Finding the right "appliance"

It's been quite a while since I played with the idea of keeping a go-go boots blog and an even longer time since go-go-boots.com had a home on a full-blown custom website.  In the interim I found that I enjoyed posting updates on a Facebook page whenever I would run across something noteworthy to the world of "women's boots and the women who wear them". I especially liked that Facebook had an easy way of managing feedback and allow others to comment and make sidebar posts.  Unfortunately the layout of the Facebook post as a "layout appliance" just isn't flexible enough for my tastes.  I've often wanted to post multiple photos and Facebook posts just don't lend themselves well to that.  When previewing a full length photo of a woman in amazing boots, Facebook is just as likely as not to cut the photo off at the knees, which sort of defeats the purpose.  I thought I had an image appliance solution with Pinterest where you can store multiple photos on a board, set a primary preview image and then link to the board from Facebook with an explanation, but I realized that Pinterest would try to cajole visitors into signing up.  I began to think that a blog would be needed to get the right amount of flexibility without the hassle of running a website.  I'll be able to create posts with multiple photos, change the layout to my heart's content and then link to posts from the Facebook page.

A note about the go-go-boots Yahoo group: Traffic has certainly died down over the past few years, but thank heavens it hasn't degenerated into an utter spam-fest like many Yahoo groups have.  Not to toot my own horn, but I feel like my own lack of participation and oversight has caused interest to wane.  I've done just enough moderation to keep the spam at bay.  I still like topical email lists, so I'd like to see this trend reversed, and now that I have a personal iPhone it is much more convenient to read and respond to personal email.  In fact I now feel genuinely capable of effectively moderating the list if folks still want to use email, but if technology trends overrule me and most posters end up moving to Facebook or some better social media format is suggested/vetted, I will be happy to roll with that.

I hope this blog can be a place where I can effectively and aesthetically manage go-go boot content that I feel compelled to share and then post links to it from Facebook and the Yahoo group.  People who want to share their own content can still use the Yahoo group or the Facebook group and of course, if I love it as much as you do, I reserve the right to steal it for the blog!