Hi there,
No this is not an additional bonus station for the week. Do stick around though.
You may have noticed a few new things around here! (If not, well….. dang.)
We have the Station to ourselves now!
The Eighteenth Station (or ‘eighteenth station’; still debating on the caps) now has its own domain, and with it, some additional perks.
For one, I’ve tidied up the space to get rid of some of the jarring issues I had with the stock theme, such as the title sizes, margins, paddings, and a bunch of non-interesting stuff (the menu will have to stay off-centered for now, unfortunately).
I’ve also refined the overall look. Though it wasn’t problematic, what bothered me about the old page was the edge-to-edge title boxes for posts. It looked fine on tablets and smartphones (in fact, I’m keeping it that way) but on a desktop 16:9 screen (or even a 4:3) it looked like a stack of slabs, so I’ve customized it to break off from the full screen format at certain screen sizes…..
Anyway, I’m getting too excited about what I did. You guys probably don’t want to hear about that!
In other news, I want to give a little update on what’s coming up in the future for the Eighteenth Station.
First off, I want to thank the few of you who take the time to stay for the ride. Whether you’ve just got on or you’ve been around since Station 1, I’m glad you’re reading. It’s the whole reason I write in the first place.
Moving forward, there are a few things I would like to improve upon after our thematic make-over. An item on the list is the chat, which I’ve been neglectful of. I’ll admit that the settings for the comment section are still on default, and I recently noticed it had blocked a few comments.
For now, I’d advise travelers to not post links in the comments, as I’m sure that’s one way to get marked as spam.
I was also surprised to find out that WordPress (the site host) doesn’t allow me to direct message people (unless I’m not doing it right). Imagine being at a station and not being able to have a conversation with the person next to you without yelling loud enough for everyone else to hear.
It’s understandable why they wouldn’t allow that, so instead of complaining about it, I’ll be deliberating how to setup a cohesive place to chat rather than relying on the scattered Stations. I would love to be able to chat with some of the Station’s readers (hi Tetina) and get some general thoughts about this project and how you guys found out about it.
And finally, of course, I’ll continue to work on improving my writing, the station’s structure, its SEO and all those stuff (if you don’t know what that means, Google it).
One step is to fine tune the reading experience for you mobile users out there. There are very practical reasons as to why the mobile experience is essential for the Station’s design (the site’s dark theme is no coincidence).
The other is to increase the visibility of the Station. There are countless ways to do this, some of which I’d rather refrain from doing (for courtly reasons). But what I did do a few weeks ago was create a Facebook page. Feel free to follow below and share it with your friends!
https://www.facebook.com/eighteenthstation/
That’s all for this announcement. Thanks for reading, and have a good evening.
— taikode