As you can see some changes are starting to happen here. Hopefully, I am finally getting around to finally revising this site and getting it up and running soon.

I have some ideas that I hope will improve the site and I hope will automate the site so people can submit their sites and they will be posted with relative ease. This will make it a lot easier for me to administer the site.

I have been unable to respond to all emails but I have saved them and will respond one the site is up and going again.

Thanks for anyone who still cares and has patience with me.

Lame April Fools’ jokes notwithstanding, this site is not dead. Not completely at least.

The site hasn’t been updated for quite awhile and I apologize. Maintaining the site simply got to be overwhelming. First, the process of posting submissions has been cumbersome and I got way behind. Second, spam submissions just made that worse. Third, the site was getting unwieldy with too many blogs. Just a big long list of blogs seemed to be too much clutter and not very useful.

So I am in the process of revamping the site. No promises of when things will be back and running again. To counter some of the problems, I aim to have a process where the submitter can directly add their site to the directory, only requiring my approval. That should saving me some work.

The biggest change I am mulling is to exclude personal and family blogs. That is a tough decision, but I my thoughts are that there is little use in publicly listing a blog whose interest is mainly for family and friends. And listing all those blogs make the list too long which limits the site’s usefulness.

All submissions that have not been posted have been saved and I will notify the submitters when the site is ready for business again. Until then, no new submissions will be accepted.

In the meantime, any suggestions or comments are appreciated.

Along with the relaunch of A Soft Answer I have also relaunched the LDS and Mormon Blogs list. Now that both are running, I will start catching up on the huge backlog of blogs that I have accumulated since the hiatus began. I am sorry for the long absence that kept growing longer and longer, unintentionally. My many apologies to those who have submitted their blogs that were not posted until now.

There are still kinks to work out at both blogs but things are at least presentable. In addition to adding blogs and weeding out those who have earned “Til We Meet Again” Status (like these blogs were for a while) I need to add two new categories for Podcasts and Wikis. But I am excited that I figured out enough about RSS feeds to splice a combination feed for both A Soft Answer posts and new blog additions which can be found here. Regular blog posts will direct you to my blog post as always but feed items for new blog listings will link you directly to the new blog instead of to my blog first. I am pleased.

Any suggestions or comments are always appreciated.

Technorati Tags: bloggernacle

Danithew (author of the best LDS blog that no longer is) was good enough to email me and let me know that Wednesday was the first anniversary of our collective moniker, “The Bloggernacle.” I have to confess it took me a while to warm up to the name but it has stuck and rightfully so. So happy birthday Bloggernacle! Danithew also suggests that March 23 forever be enshrined as Bloggernacle Day. We’ll have to see who remembers next year. . .

But this gives me the occasion to unveil the rudimentary beginnings of a new and improved Bloggernacle index.

The biggest improvement I hope to bring is a detailed categorized index of all the LDS blogs and Mormon bloggers based on content. This is intended to make the index more useful, accessible, and navigable. I have made a very preliminary attempt to make some subcategories (not even that yet – see UPDATE below) and I was not going to announce the new index until it was further developed, but I realize that I could use some help.

I would especially appreciate any help on:

• what categories should be used
• whether blogs should be listed under multiple categories, or if that would be too confusing.
• most importantly, how you would like your blog to be categorized.
• any other tips or suggestions would be most welcome.
• and, any tips on how to pass the Patent Bar :-)

(Note, I created the category “Bloggernacle Choirs” to represent the must read group blogs (regardless of whatever large retail chains they may represent) that cover wide-ranging subjects and defy categorization. Other single-author blogs may similarly defy categorization – should a blog fall under multiple categories or should an all-purpose category be used?)

It would be especially helpful to link to or pass this post on to others so I can at least get author’s opinions on how to categorize their own blogs. Ultimately, I hope to get some consensus on how the index should look.

Thank you to all who have helped me make the index so far, for all the updates, submissions, and messages of support.

UPDATE: I had hoped to have had a preliminary index listing on the main page (right now there is a cursory listing in the right column). However, I am having difficulty figuring out how to do it since Movable Type does not support “true” subcategories. It is getting to crunch time for the Patent Bar so I don’t know how much I will be able to do for the next three weeks. But i would appreciate any input on how to categorize the blogs.

So without further ado . . .