June 19, 2008

A bit of blog maintenance

Posted by: Chris

As I begin my second week visiting Memphis during a difficult time for me and my family, I stole some time away to make a few long-needed tweaks to the blog. (Thanks very much to all of you who have posted supportive comments and messages here or on Facebook.)

As for those tweaks, for those paying attention to such things, they include:

• Filling in the Blogroll and Sources links at the upper right of the blog banner. Check out the Sources link if you're curious my take on the best gay political blogs, gay general blogs and news sources, and the best political blogs and news sources in general.
• For the link called Columns that's intended to include my weekly syndicated gay press columns, I'm directing folks to the San Francisco Bay Times, which has published each and every column since I started in November 2006 after leaving the Washington Blade. There's also a link there to almost 100 of the editorials I wrote over a number of years at the Blade. (There are another 50 or so Blade editorials that pre-date the linked compilation, as well as -- gulp -- some 200 editorials I wrote during my years editing Southern Voice newpaper in Atlanta.)
• I reformatted my own "About" page to fit the "new" blog format, and updated the text a bit from when I wrote it almost three years ago. I also went a bit hog wild with "citizen" quotes; not sure they will stand the test of time.
• Adding links in the "About" section on the righthand column that includes background links on my co-bloggers Kevin and Don George.
• In addition to my own Facebook profile, I've added one for the blog itself. If you're on Facebook, I'd love to have you as a friend and to include you on the profile for Citizen Crain as well.
• I've increased the size of the author IDs that appear before the headlines to each blog post. While I can revel with the best of them in the praise I get for blog posts written by Kevin and Andoni, I had to draw the line when a friend told me my "beautifully written" post about Ted Kennedy was my best ever -- except Kevin wrote it.

That last change didn't come soon enough to prevent my getting credit on Andrew Sullivan's blog for Andoni's post on HRC's misplaced priorities. Special thanks to Patrick, Andrew's assistant, for correcting that one.

I'm still working on other changes, including the return of the photo albums that disappeared after the blog's makeover in January. If you have any other suggestions, please do let me know.