Featuring…You?

Way back near the end of 2005 I began the feature I called “King for a Week,” where I highlight another person’s blog for a week or two (perhaps the name was not the best choice, but it’s too late to change it now). I’m glad I did this and, though I’ve pretty well exhausted my list of long-time regular reads, I plan to continue with it. But I realize that there are many readers who do not have blogs (or who have a life beyond their blogs) and I thought it would be fun to find a way of featuring some of your contributions to the kingdom. Thus I’m interested in connecting with people who are involved in some kind of creative endeavor—perhaps music, art, photography, short stories, poetry or the like. I think even of landscaping or fashion or any other pursuit that involves creating things for the glory of God. If you fit the bill (or know someone who does), why don’t you send me an email and we can talk about this feature. I’d love to have the opportunity to showcase your creations and the ways you serve the Lord with your talents.

A New Look

Every now and again, I guess it is about once per year on average, I update the look of this site. I do this for various reasons, but usually because a) I am easily bored with my designs, b) the sites serves, in part, as a gateway to my web design company and it is important to keep it looking fresh or c) the nature of the site changes a bit over time and there is something I wish to emphasize that cannot easily be done with the current design. I guess all of these reasons have come together this time. Especially, though, I’ve had to prepare for the lead-up to the book, knowing that I’ll need to make the book available through the site and begin to “promote” it in some way. I think the new design lends itself to that task a little better. I am also considering integrating my company site with the blog. Put all of that together, and it makes sense to move to a new design, I think.

I’ve been tossing around this new design for a while, bouncing it off Facebook friends and just about anyone else who cares to give it a look. On the whole it has been positively received and I hope to move to it about a week from now. Half of you will probably hate it (half always do when I change designs) but you’ll just have to trust it’s for a good cause! Even if you don’t like the look quite as much, I think you’ll agree that the functionality is improved.

Commenting

If you are one of the readers who comments on occasion you’ll know that the commenting system is running a bit slowly. As I’ve mentioned in the past, I think I may be maxing out the server the site is on, though I don’t really know how this could be. I can’t figure out why else things would be running slowly. A new version of Movabletype (my blogging software) is expected soon and I will upgrade and hope it helps solve the problems. If not I may consider changing hosts or potentially moving to Wordpress or something similar. Either way, I don’t like waiting 45 seconds for comments to appear any more than you do. And, while that is annoying, what is worse is when people figure nothing has happened and hit the button a couple more times! So I’ll see what I can do.

Less Fun

I think it is time to drop the “Putting the fun in fundamentalism” tag that has accompanied this site since its infancy. That tag actually followed me to the blog from an online community I used to be involved with. I took it on before I really understand the connotations of defining myself as a fundamentalist. It’s not that I’m scared or ashamed of the word, but I’m not sure that I want the book to be associated with it! So if you have alternate suggestions, feel free to send them along!