In the last year I’ve tried moving away from the day-to-day battles of politics to a wider view of life in northern Minnesota and my creative interests. We still do politics and news here; just done in a way that stands out from other blogs.
This summer I am going to redesign the blog. It’s time for a new look and I’m overdue for some performance upgrades on the code, design and functionality of MinnesotaBrown.com. So I’ll be moving off of Google servers over to a WordPress-powered site. There’s a lot to work out yet and I’m saying this partly as an insurance policy so that I follow through.
I’d like to know from you: what are your favorite parts of MinnesotaBrown.com? What do you think should be included? Some things I’m considering are a guide to the region sorted by town, some kind of interactive map, and maybe some landing pages for significant points of interest. I’m also going to release some e-books, ranging from essay collections to some fiction and perhaps, just perhaps, an electronic version of “Overburden.” But I’m open to other ideas.
I supposed the best way to describe it is that I’m producing something more akin to a fully-realized website, less tethered to being “just a blog.” I’m also looking for ways for the site to generate some revenue since this endeavor involves a large amount of time.
Oh, and if you think I should just write a book instead, now would be the time to tell me.
Respond in the comments below, via my contact page, or on Twitter (@minnesotabrown).
Good call on making the move to WordPress. My only suggestion is make sure to pick a mobile-responsive theme — my dad’s blog uses “Montezuma,” which works well as sort of a sandbox-type theme. You’d have to invest a lot of time in it, but I think it offers really great control!
Let me know if you have any questions with installation or site quirks, I’m pretty solid on WordPress at this point, would be happy to help or point you in the right direction. Good luck!
(And I’d personally love to see another book from you!)
Being partial to tangible, on-the-ground stuff in and around the Range, I think these are especially good ideas: “[A] guide to the region sorted by town, some kind of interactive map, and maybe some landing pages for significant points of interest.”
Some time ago I was reading about ingenious methods of home construction that the Finns brought to the region. [Basements and conventional joinery are spurned in favor of a loose confederation of timbers that shifts with the heaves of the bog.]
It would be fun and awfully convenient to find things of this sort at MNBrown (and to actually visit them in the flesh).
Who knows — you might even be able to monetize some of this stuff if you can persuade a few nearby merchants that the Internet is not some type of unicorn.
Best – – –
– – – cjh