Monday, November 17, 2008

Building a website

Stupid, stupid me. I used to have my website all built up and running. I forgot about it and let it the hosting lapse, now I have to rebuild it again. I'm not that great at creating websites, so I've been making mistakes and having to start over again. Well, it's my own fault and I have no one to blame but myself, so I guess I'll just have to deal with it. 


Websites are important for authors to have, in my opinion. They provide information to your readers and let them know when new books are coming out. Once you build a readership, this information can be good for promotion. As writers, we are always looking for new ways to get our name out there. We want more people to know about our books and we hope that they will want to read them. After all, this is how we make our living, or hope someday to do. 

As I said, I'm not good with creating sites on my own. So, I've been using the Wordpress blog to create my site. The downside to this is that I have to use whatever themes I can find to make my site. There are tons of themes out to choose from, but most of them are not what I'm looking for. If you've ever created a myspace page, you understand what I'm talking about. There can be thousands of themes, but nothing that really catches your eye. Everyone is different, so it makes sense that not everyone will like the same thing. 

One of these days, I'm going to learn html so I can design my site the way I like it, but for now, I have to rely on others to create a theme I like. I've found one that I'm using for now. Unfortunately, the author of the theme was french and some of the html (what I can understand of it, anyway) is filled with the language. That makes it even harder to understand. But, it will do for now.

Do you think authors should have a website? Do you have one? What tools did you use to create it? Are you html illiterate like me? I'd love to hear what you think. Please leave a comment and let me know.

3 deadly screams:

said...

I like havin' web sites and, the now infamous, "My card" to give to people to shut them up.

Stay on groovin' safari,
Tor Hershman

Kenzie Michaels said...

I'm very html illiterate. I use Citymax for mine, although some times it is hard to make changes/update and I still haven't figured out how to post pics on it.

But, the blog is clearly linked on the first page, and I think more people go to my blog instead of the actual site.

And my early blog entries are gone; I'm not sure what happened to them. And when I landed on Blogger, it was hard to mainain both pages. But would love to see what I'd posted in early 2007.

How do I know it's not getting a lot of traffic? No one has left me a message on it since last May!

But it looks great on my business cards and now my T-shirt!

Oh god...my WV is 'tar me'!!

Gracen Miller said...

I'm illiterate too, Sierra. My girlfriend's husband did all my website work. He showed me the basics on how to change something, but now that I have my new computer, it doesn't want to cooperate. *grumbles* I HATE html!!!

I don't know how much traffic it's getting though because he still hasn't set me up a visitor counter. But like Kenzie said, it looks great on your bookmarks, cards, t-shirt, whatever you have. :-)