1. Have people give you money to go on a trip, then create a blog to keep them updated on your journey. This ensures that you give yourself a solid readership base – something you’ll most certainly need once you move beyond, well, creating the blog.
2. Set the bar high with stories about riveting, real-life events. To adequately check this point off the list, it demands that you live in such a way that puts you in riveting situations… like getting a haircut in China. A plus to telling such inspiring stories is that if you aren’t the world’s best writer, the tales’ content will pick up your slack.
3. Return home from said trip, and use your content to demand people keep reading. There are no shortage of ways to do this. Topless self-portraits can prove productive, as can posting topless photos of your neighbors. Making fun of yourself works pretty well, too.
4. Shamelessly plug your blog until everybody knows about it. This is particularly effective for the first several months of self-promotion (until people realize that your content isn’t good). Social media outlets like Twitter and Facebook allow you to drive traffic to your blog, promising your friends something spectacular if only they’ll click the link.
5. Call your blog “award-winning.” You can only do this if people continue to visit it 6 months or so into your promoting it. It doesn’t have to have actually won any awards, but the fact that people spend their valuable time on your site is an award in itself.
6. Write about things you’re an authority on. Maybe you’ve had Lasik surgery, maybe you’re really savvy in the way of things like facebook or the Internet in general. Write about it, and do so in a way that people leave thinking, “Man, I didn’t know [name] was such an authority on [whatever]!”
7. Blog about how good your blog is. This must be done with great care. It is important that you not come across as full of yourself, but communicate to your readers that they are smarter and better looking than their friends because they read your blog. This is not a step for a beginner.
8. On your 500th post, tell people your secrets. Some of the best blogs I follow (incidentally they are the same blogs that most coolest and sexiest friends follow) have done this. It shows your selflessness, and people will leave lots of congratulatory and thank-filled comments, which will in turn validate you, the blogger.

There you have it friends. I admit, there might be other approaches to attaining award-winning-dom with your blog… but probably not. Thanks again for all your time. Five hundred posts take a long time to read, and I don’t take that lightly. I’m proud of you all, and I appreciate your being proud of me.

Depending on when you jumped on the proverbial party bus that is online diary for the masses, it may have looked a number of different ways. Some of you, upon your first visit to these parts, were greeted by a brick wall with photoshopped spray paint welcoming you to the blog that none of your friends were talking about. Others of you found a blue floraly mix, others still a earth-toned canvassy combo, and some of you (precious souls that you are) have been around from the beginning, with the plain ol’ tan-and-brown Reese’s peanut butter theme.

As you’ve no doubt noticed by now, the layout in which you’re currently reading these words is different from any you’ve seen before (unless you’re still in your reader, in which case I need you to man up and click through). What you’re looking at is the new, simplified odfm. It includes such breathtaking features as:

• No support for Internet Explorer 6 – this may seem like a lack of a feature, but in my endless effort to get people to upgrade to more appropriate and capable web browsers, I saw it fit to cease support for the lousiest browser of them all. If you’re using IE6, you’ll still see all the content, only without the styling. Not sure if you’re using IE6 or not? Do you see a red banner at the top of the page poking fun at you? Well do yourself a favor and upgrade. Get Firefox, Chrome, Opera, or Safari. Please.
• Single column design; New “archives” page – for the sake of simplicity, I’ve tossed the sidebar which housed my links and archives, and in its place created an archives page. And until I get it looking how I want it to (which may be never) I’ll not tell you about the links page…
• Revised “about” page – It stood to reason that a new, elegant website deserved a new, elegant about page. So I gave it one.
• Classy splash page – Honestly, it might even be sexy. I was just afraid to make the word “sexy” be bold on my classy site.

And as if those weren’t enough, there are a few things that are still to come, including a bad-to-the-bone header image, and an even badder-to-the-bone photography portfolio.

So there you have it. The new odfm. I’m willing to bet your friends will continue to not talk about it, but I didn’t do this for your friends. I did it for you. I hope you enjoy it. Feel free to share your thoughts in the comments section. The new layout has one of those too, after all.

There have also been a couple countless times that I’ve taken the liberty of plugging odfm on social networking sites such as facebook dot com or twitter. These generally prove to have a fruitful conversion in the short term, which is very satisfying for a nerd of my caliper.

In addition to these tried and true referral methods, there are the few precious moments each week in which unfortunate people who, while looking for something far more worth-while on Google, end up here. The following is a list of Google searches these web surfers have executed which have terminated at odfm, complete with parenthetical commentary:

• “anti-sideburns” (I’m most certainly not.)
• “big red beard” (This, I’m sure, was a cute female customer looking for the boy who sold her those boots earlier that day.)
• “is it creepy to add people you just met on facebook” (Great question. I hope you read all my facebook etiquette posts. And yes, yes it is.)
• “poop in pants windle” (I sincerely hope my blog won the favor of this genius browser.)
• “how to attain facial hair” (Grace buddy… you don’t attain it… it’s a gift.)
• “online diary for girls.com” (Yes, this is a site for girls.)
• “pastor derrick oliver, book” (I wouldn’t pay much for that.)

So while the sites people visit immediately before entering odfm have changed slightly over the past year, one thing remains true as a turtle: regardless of how you end up here, I am beyond happy to have you. It is you — from the first-time visitor to the faithful subscriber — who keep odfm at the forefront of blogs that nobody is talking about.

While I don’t remember ever saying that particular sentence about any particular girl, I didn’t doubt that I had, in fact, said it. It is the kind of thing I’d say, after all. Particularly in high school, the season in which Stroupid and I spent the most time together.

And in the spirit of celebrating girls who are funny, I’d like to share a list* of girls whose blogs have, on multiple occasions, made me laugh audibly in otherwise quiet coffee shops.

• Catlin Whatley – I met Catlin the summer after I graduated from A&M when we both worked for Mission Brenham. She generally blogs about the subtle hilarities of her daily life, which currently takes place here in Dallas. (I’ve never seen her here.)
• Heather Hendrick – I met Heather in October of my freshman year at A&M, and the impact that she and her husband made on me in the years that followed is among the deepest anybody has ever made. Her blog, at times, is hysterical. Other times it’s just about coupons.
• Lauren Cowling – I’ve never met Lauren. She doesn’t know I exist, and unless she somehow sees that derrickoliver.com has sent her some hits, she’ll neither know that I exist, nor that I read her blog. But this girl is a riot… or at least she puts that facade up in her blogging about everything from politics to The Hills.
• Linley Jones – I met Linley through the fine folks at The Artist Formerly Known as iWitness, and she is without a doubt one of the funniest girls I’ve ever known. If you read her more recent blog posts, you’ll just think she’s the most serious girl you’ve ever known. But look around. There’s bound to be funny stuff in there.
• Sarah Vierling – I met Sarah sometime in college, and by the Grace of God I was able to spend an inordinate amount of time with her and her roommates throughout the entirety of my senior year. She hasn’t written anything in a long time, but equipped with a new teaching job I’m hoping that the stories start flowing like mad.

So masses, if you’re able to pull yourself away from the majesty that is odfm, go take a look around these ladies’ blogs.

And ladies, thanks for being funny, and sharing your funniness with friends and creepers alike on the Interwebs.

Here’s to you.

*This list is in alphabetical order by first name, and is in no way an exhaustive list of every funny girl who has a blog. Just the ones I subscribe to. And if you’re a girl who has a blog that you think is funny, and I didn’t mention it here, then either I don’t subscribe to it, or it’s just not funny.

Lately, since I don’t have Internet access at Sandia, I open up my Google Reader at local coffee shops to find an unattainable number of new items that need reading. In order to figuratively thumb through these blog entries in a timely fashion, it is necessary that I set up a sort of filtering system of which blogs I’ll read and which ones I’ll skip altogether. And so, I give you…

A list of blog posts that I’ll most certainly not read:

- Posts containing photos of your pregnant stomach – I just don’t care. I probably like you a whole stinkin’ lot, but I do not care to see how you’ve grown in the past 9 months. Not saying it isn’t a beautiful thing, just a thing I don’t care to see.

- Posts that require more than a few scrolls down to find the entry’s end – There are some exceptions to this rule, but on the whole, unless you’ve proven that your lengthy posts are actually worth my time, I’m not reading them.

- Posts typed by people whose keyboard doesn’t have an “Enter” key – If your entry is a single paragraph of 100+ lines, then you’re not doing yourself or anyone else any favors. It could be some of the most worth-while content that the Web’s ever seen, but when presented in that format, nobody’s (at least I’m not) going to see it.

- Posts about how your baby is one month older than he/she was last month – This has its exceptions too, but again the rule of thumb is that while I love you and your kid, I’m not surprised that he/she has in fact aged over the past month. I don’t necessarily care to read about it. Unless, that is, you are a professional photographer and your posts of this nature are accompanied by sick photos of said child.

- Posts by authors who are historically neither funny nor entertaining with their content – It is people like this who took my subscription count down from 150 to 130. My conscious won’t allow to unsubscribe from a handful more, but just because I’m subscribed doesn’t mean I’m reading…

- Post number x of 7 unread from a single blog since I last checked my Reader – If you update your blog three times a day, I’m out. I even unsubscribed from my keyboard playing girlfriend‘s blog for this very reason.

Now having said that, I’m fully aware that most of what I put out here on odfm is hardly worth reading. In fact, of the 440+ posts that odfm boasts, I’d guess only 10 of them are worth they time they take to read. Say all that to say, sincerest thanks to you for reading my blog, since chances are I’m not actually reading yours.

Being that I’m so shamelessly obsessed with my own blog, it should come as little surprise to anybody that I’m also on the up and up when it comes to how many (or few) people are visiting odfm, and where those people are coming from.

Most of the folks who come to these parts get here from their rss feeds or from links in other blogs’ sidebars, like my beloved Hendrick’s blog pictured above (a blog whose referrals account for an average of 10% of my total hits, thank you very much).

From time to time, people will see a comment I made on some other blog, a comment that most certainly left them in stitches, and they then click that weird two-letter name to experience the wonder that is odfm. One particular example of this happened just this week when I botched up a comment on Matt Chandler’s blog in which I used the brilliant subject-verb pairing, “I’m know…”. No doubt the people who clicked my name on that comment didn’t expect to find much on the other side. I’m confident I met those low expectations.

Then there’s folks who ask Google about things and, like it or not, end up here. Bless their hearts. Some of my favorite keywords that have brought people my way recently include:

• “songwriting club” (naturally)
• “derrickoliver.com/blog” (why’d you Google it?)
• “funny online diary” (Google, really, I’m honored)
• “living hope college station cult” (I can think of no post I’ve written that would support such a claim)
• “how to approach random people online” (oh yes, let me tell you)
• “does gmail have an online diary function?” (not yet, but Google you hire me and I’ll see what I can do)
• “numb finger spray paint” (and plenty of variations on the theme)
• “spinning cycling classes in brandon, manitoba” (my personal favorite)

So if you stumbled upon odfm by some weird happenstance over at google.com, well I’m happy you made it. Even if you did spent less than 5 seconds here (52 % of you fall into that category… I know it… I’m on to you).

“Blog”.

That’s got to be one of this day’s most well-known words that didn’t exist a decade ago. Everybody and their dog has a blog these days. If you find yourself in a group of Internet-savvy people and you asked them if they either have a blog, or read blogs, I bet the great majority of them would say yes. It’s really pretty fascinating.

While working in Philly, I spent a great portion of my time reading hundreds and hundreds of different people’s blogs. That, in and of itself, is really insane. The idea that a complete stranger a thousand miles away can sit down at their machine and divulge any and all information on their opinions, life events, kids, etc., and that I can read (and even comment) on that… it’s a little weird. Arguably weirder still would be to regularly read that stranger’s (or unknowing acquaintance’s) blog without their ever knowing of my e-presence.

Blogs (and in a broader sense, the Internet) allow people to do something that most people in the history of the world haven’t been able to do: be heard. Anyone and everyone with Internet access can spend less than half an hour at a keyboard and within seconds of pressing “Publish” every other Internet user on the planet can read what they just said. Sure, most people won’t, but the fact that they can is truly fascinating… and again, a little weird. And since so many people can so rapidly access such a broad array of information in the blogosphere, some blogs become unfathomably popular in a very short period of time. Others don’t become popular at all, but their authors pretend like they are anyway, so they design web banners for them that they post on their myspace pages, never to be clicked.

Not all things about the blogosphere are weird though. In fact, I submit that the good’s far outweigh the bad’s when it comes to blogging. No doubt they have the potential to ruffle people’s feathers, but they also have the potential to warm your heart and to keep you up to date on loved ones who live far away. As my last visit to the Station came to a close and I was bidding my beloved Hendricks farewell, we conceded that it was a comfort indeed to know that if nothing else, we’d be able to keep in touch via each other’s blogs. It’s certainly no substitute for sitting on their couch, drinking their sweet tea, and playing with their kids, but it’s way the heck better than nothing (especially with gems like the afore mentioned heart warmer).

All that to say, I think blogs are fascinating. I love them. I love mine, I love reading others’, and when I’m due to update mine but don’t have high enough caliper material just yet, I just spend five paragraphs talking about them.

There is one thing about blogs that I just cannot wrap my mind around though. It has come to my attention that some people who read multiple blogs do so without subscribing to them via an RSS feed. This is simply no longer acceptable. Do yourself a big ol’ Cinco-de-Mayo-favor and add Google Reader to your Google repitoire. It’s about as easy as typing “derrickoliver.com” and pressing Enter. And if you use a different RSS reader, may I suggest setting up a Google Reader account anyway? It’s a little harder this way, but not much. Just look for things like “Export” on your existing reader and “Import” over at Google Reader… and you’re done.

So there’s what I think about blogs. What say you? (Self-promotions allowed in the comments section of such a post as this).

It’s really remarkable how quickly they grow up isn’t it? It seems like just yesterday, inspired by Joshua Langston’s late blog, I set up an account with blogger to keep my friends and family up-to-date with my Oriental travels. When prompted to come up with a name for my new creation, I chose one I thought both clever and appropriate: online diary for the masses. Back then odfm boasted approximately 8 readers spanning across a single state in the US.

But now, exactly three years since the debut post, odfm boasts at least 10 readers representing the farthest corners of the cornerless Earth. It’s convenient when 5 of your 8 original readers move to various countries, and keep reading your blog. It makes it look like Asians, Africans, and Europeans read it, when in fact it’s just Americans using Asian, African, and European Internet connections. But oh the blogosphere-cred that comes with such an international readership!

So in order to celebrate such an exciting day, I decided to have everyone who has ever contributed to odfm meet up in the early morning in my new dining room-kitchen combo for a Birthday Party/Reunion/Informal Conference Extravaganza (B-PRICE). It was a truly magnificent gathering. Some of the greatest minds in modern online time-wasting were present. Below is a candid picture I managed to snap during the festivities.

At the B-PRICE, odfm’s contributors from over the years discussed important issues facing odfm in a series of breakout sessions. Such issues included, but were not limited to:

• odfm in a post-post-modern age
• odfm’s steady decline in quality content over time
• Jiffy News: A debate on whether or not to re-launch
• Remember When? (A session for contributors to odfm during the blogspot.com and wordpress.com years)
• odfm and its illiterate subscribers
• Adequately Blogging B-PRICE: How to do it effeciently and effectively

Needless to say, the celebration was an enormous success, and it allowed odfm’s contributors a chance to have many necessary conversations regarding the future of the blog none of your friends are talking about™. The conclusion that the “Adequately Blogging B-PRICE” came to was to let the readers of odfm share their stories in the comments section of how they celebrated odfm’s 3rd birthday. They thought about having readers share their all-time favorite odfm post, but they quickly realized that would most certainly yeild the ever-dreaded “zero-comment-post.” As such, they went with the “Share your Celebratory Story” idea instead.

So there’s your invitation readers. I know you guys are itching to share the creative ways which you and your loved ones chose to celebrate this momentous day. No celebration is too small to share! Don’t be shy. Even if your celebration only consisted of skipping work and re-reading every entry that odfm’s ever published, that is share-worthy. Plus, you sharing your Celebratory Story will give those uncreative types ideas for next year when America’s favorite holiday rolls around again!

Greetings to all. I’m happy that you made it here. As you can see, this is the hippest and classiest online diary for the masses has ever looked. Well don’t worry, because the quality of content that odfm will offer at this new (and permanent) address will certainly continue being less than hip and far from classy. I just thought an appearance to the contrary would suit the blog of such an anomaly as myself.

While you’re here, exploring previously unknown parts of the world wide web, let me give you an idea of what the new and sliiightly improved odfm has to offer.

Just like my wordpress blog, this site also has separate pages (see the navigation bar above) to make for easy navigation and a greater variety of content. If you’re the type who likes to see everything that a particular site has to offer, feel free to click each of the links above and see if you can discern the changes I made from wordpress pages. If you’re just looking to subscribe for now (so that you can come back later to spend hours on end rereading everything I’ve said for the past three years), just click the word, “rss” above. If you’re more into things that are entirely new and exciting, awesome, wonderful, rad, bodacious, et cetera, then please, ladies and gentlemen, behold…

The photos page!

This was one of the main reasons I switched (yet again) to a new format. I’m still hosted by wordpress, but now I’ve got my own domain (for potential future needs of who knows what variety) and a whole heck of a lot more freedom to do what I want. You should have seen what this blog looked like when I started working on it. Let’s just say that there was no grey, black, or red. That’s exciting to me.

So please do what you gotta do to get adjusted to this new address. Change your links, bookmarks, feed, home pages. Get the “wordpress.” in your “www.derrickoliver.com” tattoo removed. Sell your “www.derrickoliver.com” t-shirts and other paraphernalia on eBay as “vintage”.

I’d like to take this next-to-last paragraph of my debut post to thank Thomas Supercinski for all of his help in making this and many other web projects possible. He’s answered countless freshman questions for me and taken plenty of time out of his schedule to help me with this. If you don’t subscribe to his blog, you really should. He and his wife talk about way more worth-while things than I do. Really. Check him out. Thomas, thanks so much man.

Thanks so much for tolerating all my moving around lately. I’m done now though. This is my new home. I like it here and I hope you feel comfy here as well.

I have no doubt that I could go ahead and leave this post a simply a picture (as I did when I redefined beauty), but I feel that both a bit of commentary and an inquiry are in order.

First I’d like to point out that both of the highest trafficked days for odfm were days when the post dealt with the fact that I was leaving. I could imply from this information that my friends are happy to see me go, but I know that not all of my readers are here in the Station with me. Perhaps it was a lot of excited Philly people reading about how I’ll be joining them for winter, but I find this unlikely as I’ve still found no success in the find-a-place-to-live department.

Regardless of why so many chose to read about how I was leaving, there is no denying the fact that the masses unashamedly hate Keith Green, Andrew Peterson, and my Christmas posts. There are of course a few exceptions, such as the Supers, Linley, Andy? Ross (who may not actually be a reader, but he loves Keith) and Hannah (who will likely never have a hyperlink accompanying her name). And it’s fine. The masses aren’t required to love everything I post. I’m just thankful for blog stats that tell me the things my friends won’t. For those of you who want to read the remaining installment of Christmas Through Their Eyes, let me know, I’ll email you or something.

On an equally serious note: It has come to my attention that some people who subscribe to odfm may not be picking me up via their feeds. Of course, if this is you, you aren’t very likely reading that this is an issue at all. I guess I’m just asking for some confirmation that you rss users are still trucking with me. The comments section would be an appropriate place to answer that question. As good a place as any, I suppose.