OK, folks.  Buckle your seat belts.  OOTOB is making some great new changes, and here’s what you can expect:

1. My new domain.

Check out your URL bar.  See how it says “outoftheorthobox.com” instead of the “blogspot” domain? Yup, we’re growing up.  Cutting the blogspot apron strings and paying our own rent.  Whether you find this as exciting as I do, I don’t know, but I’m liking it.  I’ll also have an @outoftheorthobox.com email address, which I’ll update on the contact page as soon as it’s live.

2. Spreading my reach.

For a long time I resisted any other social media platform other than my familiar Facebook.  I even tried and left Twitter for awhile, and surely laughed that a place like Pinterest would make room for this blog.  But I’ve been educating myself on blogging and have decided to join those two platforms – not as myself, Ruchi Koval, but as OOTOB – just to put my blog in front of more eyeballs.  I’m building my reach slowly.  Help me by finding and following me on Twitter and Pinterest (and Facebook if you haven’t yet done so, where I’ve created an OOTOB page – something else I’ve resisted for awhile), and sharing, liking, pinning, retweeting, favoriting my content there when you like it!

Note: on both Twitter and Pinterest, you can find me by searching for “Out of the Ortho Box” or outoftheorthobo – notice the missing “x.”  That’s because they limit your letters.  Just click the link above and you’ll be taken to my page.

3. Blog makeover.

It’s time to move off a free template from Blogger and actually get a designer to snazz up the blog.  I will definitely stick to orange, my favorite color and an optimistic one, and to the contemporary, clean feel, but I’m going to be adding some fun stuff:

  • You’ll be able to find me on social media and email from the home page.
  • You’ll be able to share each post on social media and email at the end of each post.
  • I will still retain the easy, no-need-to-log-in-and-create-an-account method of commenting, so no worries there.
  • I will have different pages for each different type of post (more on this soon).
  • In general, it will have a cooler, more interesting look – not exactly sure what.  I’m in the process of hiring a designer and I’m welcoming suggestions!
4. Categories.
It has long bothered me that I have something of an identity crisis here on the blog.  Like, I’m not exactly sure who I’m talking to when I post.  Some of my posts address non-Orthodox Jews, explaining why we do certain things, or how to do them.  Some are simply Jewish inspiration, more addressed to religiously-oriented readers who are looking for that.  Sometimes I make controversial observations.  To whom am I speaking?  Well, I finally sorted this out in my mind.  I am talking to all of you.  There are non-Jews, atheists, Orthodox Jews, and Jews who have never met an Orthodox Jew, and they are reading this blog.  So I have eight different types of posts on this blog, and some of my readers will find some of them interesting and others not – and maybe some will find only a fraction of them interesting, and others will find all types potentially interesting.  And that’s okay, because I’m serving a super-diverse readership and this is a good way to do it.
To that end, I’ve gone back in to all 238 of my old posts and assigned each one one or more of the eight categories, and I’m going to create a page for each, so you’ll be able to click on the page and see all the posts I’ve ever written in that category.  Fun, right?  
Further, with each of my future posts I will scroll regularly through each category, so you’re getting an even range of my different types of posts.
Here are the eight:
1. Book reviews
2. Interviews
3. How-to Judaism
4. Controversial observations (these will require a glass of wine prior to posting)
5. Why Orthodox Jews do the things they do
6. Q&A received from real people in the real world
7. Jewish inspiration
8. (This is a new category) My favorite round-up of Jewish posts from around the web
I will also periodically, but not regularly, post about Jewish food, and about me and the blog.
5. Future posts.
I already said above that I’m going to be regularly posting on a schedule. rotating between each of the eight categories.  Some will overlap.  For example, I may do a book review that is also a controversial observation.  Or an interview that contains lots of Jewish inspiration.  Or a Q&A that will answer why we do the things we do or how to do something in a more Jewish way.
Monday will be the day that I put up each new post.  You can expect a new post each week, barring unusual circumstances.  For those of you signed up via email (and see the right sidebar to sign up if you’d like to get an email with each new post) you will get the email around 1 am or 2 am early Tuesday morning.  This is an automated system that sends out all posts published within the previous hours.  It is not me staying up till 2 am to email you.
On the day I post something new, I’ll post it to Facebook, Twitter, and Pinterest right away, and the email will come that night.
Got it??  Those are all my updates.  I’m really excited about bringing the blog to the next level and making it more professional, even-handed, beautiful, far-reaching, and ultimately, educational and unifying.  Thanks for being my partners in making it so.