Hello everyone, and here’s the latest update.
Thanks to everyone who took the poll on my plans to add some content and community to the Sanctum. Before I get to that however I do want to address the issue of removing the option to decide how many entries to generate. A lot of people wanted it back.
I had waffled on this because removing the option didn’t seem to make much impact and it kept things simple. But in the poll, someone gave a me case of why they needed to modify how many entries they got. That was the real convincer for me. So I’ve mulled over some ways to work that into the current layout, and I think I have an idea, so I’m going to work to put the choose-your-amount option back in, though I think I’ll have it default to maximum.
That kind of feedback is really helpful. I need to know how people use the site. So in the future if you want a change or have a new idea, spell it out in detail, it helps a lot!
So now what the poll told me!
First of all, people are in general behind adding a content/blog/library section. But it’s not everyone’s primary interest – more of a secondary (20% of people were neutral, 8% didn’t like it or really disliked it, 55% were for “pretty good” and 17% were really enthused). That tells me that it’s a decent idea, and one I’ll do for various advantages, but its appeal is mostly secondary to the larger audience. Right now I plan to add one, but I probably won’t trick it out with any bells or whistles right now – though as I’m going to be doing some really weird stuff to make it work, that may be secondary.
Secondly, I got some good suggestions from the polls period – and not just on the number selections. So I think I’ll do some of these now and them! Also frankly it’s kind of fun.
Third, yes, I am going to be making more generators. Now that I got the site rewritten and have my mojo back, I plan to add new ones over time. I’ve got about one to three I want to do now more for fun – and one silly one turned out to be a fascinating exploration of language structure I want to finish.
Fourth, I got other good ideas for the site I may give a shot, mostly usability tweaks. Stay tuned 😉
Finally, for those asking for a mobile version of the site, the site is optimized to work across devices, though a vertical cell phone profile is a bit hinky. I am looking into making it into an app (though the generators based on other media wouldn’t be there), but that’s more later 2014 if I try it – a friend is experimenting with such things and we may team up.
– Steven Savage