jessiemac.com

Continuing from the previous post What to have on your website (part 2)?…

~Decide what you want to change often and learn how to do it

As I said, consider your future needs when it comes to adding information. What information would you need to add once you get your agent; once your book is published; once you have a book tour; once you’re invited to give a speech; once you have 20,000 fans etc? After checking lots of websites and blogs out, I wanted something simple and easily updated. For instance when I started I didn’t have ‘Recent Comments’ because I didn’t have any comments. Now I do, so I wanted to showcase them and I’ve got space to add it to. And that’s what great about this template compared to my old one. This one can be easily added to. Things I may change often is something I want to learn how to do and make notes on. For example, the RSS Feed and Twitter icon, I’ve learnt how to add my own icons so that one day in a few months time, I might revamp my blog by adding new icons. Same goes for the header (the header is not perfect yet) and the social media icons.

~Decide if you’re going to do it yourself or get a professional to do it for you.

Once you’ve decided on how many columns, and what information you want on there, go out and find a template that would suit you. And when you have settled on one, there is a lot of help from professionals out there if you search. I find that searching using ‘video’ on Google helps when I’m trying to do something and I don’t know how. I recently found TutVid.com; they’re a company that provides video tutorials so you can watch, pause and go through the process step by step with them. There are so many out there – go to YouTube and check them out. Once you find a company or individual you find helpful, check out their other videos. I get confused with too much code writing and find videos better as it’s more visual – that’s how I’m learning how to do things with Photoshop and Dreamweaver. It can seem overwhelming if you’ve never done it before and there’s so much information out there it can get frustrating. But take one task at a time. If it’s a task I may need to do again; I usually make a note of how to do it for next time.

If you do decide to pay for someone to set up your site for you; you still need to figure out what you want first before you approach a professional web designer. And I would suggest choose someone who is willing to teach you how to update the most basic things. I guess that would depend on if you have the software they used. But if you do have access, when they do teach you, make sure you have a notebook with you to write it all down step-by-step. Finding a professional web designer to do it for you can still work even if they update for you. The information on the website pages tend to be static information. For example, your book once it’s out is not going to change much. Reviews, Biography, Contact etc aren’t going to change every week so an update with your web design once a month would be fine but when it comes to your blog, it’s better if you learn how to navigate around it because you will be updating that more often. If you can’t afford a web designer, find a wordpress template that allows you to add pages such as ‘Contact’, ‘About’ and any other pages you want.

Carolyn Kaufman’s post Building Your Book/Author website and How to Make Your Personal Brand Visible with Social Media at jeffbullas.com give you more information on branding.

It’s not easy but it’s not impossible.

So what can you do today to get one step closer to getting the website and blog that you want?

[pic taken from here]

Similar Posts ~

What do you need in a website?

What to have on your website (part 1)?

What to have on your website (part 2)?

“Keep away from small people who try to belittle your ambitions. Small people always do that, but the really great make you feel that you, too, can become great.” Mark Twain – Writer

CURRENT STATUS: Reminder, Motivator and Daily Review Meeting (Read on if you want to join me in my Corporation of One meeting)

What l learnt today:

• Need to sort out my Facebook page. There is nothing on it. And as BubbleCow has rightly reminded me in the post Why Have a Facebook Fan Page?
• Read this article 7 Essential Steps to Creating Your Content Masterpiece at CopyBlogger.com. Amazingly inspiring. Shows how you can provide tips and inspire at the same time. Definitely something I want to dip back to at a later point to remind myself that it takes hard work but it’s worth it.
• You can tweak your blog and website forever; so decide what you want to do, do it and then stop.
• I’m not alone when it comes to the MBISB phase of writing. Gregory Frost says it’s normal in his post The Literary Aperient. I have My-Book-is-So-Boring-itist. But you’ve got to push on right?

What I have done today:

• Added some more information to my Linkedin account.
• Joined Website Grader (via jeffbullas.com)

WORD COUNT: Night Walker 122,000 in total. Tuesday 6 July 500 words.

Continuing from What to Have on Your Website (part 1)…

~Decide on what information you want on the blog

The information on your website is self-explanatory and we covered that in the post What Do You Need in a Website? so now I’m covering the information on your blog. Information is usually added by using widgets on the wordpress dashboard which you can activate and deactivate whenever you want. Here’s a list of widgets I have on my website: Text x 2; Recent Posts, RSS x 4; Categories; Archives; Social Widget and Tag Cloud. There are so many out there to choose from really search around, have a look at other blogs and see what you like and want. With widgets, plugins, icons etc new ones are coming out every day that’s why I want my blog to be able to adapt quickly and easily.

If you look at my blog – it is pretty busy I admit with lots of text so I broke it up with the RSS feed and Twitter icons – I bet you noticed them; they are quite big – and later perhaps a small thumbnail portrait of yours truly, when I can find a decent photo. The purple email icon is probably where I’ll have it. And when I get my first book published that’s where the photo of the book cover will go and I’ll put my face somewhere else – by that time I’ve evolved and can put it on the header without it looking too awful, hopefully. These are the things you have to think about too. Where would things go now and in the future? And would your blog cater for that in a year’s time? I’m hoping this blog will last me at least 2 years, okay, perhaps one. But not every few months – who has that sort of time to tinker? I have a book to finish, don’t you?

Anywaaaay, if you look at my blog’s 3rd column, you’ll see that it is ready to be added to. I can see myself adding more links at a later stage and there’s space for that. Look around at other blogs and websites; what information do they provide that you want on yours? All I wanted was the blog post, naturally; the RSS Feed – I made mine stand out from the other RSS feeds from other blogs – and no, the orange man is not sitting on a toilet – thanks bro – and the Twitter icon that clicks to my Twitter account.

~Decide how everything you want is going to fit on your blog and website.

With the website, decide on the layout that could cater for the amount of information you need. For instance, if you intend to write a lot about yourself in your biography – make sure you have the space for it. At the moment, I’m figuring out how to create a scrollbar on the website page just in case I want to add more about myself. With every page of your website have a clear idea about what you want on there. And as long as a part of your page is connected in design (eg using the same header), font and colour, you can have a 1-column page for some and a 2-column page for others depending on your needs. For your website, I’d keep it simple and avoid 3-column pages since the information you’re giving on every page is very specific to that page and tend to be limited. Whereas your blog is constantly evolving and more people would read it because it’s updated often so you need to make sure that it has the capacity to evolve with you and not look outdated. If your blog doesn’t have RSS Feed capabilities or links to your Twitter, it’s already outdated.

The more information you want to include, the more space you need. When it comes to websites, the page gives you a clue of what is included eg Biography, Books etc and a single column is enough. But single column is too limited for me for my blog – it would have only been the blog post and a few social media icons outside of the post if that – and a 2-column page would have been fine but like I said, I wanted to be able to add later. And depending on what you want, decide how many columns and rows you want bearing in mind that you want your reader to find your information easily without having to scroll right down to the bottom to find a link to your Twitter account or RSS Feed. The area at the top is the most accessible and a reader should be able to find you elsewhere and connect without without scrolling at all. You might prefer just to have a post and nothing else – that’s up to you. But you have to decide. Have a search on the Internet; on Google you could search via the ‘web’ form and then ‘images’ at the top left hand corner of Google search. Look at the many single column templates, double column and 3- columns themes available and decide which you prefer. How simple do you want your blog or website to be? There’s no wrong way or right way; just your way. What is your way?

[pic taken from here]

Similar Posts ~

What Do You Need in a Website?

What to Have on Your Website (part 1)?

~Until I sleep, life will be my playground~

“Imagination grows by exercise, and contrary to common belief, is more powerful in the mature than in the young.” Paul McCartney – Singer & Songwriter

CURRENT STATUS: Reminder, Motivator and Daily Review Meeting (Read on if you want to join me in my Corporation of One meeting)

What l learnt today:

• There’s a right time to follow up on your query. 2 weeks is too soon. Give it 6 weeks and do not respond to out of office messages says agent Jessica Faust at BookEnds, LLC.
• Mac Freedom is a software that locks you out of your iMac so you won’t be distracted but can I give that much power to a computer? (via Novelists, Inc Blog) Being distracted by it is also giving it power. I don’t want to fight with my iMac. iMac is my friend.
• Learn from the traditional and the self-published. ‘It’s not the tools that matter, it’s how you use them’ says agent Mary Kole of KidLit.com in her post One Last Self-Publishing Post.
• Ass in Chair rule is what I need now. No Block, Just Tackle by Kelly Simmons at The Liars Club.
• Again it’s your name that people search for, not your book, it’s the branding and being hated keeps you afloat says author Mark Charan Newton in A Year Later.
• 3 Tips for Cultivating an Online Brand by Jody Hedlund (via Mystery Writing is Murder).

What I have done today:

• Added a photo of yours truly to the blog. Everyone says people want to see you so I’ve succumb to it finally.
• Added SexyBookmarks at the end of my post. That’s what they’re called and they do look sexy if I may say so myself.
• Sometimes when you’re fiddling around with your blog, things shift, disappear or go a bit weird so I’ve been re-fiddling and putting things back the way they should.
• Joined QueryTracker.net‘s forum, AgentQuery Connect, AbsoluteWrite.com,   (via blog post The Writing Community by Elana Johnson).

WORD COUNT: Night Walker 121,500 in total. Monday 5 July wrote 500 words