Features Coming Soon To The Site
To quote the great Jedi Master Obi-Wan Kenobi: Hello there! Welcome back to starwarscanon.net, my fellow Canonites. I can't tell you how excited I am to be getting this platform back up and running. My mind has been a constant whirlwind of thoughts and ideas for the website and pod, so I thought today I would share some of what's been banging around in my head the last few days.
First off, I want to thank everyone who has reached out with encouragement since my first blog post went live a few days ago. It's a solid reminder of why I love working on this website and recording the show, and a great encouragement to keep it going to see what it will become. Without you (the listener or reader) this website, pod, and content would be pointless. But YOU guys and gals have made this thing worth keeping alive in my opinion. So from the bottom of my heart, I want to thank each and every one of you who have sent messages and emails saying you like where it seems the website is going.
So that brings me to the main point of today's post. Where IS the website going? The short answer: I don't know. Yet. But I'm excited to see how it goes and what it evolves into. While I was in the army a key motto that we constantly heard was Adapt and overcome. And so, I'm leaving room for adaptation and keeping my mind open to new ideas and change. Some of which I'll throw at the wall in this post and see what sticks, so to speak.
I don't know how many of you out there were like me in the early 2000s, clamoring for any little nugget of info on the upcoming prequel films. But man, I was scouring the internet for anything and everything I could get my hands on. Whether it turned out true or not didn't matter, because it fueled my imagination. Star Wars fever was real, and I had it bad in 2002. I remember when I walked out of the theater after seeing Attack of the Clones with my mother, sister, and best friend at the time I was already stoked for whatever episode three was going to be. I had an idea on when the third and final prequel film would release. In my mind it had to be May of 2005. And I'll be danged if I didn't nail the exact date with my little project.
I had gone home and gotten on AOL (I know, right? I already know what you're thinking) and printed off calendars for every single month for the next three years. I took those thirty-six pages and counted out backwards everyday from May 19th, 2005 all the way back to the current date at the time (May 20th, 2002). I numbered every day with a pen, and for the next three years, over 1000 days, I counted down to the release of the movie. And somewhere in between those films, I found a little website that turned out to maybe have not been so little after all. Do y'all remember SUPERSHADOW.COM?
Man, I was on SS.com daily, reading comments and messages that people had sent in for this random guy to answer. He claimed to be close to George Lucas himself and that he had the inside scoop on a lot of what was happening behind the scenes at Lucasfilm on the production of the third prequel film. And at fourteen years old, I was naively hanging on every word. My imagination would run wild thinking about his claims that Vader was going to look different in his suit, that he'd be referred to as "Mechanical Vader" and that the film would be about him hunting Jedi down. Obviously, that wasn't the case. But it was fun to think about, and it kept me going until I was finally able to see Revenge of the Sith in 2005. But I remember his format on the home page of the site. It was simple text. He'd post the comment or message he got from a fan and then simply answer them right there in bold font. It's too easy, really. But for me, it was effective.
I get a pretty good number of mailbag questions weekly from you guys. Some of them are about the same topics once in a while, especially if something is trending. And there's usually a few more than I can really squeeze in on the show. I'd like to start addressing those questions on the site if I'm not able to get them on the air. Starting here in the next few weeks, I'm going to begin a blog thread simply for answering YOUR questions about Star Wars and Star Wars canon, while still taking a few to the show each week. As I've stated, my main purpose for starting this project was to interact with fellow SW fans. And so I want to follow a similar format as SS.com did. Now, obviously, I don't claim to have any connection to anyone in the know or at Lucasfilm. But it's a format that lends itself very well to what I have in mind for this community of fans. We'll see how it goes and adjust where necessary.
Another feature I'd like to bring to the website, and have already began rolling out on a small scale, is information pages on each and every piece of canon and legends material. Right now, if you go to the canon timeline on this site and navigate to the High Republic Phase 2 section, you'll see some of the titles have been underlined. Those are links to a page dedicated to that piece of canon material. Eventually, I'd like to add a comment thread at the bottom of each of those pages so that people can post their own reviews and thoughts on the material. Again, trying to build community. That feature may be a ways down the pipeline, yet. But I've been working on individual pages every time I work on the site. It's a long road to getting that finished, but once it's caught up, it should be pretty easy to keep up as material is released.
The last idea I'd like to share for today is a newsletter. There's a place on the website's sidebar where readers and listeners can sign up for a newsletter I'm going to begin putting out in September. The letter will include news articles, reviews, book and comic announcements for the month, an answer to a couple of mailbag questions, and some other things I think will be fun. I'm still piecing the idea together and stitching some things to it here and there, but I think it'll be a great addition to the site and supplement the pod.
I want to begin focusing on website content a little more than I have in the past. Because our lives can be hectic and sometimes it can be hard to get an episode of the pod out, I want to be able to at least sit down at night once the kids are asleep and add content to this website. I don't know who knows this, but Usef and I usually record the pod on Thursday evenings. Because of the distance between us (I'm in Kansas, USA and he lives in Cairo, Egypt) there's not only an eight hour time difference, but a cultural one as well. Usef's weekends begin on Thursday, so he's able to stay up much later to wait on me to get off work and be ready to record. That usually gives me Friday and part of Saturday to edit, export, and upload the show before 7pm CST. So we have a very small window for recording there, and if we miss it, a show may not get released on time that week, if at all. We're able to use Friday as a backup recording day if we need to, but it puts a serious strain on me to get the show edited to my standard of polish and out in time. Because of the resolution I record and export in, exporting the show and rendering it can take up to five or six hours. And that's AFTER editing time. This is why I'd like to focus on the website more, even if the pod skips a week.
So those are just a few of the thoughts I've had in the last several days. There are many more, but I don't want to overwhelm myself with things that may not happen for a long time, yet. I'm really excited to be putting out this content again and can't wait to start filling this site with a trove of information and opinion. Let me know what you think of some of these ideas. If you think one may not work or is unnecessary let me know. My feelings will not be hurt. One thing I've always prided myself on is my ability to take creative criticism. I wanna know what you guys are thinking. If this site is going to be built for YOU, I want you to have a site that you enjoy coming to, a pod you like to tune in for, and a community you actually want to be a part of.
Until the next post, I'm signing off. May the Force be with you.
-- Brian
