Tips and Tricks: Writer Websites

If you don't think you could possibly enjoy or get the hang of html, it would be best to pay a kid at a local university to set something up for you. Depending on who you ask, this could mean something very snazzy or something kind of gimpy. Ask professors who have cool websites if they can recommend anyone. Professors tend to ask students to design their websites for them.

In the corporate world, a website with a fully automated back end (where you go in and just fill out the forms and don't have to even look at the code) can cost as much as $7,000. I know this only because my husband works for a company that designs corporate websites. If you get a (good) freelance artist, it's a little less but still goes into the hundreds. My husband says that price varies a lot "depending on the functionality that the user needs as well as who's doing the development." If you get a student to do it, though -- especially a savvy computer science student -- you could get away with paying them maybe $200. (Not to cheat them, mind you. College students will do just about anything to ease the financial stress of having no money whatsoever. A lot of them would just be glad to do something, anything, to earn a little extra cash.)

That is for you writers who are better with pen than keyboard. For those of you who know your way around paragraph tags and possibly a table or two, and who would enjoy getting a little deeper into your html, I'm here for you.

Content

Make sure you have decent content before releasing your site. As a writer, I expect you to use your brilliant brain to put something up that people will want to read. For example, a profile of you. Updates on your writing career. Links to your books. (Try Amazon Associates -- they pay you if people buy something from your referral link.) Teasers of stories. Even a few free stories for people to see how good you are.

If you don't have good content on your website, people will think that you don't have good content in your stories. And they won't buy them. And that's bad.

Site Reviews

Getting someone to go and look at your site and give you tips is a great way to improve your design, much like asking someone to critique a story or a poem. Some people offer review sites, but they can take forever to actually get to you. Rather, ask friends and family what they think of the site -- especially younger members of the family who spend a lot of time online. Ask them to help you improve it.

If you want to do a little research on your own, I'm fond of the book Web Bloopers (or try their website). I'd also recommend Don't Make Me Think. Both are highly-rated books on the most common mistakes websites make. They lean a bit toward corporate websites, but the ideas are pretty universal.

HTML Beginners

HTML Goodies: Basic HTML Tutorials: This is where I learned basic html. If you think this site is sitting primarily on my husband's programming and web design skills, tsk tsk. I've been designing and coding my own sites since I was sixteen. I use basic html tables, an image editing program, some crude CSS, and PHP includes. That's it. Easy peasy.

My husband recommends HTML Dog. He says it's his "favorite resource for HTML and CSS for both beginners and advanced designers. Easy to navigate, thorough explanations, and great examples."

Learning basic html will definitely help you if you get a pre-made layout. A lot of times, people who get snazzy layouts and don't know how to edit them properly just look stupid, because they're so afraid of breaking something in the code that they refuse to edit it at all, even the example links. And your website must look at least competent.

Intermediate

This is where I am. My husband is advanced, and I'm not even going to try going anywhere near javascript or programming. But I really don't need to -- and, as long as your site isn't massive, you'll do fine without an automated system.

If you have more than 15 or 20 pages to keep up, you will need PHP Includes. To preserve your sanity. And they're actually very easy.

PHP Includes

1. Put the beginning of your website (all of the layout code) in a .txt document. (Say "top.txt")
2. Upload it.
3. Put this line at the beginning of every single page: <? include('top.txt'); ?>
4. Do the same with the bottom. Put up <? include('bottom.txt'); ?>

That little line of code will automatically put all the code from the text document into the code of every web page that it is on. That one line puts in everything from the text document. This way, if you want to change your layout or your navigation, you only have to do it on the .txt documents, NOT on every single page. This will save you a lot of headaches if you ever need to add or remove a link. I used to spend entire days updating my personal site links, way back before I found PHP Includes. (Sidenote: The top/bottom pages can also be .php instead of .txt, based on your individual preference. Pick whichever is easier for you to edit.)

Where I learned this: DayDream Graphics: Tutorials

Alex says: "PHP Includes only work if your web server supports PHP. Most do, but if you're using ASP then you can use a very similar technique called Server Side Includes. As with everything regarding ASP, 4Guys does it best."

CSS Stylesheet

This is a little trickier. I basically stole someone else's and edited the color tags. Also, most premade layouts will already have a stylesheet, so you won't have to worry about it if you do it that way.

You'll want to title it "style.css" or something like that. Something simple. You can include it in your "top.txt" by just adding this line of code: <link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="style.css">

Basics: HTML Dog
Tutorial: DD Graphics
In More Detail: HTML Goodies
Position Is Everything is essential for CSS-based layouts.

Programs

Also, trust me that no program can truly make up for a lack of understanding of basic code. If you use them without any real feel for html, your site will never be as slick as it could be. At the very least, I strongly recommend learning to recognize the html for pagraph breaks (<p>), links (<a href="link.html">text</a>), bold text (<b>text</b>), italic text (<i>text</i>), and images (<img src="image.jpg">).

If you're definitely interested, always download the trial versions before you buy a program. You'll quickly find out if it was an impulse or a love match.

• Dreamweaver - Coding program. Has a design function for people who don't know html. Not necessary if you want to do your own coding but it's convenient enough. (I get to use it because my husband uses it for his work.) For people who want a slick site and think the most recent Dreamweaver will get you something fancy and charming, just hire someone. It'll cost about the same and the outcome will be much nicer. Dreamweaver does not suddenly make you a website maverick and hiring a professional is a much more effective use of two to four hundred dollars.
• Paint Shop Pro - Image editing program. Not as slick as Photoshop, nor as widely preferred, but it's what I'm comfortable with. I use it to design and chop up my site layouts. Again, it's not a magical tool that will give you good taste in web design or color schemes. You have to bring some effort to it.

Conclusion

So believe me when I assure you, your website can be a huge mess, and my best advice for beginners is this: go simple. If you can't do fancy or slick, do simple. Simple is elegant, it's easy to manage, and you don't get tangled up and frustrated by your own limitations. The purpose of your website is to convey information effectively, and far too many people get caught up in the bells and whistles of having something new and hot and forget what the site is for.

Concentrate on your content, on making things easy to find and read. There's no shame in a plain white page with information on it.

No shame at all.