SouthernGospelBlog.com

Every now and then, I try to do a “reality check,” if you will, to see if what I have been doing with the blog is what you want me to do. Because, after all, I’d rather provide the content you want to read than continue my own merry way regardless of what you want.

• Interviews. Do you prefer one or two per month? I know past responses have generally been “the more, the merrier.” Because of time involved, I can’t pull off more than two per month, but I can aim for that goal (especially in post-NQC season, when I have a couple in the queue).
• CD Reviews. Once or twice per week? My spare hours have been tied up getting the underlying formatting done for the reviews of projects I picked up at NQC, so I have been several weeks running with few reviews. Once I have all the blog formatting set up (and revised in compliance with the FTC’s new arbitrary review guidelines that apply only to bloggers and not to more established forms of media), there will be quite a few in the queue. And I don’t want to overwhelm you with more than you want.
• Contests. I loved the first two. Any ideas for a third?

SouthernGospelBlog.com hit 10,000 posts in style today, with the contest spurring over fifty comments just today. And we have winners!

• Grand Prize (#10,000): Tyler for this comment
• Gold Prize (#10,0001): J.C. Johnson for this comment
• Silver Prize (#10,005): Andrew Fountain for this comment
• Bronze Prize (#10,010): J.C. Johnson for this comment

Winners: Email your mailing addresses to us. And congratulations!

And to everyone who has commented over the last three years: Thank you for making this such an interesting and lively place to discuss what’s going on in the best genre out there!

We’re in the final stretch of the 10,000th Comment Contest. Less than 25 to go!

This site is nearing 10,000 comments. More precisely, we’re a little over 100 comments away. I mention this primarily because I had so much fun with the 3rd Anniversary concert that I thought this would be a fun excuse for another contest.

• Grand Prize (10,000th comment):
  • Liberty Quartet’s brand new CD The Journey—which hasn’t yet been reviewed here yet (but I can already tell you it will get 5 stars. It’s that good.)
  • Voices Won’s brand new CD Something For Everyone
  • Dixie Melody Boys Vintage (cassette – with Harold Reed, Devin McGlamery, Derrick Selph, and Ed O’Neal)
  • The Wilburns’ Where He Leads (cassette – with Loren Harris on lead)
  • The Greenes And The Walls Came Down Live with Orchestra (cassette)
• Gold Prize (10,001th comment)
  • Dixie Melody Boys Heading Home (cassette)
  • Paid in Full In All I Do (cassette)
• Silver Prize (10,005th comment)
  • The Wilburns Blessings (cassette)
• Bronze Prize (10,010th comment)
  • N’Harmony Keep On (cassette)

All titles are either sealed or played once before I realized they were duplicates.

A couple of rules:

1. If one of the prize-winning comments is made by one of the staff of this site (that’s a fancy term for Sony and me, who are volunteers!) or members of their immediate families, the next qualifying post will be the winner of that prize.
2. Inconsequential posts such as “Lol,” “Yeah,” “I agree,” or “great post” will not be counted. The next qualifying post will win. (Edit: If you post a number of identical posts on different threads, they will be counted as inconsequential posts!)

And if you’d like post suggestions, here are a couple of posts that didn’t get the attention they deserved:

• Publicity in a Post-Radio Genre
• A Conversation with Kim Collingsworth
• An Interview with David Ragan
• An Interview with Randy Byrd
• Blackwood Brothers Sign with Daywind
• Singer/Songwriters in Southern Gospel
• An Interview with Libbi Perry Stuffle
• I Buy a Dixie Echoes CD

And here are a few more that did spark interesting discussions:

• Re-branding Southern Gospel Music?
• What Should We Call Regional Groups?
• DVD Review: Nashville Homecoming

Are the feature interviews I do for this site too long?

I realize that what comes out to eight or nine pages when formatted may be more than most people want to read on a regular basis.

And if they are too long, should I

• (a) Cut out some information and only stick to the highlights, or
• (b) serialize the interview, posting a segment once a week for four weeks?

UPDATE (9:37 PM): Thanks for your feedback. All at once it is! Every now and then, I try to give myself a reality check. Am I doing things the way I am because that’s the way I like it? because that’s the way I’ve always done it? or because that’s the way you like it? It’s nice when all three coincide!

The winner of this site’s Third Birthday Contest is in: It’s my fellow blogger Diana B., whose guess of 9,876 was 190 away from the correct total: This site has had 9,686 comments since its launch three years ago.

Rounding out the top 5:

• 2nd place: M Smith (286 away)
• 3rd place: Adam Wallace (314 away)
• 4th place: Nate Stainbrook (514 away)
• 5th place: Jeff Foster (814 away)

There have been 20,054 spam comments, too, which is why I made the contest specific to non-spam comments.

We’re getting closer to the 10,00o comment mark. Perhaps we should do another contest for that!

Just in case you missed it in the midst of the NQC coverage, SouthernGospelBlog.com has a Third Birthday contest going; that contest ends at 8 P.M. this evening. Head over and enter!

On this day three years ago, September 18, 2006, the first post went up on SouthernGospelBlog.com. And today, as a thank you, I am announcing a special third birthday contest.

How many comments do you think this blog has had in its first three years? (Precisely: How many approved—i.e., non-spam—comments have appeared as of the end of the contest, 8 PM EST on Monday, 9/21/09?)

The person with the closest guess will win a copy of the Amazing Grace DVD (the movie about William Wilberforce). Post your guess in the comments. Be sure you leave a valid email address in the email box so I can follow up with the winner.

It’s appropriate that this contest focuses on the comments, because it has been the support and encouragement you’ve given me there that has spurred me on to sustain the hectic pace of daily posts this long. Thank you!

Nearly two years ago, when I installed this site’s current theme (graphic design), I had make extensive customizations. These included translated the entire theme from Dutch and adding all kinds of plug-ins.

One minor irritant in the theme was that it forced all sidebar items to be in lowercase. I decided to change that some time, but kept putting it off. It helps that I’m now more familiar with customizing Wordpress themes, but when I finally did get around to it today, it took about three minutes.

For several reasons, I’ve recently been contemplating switching to a new graphic design for this website. I wanted to move to a three-column format, wanted a way to highlight the featured article, and, most importantly, wanted it to be immediately obvious which contributor had written each post. So I spent the weekend re-writing this Wordpress theme and thought I would give it a try. A few specific comments:

• No, I’m not going anonymous; I simply moved my picture to the “about” page.
• You can find a link to the featured article in the upper right-hand corner.
• This site appears to display properly in current versions of Internet Explorer and Mozilla Firefox. If you use another browser and notice that it does not display properly, let me know.
• This theme was originally written in Dutch. I don’t know Dutch and translated each line of code word by word. If you notice a line that doesn’t make sense, or a Dutch line I missed, let me know and I’ll fix it.

Before rendering a final verdict on whether this design is a keeper, I’ll wait to see your comments, both as to whether you like it and as to compatibility.