Well my friends it’s almost a wrap on the 2018 year and that means its time for my annual “State Of The Site” or “Year End Editorial” – you can run with whatever label that you prefer. For those who’ve seen these over the years I don’t need to repeat what it is, but the newbies should know that it’s my chance to share some of the insight about this website with those who are interested. It’s here that I offer up the scoop on some development changes and all of the other machinations on being a bit of a content manager, scribe, photographer and social media savant. As I did last year, I am aiming at keeping this a lot shorter than it used to be. Here we go.
The Website Changes:
Visually Speaking: The PiercingMetal site continues to use the theme “Twenty Fourteen” after moving on from the “Raindrops” theme back in late 2016. Though I’ve got an issue here and there with it the theme functions as I need it to, so it will remain in place. Perhaps I will give the Raindrops one another go around our 14th Anniversary in April because I did like it. Originally we changed said theme to the one you see now based on lack of updates and issues that messed up the reader experience. Failure to get any support help found me saying “Next”. Before the morph into WordPress, a special customized theme was being worked on, but when the Dev let go of the project said theme was never released to our Metal Media Command HQ. Tech happens.
Features: In the Features Grouping, the main topics of focus fall into the Upcoming Tours, Milestones, and Memorials and all of these have all picked up steam this past year. These three are aimed at keeping you aware, keeping you celebrating and alas even reflecting with respect about those who might have left us. There is also “PiercingMetal Says” which is a bit of a catch-all/ While I don’t anticipate any additional features being added to the mix at the time of this editorial I will say that I have made a couple of subtle changes. I’ve retitled “Upcoming Tours” to be “Tours and Festivals” with the mindset being to reach our readers outside of our immediate geographic region with stuff that is relevant to their interests. Several of our publicists handle a wide array of Festival events and it would be a missed opportunity to not showcase that to you. If a new feature comes to me in a dream, I will strongly consider adding it but for the most part I think that we cover sufficient bases with these. My suggestion box is open for those of you who might have a brainstorm but please be aware that no prize comes from you discussing something that will cause me more work at the end of the day.
Continue reading PiercingMetal’s Editorial For 2018