Building Your Website

Let's talk a little about building your website. I was fotunate enough to start builiding websites on 1995 so I had it pretty hard since I had to learn HTML and build them from scratch. It's easier now and most website servers provide you with templates in which you can see them as you write them WYSWYG. It helps if you know HTML in order to customize your templates and add things to it if you want to. But before we get to that, let talk domain registration.

I've seen many author's sites that use free web hosting which is fine for you to get familiar with builiding websites, but I don't recommend it for people who are looking to establish a presence on the web as an author.

When you plan to write your book and have analyzed your book's promotion and what is going to include, you can pretty much tell if you'll develop a community type of website with the book theme or if you have many other books planned either on the same theme or not. In my case, I have many books planned and my interests are varied so a theme site is not going to work for me. I'm experimenting with a site here and trying to reach my target audience with it but it's complimentary to my main site which I decided to have under my name. By using my name people will be able to remember it better than if I use something like: johndoe.tripod.com or fiction123.tripod.com or whatever. I want my readers to look me up and find me right away even if I haven't provided them with the URL, they can give it a wild guess. It's like when you think of Coca-Cola you can try to find their website by typing cocacola.com, right? In addition to that you won't look like a fly-by author, here today and gone tomorrow.

So my main message here is play with a few free sites and get familiar with what you like and how to control the templates and alter designs and then get your own domain. Either get the title of the book dot com or your name dot com and go from there. I'll have more for later.

Comments:

[dele… I like your ideas and how you put them. You show a compassion to inspire those around you and those you have never even meet. Keep up the good work.

Monday July 17, 2006 - 02:39pm (PDT)
Mike … Offline Thanks for the information Clary, we might put it to use sometime in the very near future...

Monday July 17, 2006 - 05:57pm (EDT)
Eliza… Offline I started out doing HTML for my website by the "copy and paste from another website, and pull my hair out when it didn't work" method back in 1998. There's still a lot of hair-pulling that goes on even today, which is why I don't change the basic look of my website often. But I still think you're better off knowing at least some basic html, so you can fix any problems that arise!

Monday July 17, 2006 - 06:02pm (EDT)
imcaf… Offline IM That's awsome advice Clary! For people starting out or are thinking about what to do and how to do it, and they come across this post, will be learning some Real Sound advice, yet they may not know it yet :-) It makes perfect sense!

Monday July 17, 2006 - 05:22pm (CDT)
Carin… Offline IM Thanks! I'm planning to have my own website in the future so your advice comes at the right time! I like your website!

Monday July 17, 2006 - 10:43pm (ART)
princ… Offline I've been fortunate enough to have worked on some really fantastic websites - so I know that the idea of website design can sometimes be another "detail" that a lot of writers would rather not spend time on, especially if they could be writing instead. If anyone would like some help, or some basic suggestions, don't hesitate to drop me a message.

Monday July 17, 2006 - 10:11pm (CDT)
… Offline Hi Clary,
Great advice. I've been using free websites for years and it is a great way to start out and see the interest in your product and/or services grow to the point of having to get a "real" functional website which will allow you to customize to your hearts content ...lol!

Also, I'm with you for I too had to learn HTML in 1992. The newer programs for sale now would have been a god-send back in the day. I still think most people should learn HTML anyway, bcause it gives them more control and can help their web site not look like a cookie cutter copy of someone else's site.

Tuesday July 18, 2006 - 09:00am (PDT)
Rosie Offline I think I'm HTML challenged. I will have to stick to what I know for now.

Tuesday July 18, 2006 - 11:30am (CDT)
Chris… Offline IM Ironically, I also had to sit down and learn HTML the hard way. The funny thing is that I still do it that way. I can't figure out the software that does it for me. LOL