I spent entirely too much time today moving my old e-book Spoil off of WordPress.com and onto a sub-domain of this blog. The new address is spoil.vianegativa.us. I’d tell you to change your links and bookmarks, but I’m not sure anyone actually links to it.
I considered taking it down altogether, but I’m just too fond of the header image (which is by the multi-talented Lori Witzel) to let it go yet. And moving it should be good practice for moving Shadow Cabinet, whose contents I am slightly more invested in. That move will probably take even more time, because I’m not as wedded to the header image there, and therefore will be freer to play around with templates. I want to explore the available options for e-book presentation with a self-hosted WordPress installation so that we can do a good job with the electronic version of the winner of qarrtsiluni‘s first chapbook contest, which we expect to publish in November.
Why not just use Issuu, you may ask? Online flip-books are very cool looking, but I personally don’t find them as easy to read as regular webpages. More than that, though, I’m not willing to write off the visually handicapped, forgo search engine access, and deprive users of the ability to link to (and promote) specific poems. Issuu is great for print publications that just want to have something online — if you already have a nice-looking PDF, you don’t have to do anything further — but it would represent a step backward for a truly online magazine like qarrtsiluni. I also really admire good web design, and enjoy giving exposure to some of the more talented designers out there. (My new site Moving Poems represents, in part, my desire to do something with Oulipo, by Andrea Mignolo — the most attractive blend of minimalism, whitespace, and good typography in a free WordPress theme since Ulf Petterson’s Modern theme, if you ask me.)
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Both Spoil with that gorgeous header and Moving Poems are indeed lovely cleanly designed pages. You do keep busy, Dave.
Very nice look. How I’d like to be able to view it with nothing visible but the page! — no frame, no time/date/icons/status etc. visible.
Marja-Leena – Good to hear that you think so. Thanks.
Bill – If you’re using the latest version of Firefox, clicking the F11 key will do that for you.
Do you take advantage of it and enjoy it then? And when you visit others sites? On a Mac it’s not possible to do. I’ve downloaded software add-ons such a Mega-zoomer but I haven’t the motivation to learn how to hack Cocoa, which is what I understand is something you have to be able to do (hack Cocoa!) to make it work. I’m really glad to hear you can enjoy full screen viewing, though. I’ll have to get around a PC sometime and give it a try. As a blogger manque I had felt that the bright wash of the time/date home strip above the browser frame, not to mention the browser frame itself, so compromised my dark, very low contrast images that I declined to publish. Spoil is so very clean and poised. I wish I could take it out of “its wrapper”!
Bill, I’m sorry this doesn’t work for you. Yet another reason to stay away from Macs! I don’t remember to use that function as often as I should, but it’s great for undistracted reading — and of course for taking screenshots.
No worries! The take-away of my thwarted desire for Spoil is that I like it!
Wow! I didn’t know you could do that! That’s great (the F11/Firefox trick, that is.)
You have dangled a participle, “whose contents I am slightly more invested in.” should be “in whose contents I am slightly more invested.” Although that is still ungainly. The sentence could use a complete rewrite.
“Why not just use Issuu, you may ask?” There should be no question mark at the end of this sentence.
(Now what, I wonder, does that person think a dangling participle is? Mysteries abound.)