Disney Dispatch Expands for 2011

Bob bares his pixels, foretells site future

- by Bob McLain, January 9, 2011

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Disney Dispatch, R.I.P.

I held it in. And held it in. Then I couldn't hold it in anymore.

Disney Dispatch burst its britches.

What started as a tiny, rather ugly site that gave humorous 'hullabaloo' to other Disney sites grew without much plan or purpose over its few short months of existence until it became a beast, tedious to maintain, difficult to expand, nearly rebellious in its resistance to my guiding hand.

So I put the site down shortly after Christmas. Then I re-built it from the ground up, organizing the code like a good soldier, shunting the content into logical cubbyholes, and sautering the structure into a more pliable form.

Disney Dispatch, Reborn

And now here is Disney Dispatch, back again: but with a few differences.

Apart from the slight face-lift and re-structuring, the big news is the columns, lots of columns, with lots more columns on the way, written by Disney 'super-fans'. In the past, it was just me writing for the site. That got lonely, not to mention dull: in small doses, they say, I'm fine, but Bob 24/7 is not good for the mind or for the digestion.

So I hatched (stole, actually) the brilliant idea of building a community of columnists. With the site in the shop last month I had plenty of time to bamboozle the first handful of folks to come ride the wave and write for Disney Dispatch. Check them out, please!

Those who have faithfully visited the site from the start will see that the content has now coalesced into a few specific types - tidings, features, columns, hullabaloo - each with its own section. In the past, there were no sections, just a huge 'Vault' where I tossed non-current content (nearly 300 pages of it, at last count).

Easy, sure. But definitely user-antagonistic.

Some popular content from the past is returning, too. Remember the interactive word search puzzles and crosswords? Stay tuned!

And the hullabaloo - it's huge! Busy days in the Disney-verse can yield a few dozen links, all of them 'hand-picked'. A wise man wrote to me recently that he uses the hullabaloo as his 'jumping-off point' for finding and reading everything worth being found and read each day about Disney. As Bruce Springsteen said, "that's what it's there for".

Most important, though, is the serious up-tick in the amount of daily content. Gradually, you'll see more and more new stuff, more and more often. You may not like all of it, but you'll definitely love some of it.

Disney Dispatch, Ready for Action

As long as you've dropped by, why not give the site a spin, maybe subscribe to the Digest, definitely leave a comment or two. And please come back. Like, every day? I'll be here. But don't let that stop you...

Don't stop there! More Tidings Await...