Nathan Cooley, There Will Be No Miracles Here, 2009, Installation at Dean Gallery, Edinburgh
Readers wondering why posting has been a little sparse lately are looking at the product of my recent efforts. Thanks to Veken Gueyikian, Going Off Script’s resident business guy for marketing and strategic advice, Designer and Programmer John Sexton and this year’s support from readers and Creative Capital, AFC got an update. This means a lot of changes I hope will improve the reader’s experience on the blog. For the sake of ease, I’m going to go through a few of the updates via bullet point.
REDESIGN: You’re looking at it. I’ll be experimenting with the look of the posts a little, but for the most part, the front page will look much the way it does now, with small excerpts with click throughs leading to the full post. Image heavy posts will take up more space, and we’ve added a lot of multi media options so we can handle a lot more images. This means our invited artists participating in our annual IMG MGMT series will have a lot more flexibility and choices.
IMPROVED COMMENTS! Um YAY! Commentors will have to sign up with their full names, but once approved will now be able to post their comments directly to the blog without moderation. This not only saves me the time of having to approve each manually, but will help improve the flow of conversation. Those who wish to add videos or images in the comment section will can do that as well. Unless the post happens to be a call for cocks, I ask that readers refrain from uploading their own.
CONNECT WITH ART FAG CITY: There are five hundred ways to read Art Fag City on the web, but I’ve narrowed the list to the services I actually use. The social media section includes links to my Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, Flickr, and Delicious account as well as my RSS feed. If you want to read AFC via email, I’ve now got a mailer too. Don’t forget to sign up for that!
In other sharing news, facebook like and tweet buttons now follow each post so readers can discuss articles they like, hate or have ambivalent feelings about in the medium of their choice.
RECOMMENDED SHOWS: Answering the regular requests I receive for show recommendations, I’ve added a feature called Five Shows, maintained by AFC Curatorial Fellow Dave Harper. Every two weeks Dave will give us his top show picks so we don’t have to scour the listings to figure out what’s worth a visit. We’re using a plug-in called Gigpress for this, which has a lot of great features, including one that allows readers to subscribe to the individual RSS feed.
FRESH LINKS: We’re experimenting with this a little. The new side bar format admittedly has some draw backs — you have to click through to see the commentary and or follow the actual link — but it clears up a lot of problems in the RSS Feeds and our back-end, which until now gave everything the title “fresh link”.
ART FAG CITY MOBILE: For the uber-nerd who wants to read Art Fag City on their smart phone, we’ve set up a plug-in to make sure the site is a little more readable when it loads on the phone. Phew, right?
