At any given time, I’m working on a half-dozen different projects: making comics, of course; designing books; hashing out ideas for prints or posters or shirts or what-have-you; and often, creating logos and layouts for stuff that may not see the light of day for months, if ever. Sometimes I get a little antsy and post previews or sneak-peeks on my Twitter, but that’s very limited in its scope, and I’d like to share more, and in different ways.
However, I am also very sensitive to the fact that you come here to read comics (with the occasional other nonsense), and you may not want half-complete junk-in-progress, or long chunks of prose, or stuff wholly unrelated to Wondermark in your feed reader or email inbox. Personally, I’m in favor of littering this site with everything I do, but this site doesn’t just belong to me anymore; it belongs to you too. So I’d like to ask your opinion — where should I put miscellaneous stuff? We’re talking half-finished comics. We’re talking chapters from novels, potentially. We’re talking sketches and designs and journal-type entries and probably stuff related to Tweet Me Harder and other projects. I figure there are three options:
Keep it at Wondermark. I’m a big believer in not fragmenting one’s online presence more than necessary, and Wondermark is potentially a broad enough umbrella to encompass everything I do. Besides, you could just ignore the stuff you don’t want to read.
Move it offsite. I’d probably start a Tumblr and start posting over there. That has an advantage in that I wouldn’t feel self-conscious about posting non-comics-related stuff there, but I’d hate for that to be so separate from Wondermark that nobody bothered to visit.
Move it offsite, but post a weekly digest on Wondermark. I’d put all the nonsense on the other site, but on Wondermark there’d be one post a week (if that) listing the highlights. So you’d still stay abreast of any cool stuff over there, but if you were only subscribed to Wondermark it wouldn’t be tons of posts in your feed reader or email.
Here’s a poll!
I actually don’t care where you put it, but I would dearly love a t-shirt with “I {scribble} unparseable symbols” on it. PLEEEEZ?
Put it here, but make a separate RSS feed for it.
People who don’t use RSS can suck it.
As long as the miscellany still shows up in your twitter feed moving things to an auxiliary blog sounds good to me. But I prefer to get the choice nuggets as they happen via tweets.
@phil — If I moved the misc. stuff to a different site, it’d probably spit its feed into the @wondermarkfeed Twitter account.
I would rather you cut the cutter from your RSS feed somehow. As awesome as you and your antics are, when I hit up my reader I’m really just interested in the comics. A weekly digest is fine, or separate feeds for posts and comics.
@Grant — A certain number of non-comic posts included in the feed is the price you pay for free comics, with no ads, in the feed. But I am sensitive to overloading it and hopefully, with the feed, there is the option of ignoring headlines that you’re not interested in.
Don’t know if this is the original, but this one made coffee come out my nose when I first saw it — and I don’t even drink coffee! I Unicode: http://www.cafepress.com/nucleartacos/317769
I’d prefer a weekly digest or just a separate site/feed. Sometimes I’m interested in the non-comic posts, but generally I just scroll right past them. If there got to be too many non-comic posts, I’d probably just unsubscribe altogether.
Don’t see the problem with keeping it on site, with a separate RSS feed (as jelly recommends).
New section: Working Wondermark!
I’d like to second that Unparseable Symbols shirt idea.
Keep it on site but put it under a heading of “Stuff I’m Doing” on the right side column and have “last updated” dates next to the links to your various ‘Comics’, ‘TMH’, ‘Sketches’, ‘Prints’, ‘Writing’, etc.
I’d be disappointed in anyone who unsubscribed because there was more — a *little* more — material in the RSS feed. Sheesh. I read everything that comes through as it is; thought the James Bond thing a bit ago was delightful. If you put more things like that up and put them on another site, I’d just subscribe to that site’s feed, too, or get them on Twitter, etc. Some webcomic people’s extras bore/annoy me, but I like yours.
I think WordPress lets you stagger multiple RSS feeds, in which case it might all work out here. But if you’re setting a Tumblelog anyway, you could take the controversial step of making *that* the host of comics and miscellaneous glories. Just set it up to automatically import the webcomic’s RSS feed as ‘text with descriptions’, under ‘services’. Sorted.
I love seeing everything and think you have a good ratio going.
You’re using WordPress, why not just start tagging with categories? The default RSS would still be for all content combined, but you could link to the Just Comics RSS feed for those who don’t appreciate your other works.
I agree with Jelly and JessePB. All content could be tagged, and RSS readers could just grab particular tags. I think I’ve seen some blogging software that does this automatically. the content organization on Engadget or cafefernando comes to mind. For folks navigating traditionally, it might be helpful to have buttons at the top that go to a script that grabs the latest content in a particular tag or set of search parameters. For instance, clicking “comic” would yield the latest comic. The standard back and next buttons could navigate within the given search criteria.
Another vote to keep it all somewhere on the website, but create separate RSS feeds for comics and for other news. If you add that option to the poll then I’ll vote for it.
It’s certainly possible technologically to create separate feeds from this same site, but one stumbling block is that I won’t ever offer a feed of comics and nothing else. A certain minimum amount of bloggy nonsense is the price-of-admission for the feed with comics in it.
So we’d end up with “Feed with comics and some assorted nonsense” and “Feed with that plus EVEN MORE nonsense.” The distinction becomes “Standard/Deluxe”, not “Comics/Blogs”. I think it might confuse a lot of people.
I recommend that you go ahead and put the new content here under the same feed/website. You can then relieve yourself some guilt by creating a comic only feed that people could switch to if they felt overwhelmed.
I think there is absolutely nothing wrong in keeping your other project under the Wondermark umbrella. If they get big enough and take a life of their own, you can still move them elsewhere later.
If you decide to make another site, similar to what “jelly donut” suggested, please make a single “All of David Malki !’s stuff RSS feed.
I read your site for the comics, but I love your other stuff, too.
Adding in other stuff would “weaken” your “brand”. Maybe you don’t give a damn about that; I certainly don’t.
So long as the majority of what you post is supposed to be funny, go for it. Screw ’em. Sensible people won’t care.
I think that everything is good to post here on Wondermark, but that if you publish something on the level of a 20 page or more chapter or such, it should be a short snippet from the beginning here in the feed with the entire chapter available in its own sub-nook of the site. I only mention this because I think there should be a limit as to how much we should have to vertically scroll to see all the goodies.
I totally love your random posts of stuff you’re doing. If they were somewhere other than Wondermark, I’d miss them entirely. I rely on Piperka to let me know the comic has updated, so visiting this site is the only way I get to hear about your other rad projects!
I enjoy everything you do. Keep it all here.
Let me second (er, times twenty) the idea of keeping it on this site, under a different feed. It should be trivial to set up.
Also, a different mailing list, and a different Twitter account, and a different vuvuzela line…
I voted for here on Wondermark, but as long as it’s anywhere with an RSS feed so I won’t get eaten by a piranhamoose while reading, I’m happy.
I want it all.
Hi David,
It depends on the amount of labor you want to put into another site, or part out to the weekly gremlins, if at all.
The third option (of establishing a separate site from WM, and just posting highlights on here) is probably the most comprehensive, but also the most labor intensive of the three choices.
Luckily, you’re powered by pure caffeine, which makes any extra expended energy by you insignificant in the scope of things.
I personally don’t use the RSS feed; prior to Long Beach, I’d check the site whenever, or just come back religiously Tuesdays and Fridays, and once I was added onto your mailing list, I get all the content I can sit around for via the Phonograph update.
I’m with Victoria on this one though; do whatever you feel fit, and I’ll end up accommodating — it’s all free to me anyways.
P.S. I squiggly unparseable symbols too. Make a shirt!
Whichever you decide, don’t do the digest. We’d love it, but it will just take up extra time you could use to create more stuff. Slipstream the workflow.
leave it as it is. when I’m not interested in the non-wondermark related stuff I simply just don’t read it. Its not distracting or imposing, because I have to scroll down to see it anyway.
Everything you are doing is okay by me. (what a nice sentiment)
I don’t bother with an RSS feed, so I don’t see any problems. The comic is always at the top, and if I have time I scroll down to see what else is going on. Like someone else said, if you’re adding a lot more content, it will make sense to shorten up what actually shows on the front page. If we’re hooked, we’ll click a “read more” link. I don’t think you should have to create a separate site just to manage RSS content. It’s your site, with your personal brand of messy genius all over it; I vote let it all hang out here. It’s the difference between jumping at the chance to look through Leonardo Da Vinci’s notebooks, or demanding someone else sort and edit them first so only the stuff you might like is on top. For free, no less. 🙂
Something to think about: duplication. If you put weekly digests, I’m gonna follow both feeds… and see some stuff twice. (Unless you put all “main” content into the “extra” site/feed as well, which seems daft.)
As noted above, WordPress lets you categorise posts and provides category-specific feeds and pages with very little hassle. Sounds like the way to go to me (should be easy to divert your existing feed and frontpage to a new “majorstuff” category, people who want to can follow “minorstuff” as well).
So… you don’t love moose?
I’m sorry I just made the vote count 1338.
But I say start a tumblr or something, because I would totally look at it. I mean, I wouldn’t worry about people not looking at it. By nature the site will probably by pretty random so you can put as much effort into it as you want to, whoever is interested in that kind of thing is going to like it whether it looks organized or not.
…I mean I would love to see a Dinghy Bob website.
wait
what?
Just wanted to second (or nth) the request for the unparseable symbols shirt.
However you do it, I’m looking forward to seeing more.
I was thinking about my other feeds, and how they keep my reader uncluttered. I personall favor the “click here for more” space at the end of the page. It keeps all of your content togather on one site, but keeps feeds tidy. I was thinking you could add a short introduction after a strip, something like, “If you’re still reading this, prepare to keep reading, for I have written random writings to be read.”