As I wrestle with my book, I also need to do my website.
I have to be honest, I was going to try and make it all professional looking, impressive, important. To get ideas I went to a couple of famous author sites, but when I went to Piers Anthony's website, I slammed on the brakes.
This man is an amazing writer, has oodles of books, and is the author of the Xanth Series, and Incarnations of Immortality Series. He's a genius and a best-sell author. You would think his page would be off the chain . . .
Well, here's his page:
http://www.hipiers.com/
I am so humbled. I'm going to keep mine very basic. If a great writer like that avoids the bells and whistles, so will I.
Ditto. Bells and whistles aren't as important as content. Sort of like Snape -- don't judge the inside by its cover.
ReplyDelete~ jw
Amen to that, June. Plus, it would be pompous to "do it all up" when I'm not even famous. XD You want to impress people who visit, but once I saw Piers' site it was like he's saying "It's not the website, but the writing that matters." It really is his website too, because I wrote him and his staff wrote back and said he told them to tell me:
Delete" Yes, I think that the site is a means for promotion, and need not be flashier than what it promotes. I wish you well with your novel."
Pretty cool. :)
I think there is a fine line between the two. I'm all for simplicity when it comes to websites - so many of the fancy bells and whistles cannot be viewed on all browsers, and then you lose people. However, when I come across a *very* simple site (and his borders on that), I think you lose something too. His site his is easy to navigate and loads quickly, but the background makes it difficult for me to read the text, and it's not quite what I would consider professional.
ReplyDeleteI adore Piers Anthony's "Blue Adept" series, by the way, and I love that it's clearly him and maybe a ... helper.. doing the website, but it just seems to be missing something.
Patricia Cornwell is one of my favorite authors, and her website is certainly professional looking -- but it's also overly active. I wanted to send a link to ONE of the pages to my Mom, and discovered that I couldn't because the site design didn't allow for separate URLs to show up in the address bar for several (although not all) of the pages. Also, when I hit "back" instead of going back to the start of the site, it took me all the way back to Google!
(JK Rowling is another author who had her author site setup to do WAY too many things. I thought it was about impossible to find anything useful on it.)
I've got an author site up, but although it's very spiffy looking, I don't know that I'll keep it as is very long.
I think it's that way because he's a crotchety old bastard. XD He hated computers when they first came out, to the point of creating an evil computer in one of his stories in the Xanth series. It was called Compewter and it could change realities. It took him ages to leave his typewriter. I think this site is this way because he rebelled against having one that he couldn't update himself. XD Mine won't be as er . . . 1980's as his is, but then again, I'm not a crotchety old ogre. I'm sitting here right now, thinking what I'm going to do. I'm thinking a simple header graphic and some info, book links of course, and maybe some excerpts or short stories/poems. I might publish my unpublished manuscript, a Universe Inversed. Only thing is there's another Ruth Solomon online that writes poetry.
ReplyDeleteHilarious. And then, that suits him. But without knowing that, I was left with above impression.
ReplyDelete:-)
My site: http://author.grableronline.com
I used a template - and not a very complex one, but the biggest downside is that I can't put external links in the menu - and my blog was external (as far as the template was concerned).
So now I'm looking at another template (offered through my hosting service) that will be simple AND more customize-able, although without the neat scroll and pen look. Although I like making DIY websites, this is easier . . . and I know it will work and that the site won't shift about too much for different browsers.
You working with template or from scratch? If from scratch, I have a link (somewhere) to a site that will go through your coding and tell you where you have errors, show you how it will look on different browsers, for people w/visual disabilities, etc. (You could certainly use it on a template too, I just know that sometimes templates are more limited on what you can change.)
I use my little Frontpage program. It works like a word processor. Then I save it, and any images to a separate folder on my computer, and upload it to a corresponding folder through ftp. I have the same directories on my computer as I do on my site, so as long as I put everything where they belong it works fine. I have the major browsers on my computer so I take a look at everything from time to time. If you use a simple text/image format, and set the margins, it generally stays the same. I don't like templates because like you said, they are hard to customize. Plus if I really like a page, I can just open it up in Frontpage and grab the style. lol. Except for those blog templates . . . I think. Hm. I didn't try that.
ReplyDeleteI use FrontPage too, if I'm doing it my scratch, or with a pure HTML template. Then I upload with FileZilla.
DeleteBe careful with opening up a page and copying the style - some are copyrighted.
Oh I don't "steal" the site really. Usually I get the table setup. Most sites have similiar formatting. I just hate setting up tables. lol. I put my own images, background, fonts. I'll tell you the sites I hate though, the ones that use primarily Flash or Shockwave and don't have a corresponding text site. I think simple text sites are the best, with a few images. That way, everyone can access them.
DeleteI want people with dial-up to be able to see my page.
DeleteMe too. I know most people don't think about that any more, but there's still definitely people who still have that.
DeleteI know several towns here that DSL just hasn't made it up the mountain yet (or all the way).
Yeah, tables can be a pain.
DeleteAnd yes, I know what you mean. Even with everything up-to-date on my computer, DSL and wifi going, I've had trouble with plenty of pure Flash/SW sites. If there's no simple version, I give up.
I like that background. Templates are convenient, I give you that. You know, I got my website AND domain name for $19.96 or something like that, and for a whole year. amandagrabbler.com is available, and you could grab it for $8.99 for the year from Netfirms.com. And I know a hosting service that only charges $9.99 for a whole years hosting. They do have some website building tools and other perks too but you'd need to play with it a bit. Just letting you know. Especially about the domain name. :)
ReplyDeleteThere's only 1 'b' in my last name. ;-)
DeleteI'm hosted with Ultra Website Hosting. Have had them for years now with various accounts.
Domain name (grableronline.com) is 13.95/year, but for the actual hosting, 141.60 - but it's paid up until March 9, 2015 ($2.95/month). I can put-up as many sub-domains as I want, as many e-mail accounts as I want, etc. Great up-time and customer service response too.
I like the background too, but it's too limited feature-wise. The one I'm switching to is not as stylish, but I can do more with it so... providing I can get it working, going with more features. :-)
DeleteGood deal!
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