The intent of jaredwsmith.com was never to rest on its laurels as merely a WordPress blog. No, my ambitions for this site far transcend anything I have ever attempted. The goal is to leave it all on the table, and for people to take it for what it’s worth. In short, this could be very cool.
The main jaredwsmith.com site, eventually, will become sort of an information hub for my projects and other things I’m working on professionally. I’ve never had a true showcase for my talents before, and it’s time that changed. As you might expect, the goal is to take on some light, but steady, side work. Reentering school in the next year is a priority, and I don’t want to get bogged down and have problems. I also would like to not be poor. I have to weigh these things. :)
Another goal of jaredwsmith.com is for marketing, as we are seriously down the home stretch with my Apress project. December 19 is the projected release date (according to Amazon) and that means I need to start seriously making promotional considerations now. You can expect that I will use jaredwsmith.com as a central location of promotion.
I fully plan on continuing to blog. The blog will likely move to a subdomain such as blog.jaredwsmith.com. There are some considerations on the intelligence of blogging on the same site I’m presenting my work on, but considering the subjects of my blogs to this point, I try not to get too controversial. (We’ll see if I hold to that at this time next year, with the elections in full swing. ;)) But at this point in time, if I offend a Raiders fan, big whoop. :-P Ultimately to preserve this site as a bona fide location of my personal expression, then it’s best that I keep it all under one umbrella.
As I promised, the discussion forums will most certainly be making a comeback, and that could be within the next month. They will likely reside at forums.jaredwsmith.com. The organization of the forums will most certainly be different from the old Realm/jwsdotcom 1.0 setup. I haven’t decided whether to preserve the old content in an archive, while starting fresh, or whether I should start completely anew with a new database. I’m about 50/50 either way right now, most recently leaning to preserving the archive. I most absolutely welcome comments on this, as they may sway my decision.
The organization of the forums is somewhat in question at this time. This is my thinking on forum organization at the present time:
- Discussion Centers: Entertainment, Technology, Web design, the book, and Miscellany
- Administrative Forums: Feedback, Staff (hidden)
There aren’t many forums there at the present time, which is the goal, as I’m trying to start small to build up traffic. As traffic builds (God willing!) and posts go where they may, I will begin reassessing the situation.
Thoughts?
Discussion of Open thoughts on jwsdotcom in the next couple months is now closed
Work and blogs, as you mention, typically do not mix. One of the problems is that if you blog it, it gets cached, so even if the blog is taken down, you can still find the text.
Incidentally, I think you’ve already done this, but remove references to Anthropolemic from this site entirely. That will help keep the Anthropolemic-who-talks-about-Amy-Lee-being-hot separate from the Jared W. Smith, Esq.
It’s no fun to have a friends-only blog, and it takes a lot of the umph out of blogging. My suggestion would be to keep it about your personal life, mention few names, and read your contracts carefully so as to conform with any NDAs and work-related intellectual property.
There are 101 articles about how to keep your blog work-safe, but if your employer is going to fuck you over, they’re going to do it eventually anyway, blog or not. I suspect potential clients who are referred to your work page won’t even bother to go poking around the blog.
Can’t wait to see what you do with this site!
I talk about Amy Lee being hot? LOL.
I think that the nature of this blog – heck, the nature it’s been since I launched “the modern era” at the beginning of college – is fine. I like to talk about technology and such on it, as well as keeping things a little personal (not too personal, of course, but then again I’ve never been completely comfy with that).
And chances are I’ll rarely, if ever, blog about work unless I absolutely know it can be made public or if I’m releasing something.
Hmm..this is a really tough question, honestly. I agree with making subdomains, however, to keep a blog separate from the business, just don’t link the blog from the business portion of the site. I do that with my crappy site. As far as the blog being cached, that’s where ‘robots.txt’ comes in (this information can also be a meta tag). I did that on my site and blog, and not a single shred of information shows up in any search engine.
As far as what to do with the forums, I would do like you had last time around where you have the locked sections which was part of the previous forum. It just seems like too much to throw away, but then again, I’m a pretty nostalgic person.
But then, on second-thought, maybe it would be a wise idea to link everything. It would better present the level and range of your skills than just a ‘demo’ if you will, on the business portion.
I’m not very good at thinking up design or anything like that, so I really can’t put in my two cents of suggestions. I’ve always kind of looked up to your designs/schemes. I’m sure you noticed that my crappy site had a simi-similarity to The Realm – Millenium Edition. I’ve been wanting to revamp the whole thing and go with an all-new design and scheme, but I haven’t the slightest clue as to where I should start.