Yes, it’s that time of year. The wall might be peeling behind the desk,
but which writer wants to dig out their writing space to add a lick of
paint? The act of removing all those research tomes, notebooks of jotted
ideas, bits of half-discarded envelopes carrying insightful quips and
snatches of pithy dialogue... Who would get to the actual prepping with
so much to rediscover? Far easier to give the old author website a
revamp.
Three members of Hornsea Writers have done just that. And here are their excuses... sorry, reasons:
Noted word-wrangler,
Stuart Aken, decided to swap Blogger for Wordpress as he wanted more control over his site.
‘Blogger
is a great free platform, but is subject to Google's sometimes
arbitrary decisions and doesn't give the writer the availability of a
website. Wordpress, especially if you use the hosted option, gives the
writer complete control, allows for multiple pages like a website, and
is a crowd-sourced platform free from the commercial considerations of
any one company.’
It isn’t though, an afternoon’s job. It is
taking him a while to get the site the way he wants it, but he considers it a work
in progress. Check the new look:
http://stuartaken.net/
April
Taylor, known for her Alternative Tudor Mysteries, decided to go the
whole hog and move from a blogging site to a website with an internal
blog.
‘There comes a time in each writer’s life when they look at
their site and realise it just won’t do. I really didn’t want the
hassle of building another, so took a couple of weeks to research the
various programmes out there, growing more despondent by the minute.
However, it was a task I could no longer put off, so when I had girded
my loins with a couple of gins, I plumped for Weebly.
‘The
process is easy and very flexible. In fact, once I plunged into the icy
waters of creation, it only took me a morning to build the new site. The
secret is to plan – on paper – what you want each page of the site to
look like and what kind of information each needs to convey. After that,
building the new site is a doddle.’
The site is open for viewing and you can tell her what you think via the contact page:
www.apriltaylorauthor.com
In contrast,
Linda Acaster plumped for the easier option and scrubbed up her Blogger site.
‘I’m
a slow writer and not a daily blogger so wanted a site with a
free-standing landing page. The Blogger framework can be fairly flexible
if you don’t mind twiddling with a bit of html. Of course, what I know
about html can be written in large script on the back of a postage
stamp, but that’s why YouTube was invented. Someone, somewhere, has done
it all before and will happily walk you through it.
‘I’m
treating the current incarnation as a halfway house. When I finally stop
messing with its width I’ll go about designing a new header image.
Besides, as a displacement activity to writing the current novel it is
infinitely better than scrubbing the kitchen floor with a toothbrush.’
Cast a wry eye over her design technique at
www.lindaacaster.com