web stuff 4 writers

It doesn’t matter whether you’re hiring a team of professional web-designers to create you a high-tech, database driven website to promote your writing or whether you’ve got a couple of friends who are going to pull something together for free – there’s still some questions you might want to ask them before they begin.

1. Can I have a look at some of your past work?

In most cases, yours won’t be the first website that this person has developed. Ask if they can email you some links to other websites they’ve worked on, or if they can mail you a site or two on CD. Looking at their previous sites may give you a better idea of what you like or don’t like, and an indication of what the designer may be able to do for you. Of course, building any website is a usually team effort, so it may be worth asking your prospective web person, which part of the site he/she built. It’s no point choosing someone because of the fantastic graphics on one of his/her portfolio sites, if those were designed by someone else altogether.

2. How do you charge?

Some web designers will quote for the whole job, and ask for a percentage up front and the remainder once you’ve signed off on the project. Others will charge an hourly rate. If you intend your web designer to update your website regularly, you may also want to ask if these updates will be at an hourly rate or at a fixed charge per update.

3. Can you recommend a good hosting company?

At the end of the day, you don’t want a great website sitting on your computer hard-drive. You want your great website up on the web. To do that, you’ll need a website hosting company for space on their server or find somewhere to host your website for free. Your web designers may be able to recommend a company they’ve used before, or provide you with quotes for a number of services.

4. Will everybody be able to find and see my website?

It’s no good having a website that doesn’t show up on search engines. Similarly, it’s no good having a website that doesn’t display correctly on certain browsers (especially if those browsers are major ones like Internet Explorer and Firefox). Ask how much testing will be done before the website goes live.

5. How will my website be updated?

This will be particularly important if you want to update the website yourself. Ask if you will be able to update the website online, or whether you will need a software programme such as FrontPage or Dreamweaver. Does the amount that you’re paying for your website include training in how to update it? Will you be given a copy of the files at the end of the project?

Your thoughts

Are there any other questions that should be added to this list? If you’ve had a website created for you, how was the experience of working with a designer? Are there things you wish you had asked or did it all turn out okay?

Tags: Creating websites by Natasha
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Whether you have hired a web development team to create you a multi-page website or you are setting up a free profile on MySpace, it’s important to first consider what sort of information you’re going to make available.

You might choose to have a blog, an online forum or animated games which fit the theme of your book.  You might want to post reviews of your work or exchange links with other writers.  These features all add to the website experience and may keep your readers coming back, but they’re not, in my opinion, ’essentials’. 

These would be my essentials:

1. Information about your work

For many writers, promoting their work is a major reason for having a web presence.  Simlarly, for many readers, finding out more about the writer’s work is a major reason to visit the writer’s page. 

On Beverly Cleary’s website, for example, there’s a list of her published books.  Clicking on the cover image next to each one takes you to a page with more information about the book.  There, you can read a sample chapter online or find out where you can order that book online.

If you’re a journalist rather than a novelist, you might want to include links to online examples of your work.  If you’ve had poems or short stories published in an anthology that is not available in online book stores, you might still want to mention the title so readers can seek it out by alternative methods.

2. Information about you

There may be some who argue with this one, but I like to find out about the person behind the writing – and there’s more space on a page of a website than there is on the back cover of a book.

It’s up to you how much information you want to reveal.  Some writers include their entire life history, while others keep this section very much focussed on their writing.   On her ‘about’ page, young adult writer, Lauren Barnholdt includes both the ‘official’ biography and ‘what you really want to know.’

3. A way to get in touch

Readers may come to your website with questions.  Reviewers too.  Journalists or agents.  These people may leave frustrated if there’s no way to contact you. 

To remedy this, you could include an online contact form like the one here on web stuff 4 writers. 

An email or PO Box postal address will also serve the purpose.

Your thoughts

What features do you think are essential to writers’ websites?  Do you agree with the three I’ve listed here, or would you argue for others?

Tags: Creating websites, Promotion by Natasha
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Over the past few weeks, I’ve been updating and viewing web stuff 4 writers with Microsoft’s Internet Explorer 7. It’s the default browser on my laptop so it contains all the bookmarks I use regularly. It’s got the del.icio.us plug-in installed. I thought everything was going okay.

Originally, the layout of this blog was based on a template by Anthony Baggett. I checked it on Firefox, Internet Explorer and Safari when I first installed it. But since then, I’d been tinkering around with the code for the side-bars, adding the BlogRush widget, a search box, the sponsor ads and the icon for the Blogs by Women network. In Internet Explorer, everything still looked fine.

Web stuff 4 writers in Internet Explorer 7

Then, yesterday, I opened up the site in Firefox. Suddenly the blog which I had thought was relatively clean and easy to read, looked an absolute disaster. The BlogRush widget and WordPress icons had moved into a new third column. There were random bullet points against the right-hand margin. The second column had moved half-way down the page.

Web stuff 4 writers in Firefox 2.0.0.7

It was easy enough to fix this. A few tweaks to the code, and the layout of web stuff 4 writers now looks as it should in both Internet Explorer and Firefox.

The point is that not all browsers display your content in the same way.

Since the majority of web users still use Internet Explorer, it could be argued that you should focus your efforts on making your website display correctly in that browser. However, it could be that the majority of your website visitors are using Safari or Firefox. They might be browsing on a Mac or a mobile phone. Even viewing the same site in different versions of browsers, such as Internet Explorer 6 and Internet Explorer 7, may result in different versions of your site. I believe that these are things to take into account when designing/choosing a template for your website or blog.

What does my site look like in different browsers?

Obviously it’s impractical to have every version of every different browser installed on your computer. I’ve only got Internet Explorer and Firefox on this one. My husband has got Safari installed on his Mac, so I can check my site designs on that as well.

To see how a site looks on other browsers, I use Browsershots.org. This is an online service which allows you to type in your web address, select which browsers you want to see your site on, and then sit back and wait for screenshots to be produced.

How do I find out what browser my visitors are using?

If you’re using any sort of web statistics package, such as Google Analytics or WebTrends, then you should be able to get these figures easily enough. For example, over the last week, 54.55% of my visits came from people using Internet Explorer, 41.82 from people using FireFox; 1.82% each from people using Safari and Opera.

Alternatively, you could set up a poll on your blog or just ask your readers to leave a comment on a post. I’m going to do that here.

Your thoughts

Which browser do you use to view web stuff 4 writers (and other websites)? Do you have reasons for using one browser over another?

Tags: Blogging, Creating websites by Natasha
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