I'm going to be leaving town for the next week in a little over 24 hours. I'll still be stopping by to make sure you guys don't blow up the joint, but in the meantime I'll be leaving the site in capable hands. That includes you.
There will still be game threads, trade rumors, and worthwhile articles linked on the main page while I'm gone, but you may have to provide your own game recaps and observations. I'll only be able to get about 30-45 minutes of computer time per day -- decidedly not enough to do everything I normally do to run this site. So in my absence, the site really does become your blog.
I mentioned last weekend that I had a bit of blogger's burnout. This little break should help substantially. So should the impending trade deadline.
That being said, I wanted to address the direction that the blog has taken, and the direction I would like to see it go in the future. Since moving to the new site, I've slowly moved away from too many stats. I think I may have moved a little too far. I'd like to get back to having a little more analysis back in my posts.
You guys have been doing an excellent job of bringing up good topics in the diary section. In the future, as the site grows, I'll be moving worthwhile diaries to the main page. Right now though, diaries stay on the main page longer than regular entries.
Another thing that I'd like to include in the future is brief entries to interesting White Sox related news. (see: last three entries [1] [2] [3] for format) This isn't exactly one of my strengths. I read practically everything relating to the Sox, and I probably wrongly assume that you do too. After all, your seeking out alternative content, right?
This is where you come in. For the next week, I've got Keith and Heads in place to make the site run smoothly, but in the future I'll be looking to add somebody to the mix who can post main page entries that compliment my strengths and weaknesses. Consider the next week like a type of tryout. If you'd like to be able to have the keys to this car, demonstrate that by posting worthwhile diaries while I'm on vacation.
What's a worthwhile diary?
It's different things to different people. It doesn't have to be verbose. Yes, there's a 300 character limit to prevent spam, but all it needs to be is thought provoking or provide a good discussion. The Rumor Mills you guys have started are a great example. -- I've never been very interested in chasing down all of the hottest trade rumors, and you have stepped right in and filled the void in my coverage.
Presentation counts
- There's nothing worse than one big run-on sentence. Ok, maybe one big run-on paragraph.
- Learn some basic HTML
- <b>bold text here</b> for bold
- <i>italic text here</i> for italics
- <a href="www.siteurl.com">link text here</a> for a text link
- <div class=blockquote>insert quote here</div> to make those pretty purple lookin boxes that I use all the time. (these can be used in comments as well)
- Click the preview button -- If it doesn't look like something you would like to read, fix it.
- Spelling counts too. -- I have a couple of extensions for Firefox that are great. Spellbound helps check the spelling of your entry on any web forum, and BBcode is an extension that allows you to easily insert BBcode or HTML in your posts with just 1 click.