All of the missing DCR metadata has been added – an exercise in data management that’s given me focus and kept me sane for the past couple of hours. That’s the last bit of “paperwork” for the reworked books. There’s still a lot of work to do on the Universe, but as far as DCR, The Dualist and Transitional Voices go, well…. there’s nothing left to do but MOVE FORWARD! *

Happy holidays, etc.

The next step? Well, I’m thinking about making the blurbs less intrusive. Either a CSS-based “flipper” sort of thing, or fiddling with templates and “forking” the comic into two display versions – one that’s Just Pages and one that’s Pages With Blurbs. That’s the horns of the dilemma – there’s a hell of a lot of emo I’d love to eject, but the blurbs are also a production bible and blog of sorts – something I’d like to keep, but something I’d also like to sweep out of casual view. “Forking” the metadata into a separate page stream will be interesting for analytics, and in that respect it’s certainly worth trying. I’ll figure out what I’m going to do with that eventually – in the meantime, I need to figure out what I’m doing with the DCR website. That’s been a “priority” since late 2009 – put off until DCR.2 was completed, then put off some more while the DCR.3 script was hashed out and finalized.

Inertia. Gotta size that up and ambush the hell out of it in a dark alley – there’s a lot of little, easy things I can do with the site to help push things forward. At this point it’s largely a matter of figuring out how to put myself in a position where that impulse – that type of work – comes naturally.

That said, pulling the comment logic and “extended” entry bits from the comic pages would be fairly trivial – adding a template “fork” would be a bit more work. My initial tests are looking good, though there’s a CSS issue to sort and the question of which template the front page writeout will “grab.” Work will be progressed or completed when the Web Ninjas are available, after the holiday.

* Oh, and the book and chapter synopses. Still gotta do those… but I don’t associate a summary paragraph with page production, which is what I’m referring to above – all the pages have been combed over, all the associated metadata has been filed appropriately, everything’s been rewritten once or twice (or three or four times)…. page-wise, it’s all good to go. Finally. :D