Elvis eating Yeats
June 30, 2008 – I was a bit shaken when people at Mannix Marketing in Glens Falls, N.Y., told me that 40,000 visitors to the website had overwhelmed a server one morning last week and caused it to crash. I have recovered. We all thought this is something we should build on, so I had a meeting with Chris and Collin and we are on the move. Planned changes appearing in the next couple of months:
– New running topics on the Farm Journal page: A Dog’s Life, and Living Your Life. The first category will focus topics about dog welfare, health care, training. The second will gather all of the writings about living your life in one place.
– New Search Capability: Visitors to the site will soon be able to enter a keyword – Rose, Brutus, Winston, Annie, donkeys – into a search box and see a list of all related blog entries containing the key phrase so they can instantly find specific animals or topics and not have to scroll back through the site, which is hard.
– Animated page transitions: Mannix is creating page transitions that display three of my photos presented in half-a-second, which will appear whenever you move from one part of the site to another. This is an effort to add a new graphic element to the site, and also intergrate the photos, a growing part of the site, into bedlamfarm.com. I want the site to sharpen up a bit, graphically. The site attracts a wide mix of ages, lots of young and old people, and I want it to have a contemporary feel without going over the top.
– Today at Bedlam Farm. This page will be similiar to my other photo pages, but will not contain an archive. It will be updated at least once daily, and the way things go around here, perhaps more than once. When Winston is injured, or hopefully, something more cheerful happens, I will pop it up as a “Today at Bedlam Farm” photo and item. People can just see the news of the day, then go back later to browse the Farm Journal, which is not changing in any way. Might be a photo of the day, or a story from the farm. I suspect this will get my signal out to a lot of people.
– Today at Bedlam Farm Widget. This is a turning point for the site, the first use of the new software causing sites like My Space and You Tube to explode. This Widget will allow you to copy and paste code from my site into yours, so Today at Bedlam Farm can be automatically incorporated into your site when I post it. When I update it, you will automatically receive it, if you wish.
– Combine books pages. We are combining the Bedlam Farm Books and my Random House books into one spot. Random House is adding another widget to that page, which will make it possible for people to buy my books – I will put up about a dozen links to bookstores and online publishers (Amazon, Bn.com) that sell my books. The books will only be sold on the book page, and I want to keep the site non-commercial. At the same time, I make my living selling books, pay for the animal care and for this site itself, and so I was told clearly and correctly that I need to get over myself and make it easy for people to buy my books. If I want to keep Lenore in biscuits and Elvis in hay, this is a good idea.
Anyway, when the site crash happened, I thought it was great, once we got back online. Wonderful that so many people are coming here, and important to keep the essence of the site as it is, while continuing to upgrade and improve it.
I was perhaps the last to know that the site has become something more than a writer’s blog, but a gathering place for people who love dogs and other animals, but who always want to give some thought to their lives, to ways of improving their lives, and to the liberation of creative parts of themselves that are sometimes hidden or buried. So I hope you like these changes. I do not think of myself as inspiring in any way, but if what I do inspires some people, then I need to do more of it, and do it better.
I am very excited about these changes. The Farm Journal has evolved, for me as well, into something beyond what I expected or imagined.