So, I’ve moved to a new server on a new host and I now manage all my own domain names and email addresses. This makes things much more agile but also makes indulging in whims and pet projects all the easier. This, depending on how one looks at it, could be a good thing or it could very much be bad; either way, more on this at some later date and probably not until I’ve convinced at least one other person to jump aboard.

Notwithstanding, something I don’t think I did clearly before the move was to set out my terms of reference, the Normalfish.net Manifesto, if you will. Whilst I hadn’t set it out in public, I also hadn’t planned it in private and as a result the site felt rather modular and disjointed. Whilst I used design features to pull the separate parts together, and it probably worked as well as needed, I still felt dissatisfied with the site’s coherence.

If I were to make this plan only for me, then I’d draw a diagram. It would be a pretty spidergram using a different colour for each of the primary branches – or the main legs from the spider’s body. Said body would be labelled “Normalfish.net”. The primary branches of the diagram would read “Target audience”, “Content”, “design”. I think it’s reasonable to assume that you are the target audience and that you don’t want me to dissect the site’s design in front of you, anymore than you’d want a proctologist to talk too much about they intricacies of their craft. So here is my content manifesto.

Static Content

I plan to make more use of static content on this site to avoid it becoming – or rather remaining – purely a blogging site. Mostly I intend this to be useful to those starting out playing Magic: the Gathering. Phase 1 for static content will be describing the main card types (lands, creatures,planeswalkers, artifacts, enchantments, sorceries and instants) and the formats I want to discuss in the dynamic content (Standard, Modern, Legacy and to a lesser extent – for reasons I’ll touch on at some other time – Draft). Beyond this I could describe archetypes and strategies but for now, I’ll wait until I have those 10 pages written and signed-off.

Dynamic Content

I will keep the “personal adventures” theme from the last incarnation of this site. I aim to discuss the decks I play with, how they evolve, what I learn from playing them, as well as “tournament reports” from WNM and FNM events.

I will also continue my favourite semi-regular columns: Card of the Week, Announcements and Recommended Reading. Before the move these had their own mini-banners. I like the pretentiousness of this and will be extending these for all my dynamic content, such that all of it will be in one column or another. I will keep using the post categorisation and taxonomic tools available in the CMS however, as already I can see that my content could easily be published under more than one column. So why bother with column at all? Because I want to control content and its publication in a linear, coherent way.

The aim is to publish (at least) one article in each column each week, but I am aware that that’s a rather tall order. Card of the Week will be weekly, Announcements will be made when the Mothership has interesting news that I want to share. Recommended Reading is an oddity. Whilst it could quite easily be a daily column, highlighting one or more articles that are worth exploring every day, it could just as well be a weekly list of such articles. In the first instance I’ll aim for the latter and see how that goes.

Collaboration

I’ve always been interested in collaborating with others, particularly other players from my local group. This is something I plan to push for with more vigour. I’d like deck techs for interesting builds from the local meta. I’d like the best players to provide insights into the game. I’d like to publish winning deck lists from local tournaments – for this I’d need the support of local TOs.

So…

So there you have it. That’s the plan. I’ll get on it.