Offbeat Bride
The world's biggest weird wedding blog
Cheerleading and wedding inspiration for those who dare to walk off the beaten aisle — or skip the aisle all together! 2.6 million pageviews a month. Launched January 2007.
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Most Recent Posts
 Vintage Polaroid by Cory Verellen of raremediumseattle.com So, today's my 37th birthday. I celebrated last night by doing a reading at the Salon of Shame from my 1993 diary, about losing my virginity in a turqouise lace bra & panty set from Fredrick's of Hollywood. (Keepin' it classy!) As I was flipping through the diary, I stumbled across this little cartoon that I drew almost 20 years ago: Continue reading » 
This morning I was talking to my beloved J.M. Dodd (the Empire's long-suffering web developer) about our plans for the LIKE/FLAG plugin she's going to be developing for the Empire. And then, what do you know? Half an hour after having this discussion, the plugin we use for the "THIS!" functionality on comments completely exploded. It's broken before, but none of the prior fixes worked this time. (One more reason we've never liked this plugin: it's prone to breaking for inexplicable reasons.) This is all to say: yes, the THIS! function is broken. And yes, we're working on a fix, and it's going to be 10 kinds of awesome. It'll be coming in early June. 
Every month or so, I go into my Google Analytics and do some serious digging around to see how things are looking with the sites. The big reveal today is that Offbeat Bride is KICKING ASS, with visits up 45%, visitors up 85%, and pageviews up 22%. All awesome (and all pointing to an impending increase in our ad rates). But the most insane number to me is looking at referrals, ie websites that direct traffic to the site… 
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 Community Management
Ignore, delete, try not to engage: one more perspective on dealing with web hate"There’s this interesting culture of hate on the internet. I don’t know if it’s just that people are angry and feel a relief in releasing their anger online in the form of anonymous online “hate justice” but it’s rough on the receiving end of it. I won’t lie. People seem to think that ugly opinions are the same as constructive criticism and it’s not but there’s no arguing with them about it. They’re not looking for reasons to like you, they’re looking for more reasons to hate you." 
Last weekend I invited everyone who does ongoing work for the Empire to fly to Seattle for a staff retreat. A third of my folks couldn't make it (including one who, oh, JUST GAVE BIRTH TO TWINS) but seven of us gathered for a long weekend at my mother's bed & breakfast/eco-retreat space, Sacred Groves. While a bunch of these same staff folk flew into town last fall for our Geek Girl Con panel, hosting people for a "just ass" staff retreat was a whole different ball-game. Here's what I learned… 
My colleague Meg over at A Practical Wedding posted recently about dealing with "the period of quiet after the (lovely) storm." As entrepreneurs and small business folk, we work ourselves into a lather reaching big goals we set out for ourselves and … then what? Rather than hijack Meg's comments with a longwinded response, I thought I'd collect my thoughts here. And so I present to you: Shit I do when I'm recovering from a major project! 
When I come out of my fog long enough to realize that it's Friday, I remember that the Offbeat Empire meets on Google+ to discuss what's happening on every site. We suggest potential cross-posts to each other, talk about mechanics of the sites, and Ariel updates us on Empire-as-a-whole business. At the end of the meeting, Ariel asks us to share anything we're especially proud of from the previous week. We then snap over the video in long-distance congratulations in lieu of high-fives. 
How it looks when the Offbeat Empire's editors are in one room, editing. More stories and pictures from the staff retreat coming later. (Or you can follow #offbeatretreat on Twitter.) |
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