Reboot: New Content Outline for Entries

With the previous entry, I’m concluding the URL work for now. Any future sections will follow the same “rules” set out but I’ll worry about that when it’s relevant—here’s hoping I haven’t loaded the gun that shoots Future Carlos in the foot.

Onwards to the Journal entry details page, i.e., the one you’re currently reading and the most used one because it powers every entry.

Its purpose is simple; to tell a story.

To tell my story. Each story, in turn, aims to present an ending where an ending can be found. Or at least something which puts some of my ghosts to rest.

Meta purpose; I never knew much about my dad—read Dialogues with My Dead Dad—so I want Lucien to be able to know me.

This, in turn, means I’m inviting you to read what is an unexpectedly intimate view of what it’s like to be me. You’re the witness to all my follies along the way.

We are, as a species, addicted to story. Even when the body goes to sleep, the mind stays up all night, telling itself stories. Jonathan Gottschall

And with 57.27% of all traffic going to entry pages, it seems justified in placing our attention to it now.

Previous version of a Journal entry: Making Memories with our Marvellous Mom

With these things established, the question then becomes, how do I let these pages tell their stories to the best of their and my abilities?

Here’s what I think.

By getting out of the way.

By letting the words themselves carry as much as possible.

By removing everything else, especially that which is self-serving nonsense.

So, with that as my guiding light, let’s revise the content outline, from this;

• Title
• Metadata (issue number, date, Theme, Topics, time-to-read)
• Description
• Content (the story, occasional baked-in Call to Action)
• Footnotes
• Call to Action
• Similar entries
• Explore More (All, Prev, And Next)

to this;

• Description
• Title
• Metadata (word count, Theme, date)
• Content (the story, remove baked-in Call to Actions)
• Footnotes
• Metadata (word count, Theme, Topics)

I’ve re-ordered the Description and the Title because I think it reads better to introduce what it’s about first and then say the title, mainly because most titles are more creative than the one you’re reading right now.

With this new content outline and the legacy of moving from Jekyll to Laravel I have a few structural housekeeping tasks to do;

• Replace typewriter puncuations with smart punctuations¹
• Add permalinks for headings, and section mark (§)¹
• Add footnotes¹
• Replace {%highlight %} with backticks
• Replace class="js-lazy-load" data-original="" with src="" loading="lazy"
• Remove noscript fallback for images
• update Disclaimer content for consistency and correct content warnings (15 entries)
• Remove baked-in Call to Actions
• Update Descriptions to always start with, ‘In which…’ (some apparenly don’t)
• Naturally sort Topics when they appear at the end of an entry (not sure how)

Reading this entry, I’ve fixed some of these already and will finish of the rest before moving on.