It’s been a while since I’ve posted, but expect more content soon. In the past few months I’ve been working on a number of different projects, the most of recent of which was an upgrade to this site. I upgrade websites just often enough to have to learn everything from scratch each time, so it wasn’t as quick a process as it could have been. Outside Hollywood looks the same, but there are some new features under the hood.
In addition to a new install of Wordpress, I’ve got a number of social networking and bookmarking buttons up on each post. Just click this post’s headline or the permalink button to see how they work. From there you can email an article or add it to Digg, Technorati, del.icio.us, Facebook, or your Google bookmarks. You can also open a printer-friendly version of any post and print it off with or without comments.
That’s right, I’ve activated public comments, so those of you with questions can post them right here in full view, instead of watching them disappear into the swirling vortex of my email inbox. For now, all comments will be moderated until I have an idea of what kind of responses I’ll be getting, but that may change once I figure out how to deal with the inevitable wave of spam that all blogs seem to be getting these days.
There are a few other changes, like a collapsible archive menu, and I’ll probably be tinkering for the rest of the week, so if things disappear just check back a little later. In the meantime, check out the latest news on the San Antonio Independent Christian Film Festival and Academy (January 5-10). There’s a great line-up of speakers and sessions this year, and more information about specific films and topics should be coming soon.
If any readers have specific suggestions for favorite networking or bookmarking sites that I should add to my little row of icons, feel free to post them here.
Looks great, and the comments system is going to be quite nice! Re: comment spam, you might want to enable the akismet plugin that comes with Wordpress, as that will greatly cut down on spam.
You might want to add a reddit icon, as reddit is a fairly large digg competitor.
Keep up the great work!
Like the new upgrades, Isaac! So many options . . . I gotta try them all. So here I am trying out the comment function. Now we can all compete to see if we can ask a question to stump “the teacher.” ;-)
Thanks for maintaining the Outside Hollywood web site. It continues to be an excellent resource for tips on independent Christian filmmaking, covering both the Biblical worldview side and the practical side.
NDfilmmaker
Yaaaay! You finally got a comments box! I tried out Deshaker…it is AMAZING! I LOVE IT! The hack for the Canon camcorders was also really neat too.
Thanks so much Isaac for keeping the site/blog going! I really enjoy it.
I second Daniel McCullum’s suggestion – the Akismet plugin works wonders. I use it on my blog, and the blogs that I manage, and it works wonders. It’s a lot easier than moderating every single comment, as I get several spam ones almost every day.
Although I don’t use it, Stumbleupon is a hugely popular form of social bookmarking. You might want to through a stumbleupon icon up there.
Great input. Reddit and Stumbleupon have been added, and I will look into getting an Akismet API set up. Thanks, guys!
One of those email subscription boxes from Feed Burner is another thing I would suggest, maybe even use Feed Burner for your RSS feed so you can see how many people subscribe.
You might consider using addthis.com. You can get the code for a button there for your site that includes many bookmarking options, e.g. Digg, facebook, etc.
I haven’t seen the Father to Son project before. It looks great! The whole logo animation is very cinematic. Good job!
Great upgrade! I love reading the updates! I do have one suggestion, however. That is, make the comments load with the page hiding them via a simple css statement of “display:none;” and displaying them using javascript. If you don’t like the idea of displaying them that way you may also want to use a css popup, such as the one here…
http://www.pat-burt.com/web-de.....ew-window/
Keep up the good work!
Have you thought of creating an Outside Hollywood Facebook group?
Yes! I’m very excited about being able to comment on this site, I’ve wanted that for a long time.
Isaac, real glad to see the comments! Should really add a whole new dimension.
BTW, incredible job here. Actually probably the best blog I’ve found on film/video/etc. – Christian or not. Thanks for putting it out there :)