I’ve been making gradual updates to blog functionality and thought I ought to let you know what changes have been implemented, and ask your thoughts on whether this improves things, or if you have other suggestions.

WordPress Upgrade

Plutonica.net runs on WordPress, and on June 17th we upgraded to WordPress 3.0 “Thelonious” along with a significant portion of the blogging world.

Only a few of you may notice any differences, those who log in to comment (which is not a requirement for this site), and those who log in for guest posts. On the front end everything looks pretty much the same, and behind the scenes the changes are minimal, though there are over 1200 bug fixes and other enhancements that took place between this and the last WordPress release.

Indeed, with the insane amount of new customization options now available a new theme upgrade may be in order in the coming months.

Geeze, it doesn’t seem like that long since our last redesign, but I guess it was almost a year ago.

New Features

Liking comments

This feature was actually implemented a few months ago after a particular discussion took place where I felt that rather than repeating myself or others in the thread, it would be helpful if readers and commentators could “like” a particular response.

So, now you can.

There is no “dislike” button because I feel, as a rule, you guys are pretty civil about how you interact with each other and there’s simply no need for it. If you dislike what someone’s saying, a reasoned response is almost always more helpful than noting a negative sentiment. Continue reading »

Popularity: 6%

Plutonica.net has always had a special focus on books and occult publishing in amidst the links and commentary on occulture.

We’ve now taken that a step further by creating a dedicated space to tackle one book a month with the Plutonica.net Esoteric Book Club.

What’s the deal?

I’ve created an About page for the book club with more info on the history of the idea and how it came about, but here’s the gist:

The Plutonica.net Esoteric Book Club isn’t just another general occult forum. It’s a space dedicated to esoteric and occult literature and what people do with it.

It tackles the same themes our blog is focused on: philosophy, spirituality, magick and occulture, with a little biography and occult lit tossed in for good measure.

The real focus will be on engaging in what we’re reading, as we’re reading it. Sharing thoughts, asking questions, hopefully going deeper into material together than we might have the opportunity otherwise, alone.

How it will work

We’ll gather suggestions Continue reading »

Popularity: 5%

Plutonica.net was first launched on October 31st, 2007, today marks its second birthday.

It’s gone through periods of hyperactivity and lagging for months without posts, but I think we’ve entered into a decent  rhythm now. I’ve found it to be quite a learning curve, despite beginning my first blog in 2001, but it’s also been a lot of fun.

Write for us!

We’ve had guest bloggers in the past, but I’d like to open the blog up to anyone who’s interested in writing for it, be it a guest post or a regular column.

We’ve submission guidelines posted, but if you’ve been reading for a few weeks or – how exciting – since the beginning, then you probably have a good idea of the sorts of things we write about here. Continue reading »

Popularity: unranked

Hello all!

I’ve been rather busy the past few weeks with a complete redesign of Plutonica.net.

For a start, we’ve significantly pared down our category listing. While remaining true to the original focus of this blog, the tagline has been tweaked to:

Plutonica.net: An esoteric blog exploring
occulture, philosophy, spirituality and magick.

As you may have inferred from the image above, our banner has also changed. To the right of it, we’ve added a nifty feature that displays randomized quotes taken from various sources relating to philosophy, spirituality, magick and occulture.

We’ve changed the structure of the website. Both sidebars have moved over to the right, and we’ve removed a lot of features that weren’t being used, such as the calendar and tag cloud.

Posts are now organized into four main categories, the latest article of which will always appear at the top of the page for quick linking:

• Essays & Opinion which features longer articles about current trends in occulture and essays on techniques;
• News & Shiny highlights people, podcasts, books, art, websites – anything that may be of interest to occultniks
• our Reviews section still covers book reviews, oracle reviews, film reviews and media reviews of all types;
• and last but not least, Saturday Signal is will continue to be our occasional links round-up of the new and nifty that didn’t quite warrant a dedicated post of its own.

As a part of the redesign and rethinking the blog, I’d like to Continue reading »

Popularity: 6%

Saturday Signal: sifting the signal from the noise of the Internet’s occultural cacophony.

Wishing all of you a very merry long weekend! 

I’ve already gone sailing. Continue reading »

Popularity: 5%