If your writing kung-fu is strong (and, honestly, it doesn’t have to be that strong—after all, I got in) you may be interested in 9rules Round 3.
The submission period is like Le Mans: 24 hours long (in almost all other respects, I admit, the two are completely dissimilar). Keep an eye on the 9rules weblog for the announcement.
I’ve just noticed that there is, in fact, an actual date for when this is going to happen: November 14th, from 12:00 EST. (That’s five in the morning for those of you on real time, or for our friends in the armed forces and other strange places, 0500 Zulu.)
2 comments
November 7th, 2005 at 8:42 pm
Ryan
Benedict:
I for one love the site design. It’s refreshing and innovative without being over powering (as some “designer” sites can be).
Keep on keeping on, my good man.
Ryan
November 7th, 2005 at 9:59 pm
ionfish
Hah, thanks Ryan. I wasn’t fishing for compliments—although I’ll take them where I find them, with the gratitude they deserve—but a man has to fight his corner, don’t you think?
That said, there’s a real discussion to be had around some of the points you made, and I may well take the ball you threw and run with it.
On the one hand, I think that an original, bespoke design is the best thing that could happen to any site with good content: it can be tailored to fit the timbre and the needs of that site far better than anything off-the-shelf.
On the other, the idea that people without the means (whether that’s the time and expertise to make it themselves, a friend who’s prepared to do pro bono work, or money to pay a professional) to take that route can simply download a theme that approximates their needs—something that’s “good enough”—and start producing content is, to me at least, quite compelling. A good friend of mine is using the standard Kubrick template, with a new header image, and while it doesn’t do his content justice, it’s good enough, and it lets him get on with the business of writing.