I began this blog in November of 2009. My adventure into public occultism began under my own legal name, and on blogspot, and it’s been a hell of a ride. A lot has changed since then. I’ve taken a pseudonym that sort-of-no-really turned itself into a magical name. I’ve migrated to wordpress. The blog has been personal and political and experimental by turns, and at its best is all three at once.
When I started the blog, I was doing little enough in the rest of my life that it made sense to talk just about my magic. When I started pursuing a career in academics, it made sense to cordon off this portion of my life in the name of respectability, and to that end I obscured my identity and location with poetic pseudonyms. I was so little known, at the time, than anonymity frankly improved my credibility in the occult community. But things have changed since then.
I have given up my dreams of professional academia – if not, perhaps, my dreams of some day, in a different cultural and economic climate, of continuing to educate myself in a formal setting – and no longer fear my private life being a professional concern. Even in my day job, I no longer work for squares: I now work for Kansas City’s premier New Age book store and jeweler. Respectability politics … well, they will always be a hobgoblin that haunt my life, but I’m now being judged by wholly different criteria.
Now, by this point, you all, my highly intelligent readership, will suspect that I am going in one of two directions: I am either going to re associate this blog with my legal name, or possibly burn it to the ground. You are neither wholly right nor wrong
I am also now doing a great deal more with my life, today, than I was seven years ago. I have published my first novellas and am attempting to publish my first novel. I have taken up art photography. I am now a public leadership figure in the Heartland Spiritual Alliance, stewards of the annual Heartland Pagan Festival. I have nothing to hide and, if I may say so myself, quite a lot to show off.
My dilemma, then, is how to show off all the things I do in one place, because I am frankly not enough of a coder to create however-many interconnected “standalone” websites — one for the novels, one for the photography, one for the masks and jewelry, one for the occult, and all somehow feeding into one blog. (Because I’ve tried it and i know that I can’t keep up with multiple blogs.) More to the point, the question is how to do so with the least disruption to either myself or my readership — because I love y’all and I don’t want to lose you.
Toward that end, I am actively soliciting suggestions. What is the best way to integrate my various projects? How do I migrate the blog without an epic shit-pile of off-site links (like I’ve still got knocking around, linking back to blogspot)? What is the most graceful way to integrate my online presences into something marginally cohesive?
A little late, I know, but I used squarespace. It was stunningly easy to make a pretty handsome website. With your repository of photographs and your ability to make more, I expect you could make something even prettier than the website I made.
No coding required, just a bunch of templates that you can mix and match as needed. And their user interface is so good. I was able to integrate my facebook page with it, etc.
Check it out. It really is as good as the advertisements say.
It’s not too late, yet. I have considered square space — i was using one of their competitors, zenfolio, for my photography portfolio. I’m currently leaning heavily toward HostGator because a couple of my projects are going to require standalone web pages no matter which way I swing it (the novels need their own page). So I’m going to have to figure out how to gracefully link them all back and forth.