Today I finished the back-end script to edit and maintain all of the info about each poet. I included a preview page and an Amazon.com link maker for book titles to hopefully save me time in the future when I have to write biographies for each new poet that's added to the archive.

Writing bios isn't easy - usually if an author or publisher can supply their own bio I will jump at the chance to use it. I'm not looking to be the one and only source for information on a poet's life - but I want to provide at least a brief overview, i.e. a few paragraphs, for subscribers-only.

It's easy to write five pages on a poet. You can just include everything you can think of.

When you're limiting yourself to three to five paragraphs, or about a page in 1024x768, you have to be more exclusionary.

Do you mention their most famous works? Publication credits? Childhood? Literary Movement?

Ultimately I see the Open Poetry Project as being more inclusive of as much information as possible - Poetry X is a poetry archive, essay, and discussion site. It's going to be growing into a one-stop-shop for brief analysis and study of poem texts, too.

But I have to be firm on certain limits to the scope and breadth of the site, or it will never be released, and I'll just be working on it without anyone using it forever.

So right now my goal is to get the basics operational and add the bells and whistles as people subscribe. Most of the bells will be subscriber-only content, but I'll make a few whistles readily available.

Tomorrow I begin work on the Members section. Again, just the basics: Signup, FAQs, Registration Forms, Login, etc.

But I can see the finish line for the first time. Everything is starting to fall into place.

And of course last but not least I have to do each section's homepage (the main page you get by going to anything.poetryx.com).

I'm saving the home pages for last because the features will dictate their content.

But it looks like I'll have five home pages to build: the main home page, poetry section, articles, members, and the poetry contest (which won't begin until October anyway, hopefully).