it. I know, it’s a shame but my specific feelings toward my toes will have to remain a mystery, shrouded in darkness.

Also you won’t see my “Top 10 days that end in -y,” though I am sure you are wondering what at least three of them are. Well, keep wondering.

Anyway… so those will all show up next week (except the one that says it won’t).

Next week, Monday though Friday I will do five Top Ten lists. They will all deal with the year or decade – but I don’t know what they will be about! On Mamapop I will be doing a pop culture related one, and it will be awesome, so I can’t dupe that.

So, folks, I urge you, what lists would you like me to do? Relate them to the year or decade, go on. I got five slots to fill and if I don’t get some ideas then Tues-Fri will be like “The top ten list items from the day before, this decade” or something sad.

Suggest away!

You are not alone in your love for a certain band / singer / TV show / movie / book / comic. You are not alone in your enjoyment of an activity. You are not alone because of the things you believe. Honest. It’s all right.

The internet was settled by people who felt alone in a lot of ways. They were, not always but often, the outcast. The kids who didn’t have a lot of friends, or weren’t the popular kids. They felt different. Estranged from what was around them, as often as not. Some people saw it as hiding online. Until it became popular. You aren’t alone in reflexively finding a dislike for things as a large group suddenly discovers it for themselves, either.

But I spend a lot of time online, partly because I have to and mostly because I enjoy it, and I see a lot of people start sentences with “I know I’m alone in this but” or a variation of the same. They wear it like a badge. They’re proud of thinking that they are lone wolves pioneering something, be it a cause or a song. They’re also, often, just simply so damned used to it. To feeling alone and adrift.

But they aren’t. None of us are. For everything you like there is someone else. Lots of someone else’s, in fact. That’s all right. Hell, it’s better than all right, it’s natural, normal and glorious. The trick is to let go. This isn’t then, this a time or place where you can’t find people who share an interest of yours. Frankly, anyone over the age of 18 should be past it, or working on it. If you’re reading this and you’re under 18 then, you know, go for it for a while longer, emo kid.

But we’re not alone any more than we don’t make the effort not to be. And no, you aren’t alone in not wanting to make the effort or in being scared of it and the possibility of rejection. So let go. Find your people. Embrace them.

And I’ll tell you something else. You’ll find that “your people” comprise a bunch of different sets of people that may, or may not, overlap with each other. That’s fine too. No single group will, probably, be 100% in line with you. It’s normal and natural and awesome.

Because you get to, if you want to, learn what makes them tick and see if that also works for you. You can also do the same for them. Give and take. Don’t forget either side, in equal measure. Some of my nearest and dearest are into comics, some hate them or are indifferent. Some hate musicals or action movies or Jem. That’s all right, too.

I don’t expect them to align perfectly with me. I’m thankful they don’t. It would, honestly, creep me out if they did.

My issue, mostly, is that whenever you post and use those phrases, those trigger sentences that enforce your supposed uniqueness, you slam up walls that turn people away and propagate the same bad behavior in others. It isn’t healthy, I’m sorry.

We’re all different and we’re all the same and your great friends you haven’t met yet are right around the corner, not even aware that they’re waiting to meet you. Why deprive them of that? Why hold back some of your joy and theirs at the same time? It’s selfish, really. Take a chance, and if it doesn’t work – well guess what, you wouldn’t be alone in that either. So you take another one.

There’s a whole world of really interesting people around. I am so incredibly lucky to have met the tiniest of a fraction of them. Even the ones I don’t like are still people, other humans with insight and thoughts that aren’t mine and I can learn from those or laugh at them or build on them or all three at once plus plenty more.

If I had one magical wish, right now, it would be to strike those trigger sentences from the internet and have everyone actually take the time to get to know other people openly and honestly. To leave their fear behind them and seek out people who will give them joy and discussion and good times.

But I don’t have a magical wish. I checked. Just now. So instead all I can do is ask you all to think about it, reach out and leave the fear for another day. You won’t be alone. You never were.

Oh, and for the record? I’m not alone in having said things like this, and we all know it.

Reminder for a Monday – my publisher is running a CONTEST: Win a Complete Farscape set on DVD: Go here for info and spread the word!

So here’s the deal. My publisher and I were discussing possible contests. We like contests. And one thing led to another and here we are with a copy of the Complete Farscape on DVD on its way. A copy we’re going to give away to one of you.

What’s Farscape?
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John Crichton. Astronaut. Flung through a wormhole and lost in a galaxy far from home. He finds himself in the middle of a prison break, surrounded by hostile aliens, soaring through space inside a glorious living space ship called Moya. Hunted by the relentless Peacekeepers, he allies himself with his unimaginably alien fellow refugees and searches for a way home.

So begins the epic sci-fi classic Farscape. A fusion of live action, state-of-the-art puppetry, prosthetics and CGI, Farscape features mind-boggling alien life forms, dazzling special effects, edge-of-your-seat thrills, irreverent humor and unforgettable characters — all brought to life by the creative minds at Jim Henson’s Creature Shop. No wonder it’s been called the most imaginative sci-fi series in television history.

Here, in time for the series’ tenth anniversary, are all four Farscape seasons, 88 episodes, together for the first time in one epic collection. These are the adventures of Moya’s crew — Crichton, Peacekeeper Aeryn Sun, warrior Ka D’Argo, azure priestess Zhaan, spritely thief Chiana, Dominar Rigel, Pilot and many others. Like Moya herself, this package contains amazing surprises including hours of bonus materials, making-of featurettes, commentaries, interviews, deleted scenes and much more. Prepare for Starburst!
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Here’s how to win it:

I have a book out, Stays Crunchy in Milk. It’s a pop culture road trip, a novel about friendship and growing up. A parable for 30yr olds. Here’s the blurb for the book:
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They were four: Wereberry the strawberry werewolf, Choco-Ra the chocolate mummy, The Creature From the Fruit Lagoon (his friends call him “T.C.”), and Cherrygeist the… well she was a ghost. At least, until she wasn’t. One day, she wasn’t there at all. And then they were three.

Three friends who have sworn to search for her to the ends of the world and beyond – to find and save her.

Through familiar lands to places startling and unknown – across looming castles, endless battlefields and simple brick roads – these three friends will hunt and search and scour every inch. Along the way they’ll have to rely on a whole lot of luck and a little bit of charm, but mostly each other.

A fairy tale for the super-sugar generation, Stays Crunchy in Milk is a road novel packed with 100% of your recommended daily allowance of essential action and adventure. And it’s a delicious part of a nutritious breakfast.
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Here’s what you need to do, now, to get this ball rolling. Follow this link to the book and buy a copy. Take a picture of yourself with the book. Leave the picture, or a link to the picture, as a comment to this entry.

On December 18th we will randomly pick one person and then we will mail out a copy of The Complete Farscape to them! That’s it. Buy a book, take a picture, win a set of DVDs.

And now some fine print: Make sure the email field in your comment is correct, because we will need it to contact you if you win. We will not keep your email address or use it for anything other than winner notification. This whole shebang is only open to residents of the U.S. and Canada, the DVDs will be Region 1 encoded, keep in mind. Henson and A&E have nothing do to with this madness. This contest is sponsored by Creative Guy Press.

EDIT: Contest closed. Ed Hickox has won. Thanks for playing.