I’m still pondering what the future of Arcanum should be and thought I’d put together a quick breakdown of things I have that I want to keep, things I don’t want to keep, and potential new items.

1)Keep the Email Notification
First and foremost, I want to keep the site pushing its content out to as many people as I can. It is therefore obvious that I want to keep the email notification system, as that is the most basic kind of push. That said, I’m not entirely satisfied with how the current notifications work. They don’t maintain all of the formatting of the original post (I’m not sure, but I think they’re still losing the hyperlinks), their comments and unsubscribe links are broken, and most importantly, they don’t go out when I push the site from Google Docs, my new primary writing tool. The current system requires me to push the document to the site, go into the article, revert to draft form, save, then republish to push out the notifications. Far too much work there, this needs to be fixed.

2)Keep the RSS feeds
Again, this helps in aggregating the site out to as many eyes as possible; and again, there are definitely improvements to be made. As of now, the RSS feeds are incomplete summaries. I want to change that so that they contain the full content of the articles. This will aid those who want to use RSS feed readers (which are appearing in more places, more devices, and in more technologies than ever) in viewing the articles in ways that are easier on them.

3)Keep the Archives
There’s plenty of stuff here that is very important to me, and I hope, the avid readers of this site. I want to keep the archives of all of the current articles, but clean up the search functions, tagging, and generally make them easier to peruse so readers can more easily find the articles/essays they want to read. My deepest desire is to allow registered users to tag their favorites and have them appear on a list that’s easily accessible to them.

4)Lose the mood chart
I’m not thinking I’m going to need it anymore. My Bipolar, while still a major factor in my life, is less a “watch every minute” concern for me. Also, due to other things I’m going to mention, I’m not sure it’s very applicable to the direction I intend the site to go. While I fully intend to keep a record of the old chart around for perusal, It’s not a critical feature for me now.

5)Speed up the damn page.
‘Nuff said. This site’s code has gotten boggy and unmanageable, and what’s worse, I can’t seem to find where the all breaks are. This is a large part of my decision to scrap this codebase and build and move to something new.

6)Lose the unnecessary pages/details.
When the site first started 3 years ago, I took a very scatter shot approach to the content that I posted. I started a lot of different threads, dropping the ones that didn’t feel right. Time to close them off, and clean house a bit.

7)Redesign the interface entirely.
This site is an old school throwback to the early design philosophies of blogging, and as such, has a number of failures. First off, it doesn’t take full advantage of the screen space available on most machines today. This leads to overly long vertical pages with over-full sidebars as the archives for the site have just simply gotten HUGE. This, so far, has been the biggest stumbling block for me, as I want to create a layout that embraces a multitude of different ideals right now, but most importantly, want it to have my design sensibilities applied to it. I’m a freakin’ artist after all. This too, is in line with the new direction I want to take things.

8)Better feedback tools.
Due to the cludgey nature of the current site design and other factors that will be addressed in another communication, there’s a disconnect between me the author, and you the reader. I want that gone. To that end, I’ve already made some moves by getting involved in the beta test of a new technology that will allow me to better communicate with you. If you want to read up on it, you can click here for details.

But Why?

There, 8 ideas to revamp the site, and head it towards the future I have envisioned for it. But the question that potentially hangs of course, is why? Well first and foremost, I’m a fiddler. It’s what I do. I finally have time, the tools, and I’ve always had the inclination to make this a better place to visit. But the most important thing is that I miss this place. I miss the essays, I miss the fire of writing, I miss the conversations with the readers, I miss all of it.

When I first started this place, lo those many moons ago, I just wanted to have a place to put my words out there. I’d just lost a crap-ton of my previous writings to a hard drive crash, and I wanted to make sure that it didn’t happen again. I’d also been reading my first book, and had started feeling the prickling tingles of the second in the back of my mind. Now that the Book II project is in it’s final stages of wrap-up, I need to think about what this site means, and what *will* it mean in the future? I love this place, and it’s getting cobwebs from lack of use. Before long, it will most likely be forgotten in its entirety, and I want to make sue that does NOT happen.

But the site will change, it will grow, and it will evolve. I have plans in place that I’m not going to discuss, as I’m not entirely sure when they’ll be ready, and I’m not willing to talk more about it until I have a little more of something to show you.

The future is coming, I just have to make room for it.