I'M BACK.
Okay, seriously, though... How do I even start after all this time? I can hardly believe it's been four and a half years since I last posted something here. Although I've been hovering around the place, as well as Facebook and Twitter (though less) like a ghost, posting something or other from time to time, don't think I've forgotten about the blog. I am currently both mentally and physically exhausted from trying to give the website an overhaul, but I just wanted to give you all a quick update about what's what. It's 3:50 a.m. over here, so if I can still count, I spent about eight and half hours grappling with Blogger and its themes in order to give Werewolf Theory a bit of an updated look, at the same time keeping all the features I want and making them do and look the way I want. Which has not been easy, even less so now that I've forgotten most of what I knew of HTML from back in the day. There's still a lot of work that needs to be done, so I foresee another day of work ahead of me tomorrow before I can say I'm content with the changes. I would also like to say a few words about the time when I was away, but I'm afraid I have to leave that until tomorrow - I'm just too tired right now and I can feel my fingers are trying to tell me to give it a rest for today.
Before I crash, I would like to thank all of you who have been visiting both Werewolf Theory and its Facebook page, giving likes and leaving comments. I realise that sometimes it might seem like you're throwing your feedback into a black hole, but know that I read everything. Thank you for all your support. I probably don't deserve it after all this time, but... Thank you.
Okay, I will update this post later on to say what I want to say, but, for now, I need a rest 😆
3:15 P.M.
Yes, I slept that long.
So, first things first. I'll keep this short, because I don't feel like wallowing in self-pity and it won't make for a good read either. A lot has happened in the last 4-5 years, a lot has changed in my life. Most of that time I spent coping with depression and anxiety. The former I was able to overcome thanks to my loved ones' support as well as professional help; the latter doesn't seem like will be leaving me entirely any time soon, but I'd like to think I've got it under control. So that's that. Another thing was that I slowly became burned out on writing articles for Werewolf Theory. Research, preparation and the actual writing were always a long process and at some point I simply couldn't get myself to spend a few hours at a time to publish something. A lot of my creative work, not only writing-related, fell by the wayside over time in favour of other activities. As I thought of the blog every time I would hear something werewolf-related, I felt sad, knowing that I just wasn't in the right mindset to do anything with it. I basically lost my drive. This was exacerbated by the fact that I really wanted to try making the Werewolf Movie Reviews into a video format as well as my indecision as to whether I should go forward with that idea or stick to the written format. I was also terrified of the additional workload that would put on top of what such reviews/analyses already require. And at that point I began wondering if I should start making just video content altogether or divide it between the blog and the YouTube channel. If I decided to divide, then what should go on the YouTube channel and what should stay here? And so my inability to decide and my doubts whether or not I would be able to pull the video reviews off discouraged me from doing anything even more. Days turned into weeks, weeks into months, months into years - and so here we are. So that's pretty much a general overview of what's been going on with me. I'm still kind of undecided about the reviews. What do you think?
The overhaul
Like I posted on Facebook, I decided to finally do some spring cleaning on the blog. I liked the way it looked for the last few years, but I thought it would be a good thing to change some things up a little, you know, give it a bit of a different look for a different time. Honestly, I knew it would be a bit of work, but I didn't expect it to be this much. But it was needed. I still haven't finished, but I'm definitely closer to being done than not. Going through all the elements of the page allowed me to fix some bugs that have appeared over the years due to links changing and so on. Just for clarity's sake (since you probably can see the most obvious changes already), here's what's different:
- Sections into which the posts were divided have been moved to separate pages that can now be accessed on the cross-bar below the header. It was something I had been wanting to implement for a long time, but never really knew how without building the page from scratch. Fortunately, Blogger's Pages feature turned out to be great for this purpose.
- Moving the link lists to the mentioned tabs above allowed me to cut down to only one sidebar, which, I think, is a visual improvement
- I think that at this point I've removed all Amazon affiliate ads from the sidebar. The adds after posts I left for now, because I don't think they're as annoying. I will keep an eye on them and if I don't like them, I'll do away with them as well.
- There is now a dedicated tab called "Support Me", where you can find out how you can, well, support me. I think it's far more organised and less jarring than having stuff all over the place. So check it out, if you'd like to quite literally put food on my table.
- Last but not least, I refreshed the header at the top. It's a bit different than it used to be, but still uses most of the old art.
No comments:
Post a Comment