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The Webmaster Diaries

Building your Content Stream
Third Iteration
This week I was pretty excited when I published the first issue of the Hovercast, a compilation of a weeks worth of web posts. I announced the issue inside the stream of content for the May 21 issue of the Hovercast which should come out either next Monday or Tuesday (my cut off date is 5/21). Even as I am writing about the zine version of the Hovercast, Ive been thinking that I should call it the Hoverzine instead. Ive published a lot of different things over the years, but this is the first time that its happened because most of my theories about the flow content were coming true. I was able to consistently compose my writing inside Google Docs, publish it as a webpage or document, present it via Weebly, and then share it via Facebook and Twitter. Once I was able to compile the articles into the Hovercast (Soon to be the Hoverzine), I had already scored my first victory. The zine is only an exercise in curation, so by then most of my work had been done. Now Im watching to see if the compilation has better traction that the same documents when they were published as single-topic articles.

You caught me monologuing

This was also the first week when I was able to write a Monologue. I picture the monologue as a type of post-newspaper era version of the Note from the Editor that you might have once read inside newspaper. However, when I write it I think of it as more like the monologue that talk show hosts give at the beginning of their episode. Like when Conan OBrien cracks a few jokes about current events. My first monologue followed the same pattern. I brought up some odds and ends about things going on in the community which would normally be difficult to stretch out into a full standalone article. I also see the monologue as a way of referring back to my favorite articles, or maybe talk about an idea I have for a future article.

These are my collections

My only remaining struggle has been with settling on a method of presenting the content that I write. So far Ive been sticking with Weebly, but I really liked the idea of using Google Sites, and for a while it looked like Google Docs might be the way to go. Id prefer to cut out Weebly because it would be one less hop, but then Facebook and Twitter dont always pull in the preview correctly when I reference the article as a webpage. I steered away from Google Sites

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View: Web | Google Doc | Activity Feed | when I discovered that the embedded documents arent going to work on mobile devices (it didnt work at all for my iPad, at least). At least with Weebly Im directing the reader to either the Google Doc (which should always work) or the contents activity feed (On Trello, which I know works on most devices). The Hovercast has actually gone so well that Ive shifted the pages around in Weebly so that the homepage is now this weeks stream, and then previous streams are stored under an Archive tab. I hid any references to other publications because it just seems like the Hovercast is my strongest content vehicle.

These are my collections on Facebook

On Facebook, the Hovercast fan page is a silent partner to all of my other pages. I have regularly been posting content on the Hovercast page, and then sharing those links with the other pages. This works pretty well, but I am not sure yet if there are downsides. For example, if I am spoiling my stats tracking by moving things around so much. Also, when I share a link seven times that creates duplicates around Facebook. Im not sure how that looks to people. However, this helps to confirm my theory that Facebook could support two kinds of fan pages: One for the daily posts, and the other for longer, more long term articles. In other words, Shepherd Today and Hartland Today are my social media engines, while the Hovercast fan page is my content engine. Both are needed, but only one will generate the majority of my content which goes into some kind of publication. I have launched a sister fan page to the Shepherd Today called The Shepherd Journal. My thinking is that Shepherd Today will continue to report on the more immediate news and information, while the Shepherd Journal will look farther ahead into the future with its stories. Then, posts on the Shepherd Journal could be shared on the Shepherd Today. If things work out right, I will have increased the quality as well as the quantity of the content which is posted on Shepherd Today and built the foundation for a publication.

Google Currents
Speaking of publications, Ive also created a Google Currents version of the Hovercast. If you go to this address, you will be able to download Googles Currents app and subscribe to the Currents version of the Hovercast. Ive really enjoyed Google Currents because it allows you to import and then modify Google Docs that you have saved in your account. Up until now, I havent seen any tool that would allow you to import content and allow you to make modifications before you publish it.

Google Drive
After I upgraded my Google Docs account to Google Drive, I discovered that when someone visits your folder on Google Drive, they will see a navigation tree on the left and thumbnail representations of your Google Docs on the right most prominent frame. So in other words it is now possible to organize your files into a folder and then allow your readers to browse them like

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View: Web | Google Doc | Activity Feed | pages in a publication by sharing that folder and then distribiting the folders URL. Its not perfect, but I could see a lot of potential here.