Tending a Garden

I'm not a gardener - in fact, with few exceptions, I'm known as a "Black Thumb." That is, most of the plants to which I tend, tend to die. However, a website is a lot like a garden I would imagine, in many ways. Luckily, I'm a little better with a pixel park than an actual one.

First, you seed broad areas. In the case of The Weirding, I developed the Entertainment section to cover basically everything, as The Weirding is dedicated to entertainment. I could have forgone this step, but at the time, I also covered writing, Cyberculture, and bachelorhood/single living as part of the site. I've since broken-off several of those areas into sites of their own; they were once different beds of the same garden that grew to become gardens in their own right.

Entertainment now has several "beds" but Gaming is the primary and the largest. Again, I only cover tabletop RPG at the moment, however I play and have played all sorts of games, and may cover any or all of them in the future. This future planning, whether or not it ever comes to fruition, is important and is tantamount to portioning-off sections of the grounds for future use.

Meanwhile, Genre - which began as a navigational device, and was planned that way - became a new garden with several "beds" of its own, all of which I'm very proud of. Not all of which, however, are blooming right at the moment; Fantasy is still lagging behind because I simply haven't had the time to research it the way I did the other Genre Directories. In a certain sense, I can say that the Fantasy Genre Directory simply isn't "in season" right now. And it will be a few months before it comes into season, although it is being worked on even now.

The areas blossom at various times, depending upon traffic, my whim and interest, time availability, and similar factors. Once the seeds have been planted, though it may take a good long while, you can be sure that the areas are being eyeballed if not actively manicured, and will one day see flowers where once there was only a dead title link.

Anyway, I'm sure you get where I was going with this. The analogy struck me as I was writing the Simple And Free Engine skills section and I just didn't want to forget it. I thought it was worth sharing, and I wouldn't be surprised if I'm like the 1000th person to have this same realization. Still, if anyone puts it into finer detail, I'd love to read it.

© C Harris Lynn, 2011