So, There’ve Been a Few Adjustments to the Site…

If you’ve visited the website (not the mobile version) in the past week, you may have noticed a few formatting changes as I work to evolve this from a simple blog into a more nuanced platform for my publishing career. Apologies if you stumbled in mid-adjustment... the site never went down, but it may have looked a little funny.

So, what’s changed?

• Address: No longer will you be visiting warrenpawlowski.blogspot.com (though that will properly redirect here). Now, you’ll be reading directly from warrenpawlowski.com. That’s right, I purchased the address through the far distant future, which allows me to incorporate:
• Advertising: Chances are you can’t see it yet, but advertising will soon be added to the website through AdSense. I promise I’ll do my best to ensure the ads never feel overtly intrusive.
• Social media links: Replacing the Twitter feed and the Facebook “Like” box, the new icons are designed to conform perfectly to the site’s theme while maintaining easy access.
• “Books” page: Replacing the standalone ad from the old format, this provides brief snippets on each title I’ve written, including titles, summaries and links to purchase.
• “Hobby Hole” page: While the “Home” page will continue its focus on publishing-related news, Hobby Hole articles (such as the weekly comic reviews) can all be found in this sub-page.
• “About Warren” page: Replacing the “About the Author” gadget from the sidebar, this static page includes an expanded professional biography and a larger picture.
• “Contact” page: Useful for questions regarding press and publicity, movie rights, or speaking engagements, this creates a method of contacting me other than through post comments.

There are also a few things I’ll be adding or adjusting soon (basically, as soon as I once again have a functional computer), such as those below (in the order in which they’re most likely to appear):

• “Videos” page: While the link to YouTube is nice, I’d prefer having all relevant videos easily accessible and organized onsite.
• Sanity’s Flaw and The Nobodies pages: The “Books” page is a great start, but I would like to have dedicated pages that include excerpts, imagery, videos, reviews, etc. for each book. These will be linked from the “Books” page and not included in the header.
• Shifting gadgets: The “Comic Book Pull List,” “Recently Read Books” and “PSN Profile” gadgets are fun additions to the site, but make more sense contained to the “Hobby Hole” page.
• Hobby Hole articles: Though they currently appear on their own page, Hobby Hole articles continue to erroneously appear on the main feed as well.
• Author photo: I don’t like the current author photo on the “About Warren” page and my wife absolutely detested the previous version, so I’ve compromised and taken a new one. Unfortunately, it needs to be adjusted and I currently don’t have the means to do so.
• Banner: The “o.P.a.P” banner will shift to a more appropriate “WarrenPawlowski.com” banner. However, again, I currently don’t have the means to make this adjustment.
• “News” page: Essentially containing the blog to its own page, this would allow the “Home” page to shift to a more dynamic landing page.
• “Events” page: Highlighting upcoming and past events, including all coverage of and from such, this is not yet needed.

I’m sure there’ll be further adjustments, but there is at least one thing not changing. This site will always remain black. Sure, white may be “trendy,” “clean” and “modern” thanks to Google, Apple and subsequent copycats, but there’s a reason I’ve maintained black as my background for years: it save energy.

Don’t believe me? Check this, courtesy of Blackle: “a given monitor requires more power to display a white (or light) screen than a black (or dark) screen." Roberson et al, 2002