It’s probably about time I did a post all about the features on this site, so people don’t end up confused.
First off, here’s the navigation Menu:
It won’t look like this on mobile, but all of the items will still be accessible (okay, ‘serious Dean’)
Home, Who Is Dean and Contact Dean are self explanatory, so let’s cover the other items.
1) Fresh Thoughts – Instead of writing fully blown blog posts, I thought it would be a neat idea to have something more along the line of Thoughts. They aren’t fleshed out enough to be stand alone articles and usually stem from something that happened or a notion I’ve had. A bit like a journal update but less structured. I have a lot of fun in this section as I don’t have to overthink anything before I post it.
You will notice a scrolling ticker across the top of the blog. It includes short excerpts of the last 6 posts in Fresh Thoughts and the number you see is how many posts have been added to it in the last 24 hours. If it says Live it means a new post has been added to that section in the last hour.
2) Fresh Fragments – These are essentially micro posts that don’t fit into the Fresh Thoughts area. Think “Fleeting Thoughts” more than anything else. If it’s under 280 characters (like a tweet) it can find its way here. It’s quite addictive to write something short and random, which is mainly why I added it 🙂 The number you see next to ‘Fresh Fragments’ is how many ‘Fragments’ have been added in the last 24 hours.
3) Leave Me A Note – This is the next newest thing on this blog. I’ve always had a soft spot for the bygone days of AOL IM and MSN Messenger, so Leave Me A Note is a bit like that, except people can leave a message and the chat doesn’t just disappear forever (it remembers) which means it acts a bit like WhatsApp in that if someone isn’t around for a day or two, either person in the chat can stil reply. The chat allows for text, audio and images so it’s versatile. A bit like an egg.
I tested it out a fair bit and it works like a well oiled machine so far. Rather than people communicating with me by email or carrier pigeon, this is another option. Oh… people can either register or sign in as guests too. All that is required is a Display Name. If you don’t choose a display name it will randomly assign you something totally ridiculous like “Powerful Peafowl”.
If I was operating this blog commercially I’d make certain areas subscription or subscriber only, but since it’s me rambling and just indulging myself, I’m going to leave it all open to the public as long as my next door neighbour doesn’t start talking to me about my updates.
I’m not sure if I’ll add any more features to the blog. I think it’s pretty much complete now. I don’t have any major plans for it other than it being my little personal corner of the internet that isn’t on social media.
When someone asks me what I’m all about I’ll just go. “Yeah, freshlyspilledink.com. That’s my blog”. LOL what a rabbit hole for someone to go down that is.
I’m not going to create anything like this anywhere else as it’s too much of a personal indulgence with no commercial intent.
This is as rare as a rare thing in Summer.
How long I will keep going with it I don’t know. Life will probably get in the way at some point and everything fizzles out eventually. I’ve committed to putting 100 posts on here before I consider hanging up my blog gloves.
The messaging (Leave Me A Note) feature etc will always stay on until I forget to renew the domain or the hosting (this nearly happened recently) and even when I’ve got to 100 posts I’ll probably still post the odd update on here in Thoughts or Fragments.
Anyway, if you’ve read any of my posts, thoughts or fragments I’d love to hear from you sometime.
Thanks for reading and have a great rest of your day 🙂