Writing Tip: New Updated Website

on

Back in 2014, I created a personal blog on Blogger. In 2017, when I decided to return to the querying trenches, I revamped it, made pages, customized it all the way down into coding to create a website. When I say coding, I mean beginner coding. I can copy and paste coding all day long, but not write it. Copy/paste sounds easy, but if one little thing is off when stringing coding together...epic fails and frustration. 

Recently, I've noticed blogger is not pretty-looking as a website, outdated and not sleek, so I was determined to switch. First, I was going to hire someone to transfer it over because there were oh-so-many blog posts. Then a friend offered to do it for free, but he was tied up in paying projects, and I'm impatient to a fault. WordPress sounded great, but was not interested in paying hosting fees.

So I went to the world of Twitter to ask opinions and thought I had settled on Wix. Then, one of my publisher's created her own website using Google Sites and said it was super easy. Her site had the sleek and modern look I wanted. I read reviews saying it was limited in its use. I thought I'd try it and then when I hit a roadblock, I would go to Wix instead. Only when I hit roadblocks, I found ways around them. I build this site entirely free, costing me about three ours of time, most spent on choose and doctoring color of photos for better visibility. The only cost I would have is buying a domain name, but I'd already done that--Google $12/year.

What did I use?

Google Sites If you have a Google account, you can save it in your Google Drive as you work on it. It was very easy. I'm computer savvy but nowhere near an expert. I do think this website is easy enough for those with basic computer skills. However, the more skills, the more layers you can add. There also seems to be help and support, but I did not need it. It has the ability to add buttons for purchase links where my books are for sale, and the easy-to-add hyperlinks are handy. It was simple to create and manage multiple pages. To make it go live, it is as simple as hitting a "publish" button.

Pexels If you want photos on the website, you can use your own or copyright-free photos. You cannot take people's photos off the internet without permission. There are many websites that have these copyright-free photos from photographers who share them to gain exposure.

PowerPoint There are also many ways to doctor the photos. The one on my main page was too dark. I prefer the simplicity of PowerPoint. I uploaded the picture, changed the brightness and contrast to get a deep orange, and then saved as a JPEG. Some people don't realize you can save PP as different files. I create ads this way too. You can do lots of fun things with fonts and pics. 

Mailchimp On my last website, I had a pop-up subscription already made via Mailchimp where I also write my (occasional) newsletters. Google Sites is missing perks like forms, but you can embed just about anything. I embedded the subscription form from Mailchimp so people can subscribe to my newsletters.


AddToAny Another roadblock was follow widgets and sharing widgets. Widgets are like min-apps you add onto a website to perform a task the website cannot do on its own. I simply found a free place to grab the coding to embed it. The share widget was simple because they have the code for the websites that takes the viewer there where they login. The follow widget involved minimal altering of coding. Mainly, I had to plug my social media handles in where they highlighted. Then, you embed each in Google Sites on whatever pages you want them on; when the viewer clicks on them, they are taken to your specific social media pages. The best thing, is you can choose many options and AddToAny strings the coding together for you; it works for any website, but does have specific pages for Wordpress, Blogger, and some others.

Blogger I already had a blog, and blogger is free, but was able to simply embed the blog in Google sites. All my blogs are still there, and I can still add to them through Blogger itself. Blogger also is user friendly. I've slimmed mine down to no longer be a website and transferred my domain to the new site (was easy once I realized I had to drop it off blogger before I could use it on Sites).

YouTube Last, I embedded my book trailers from YouTube. It's simple to do: right click on video and choose the copy/embed action. Then, choose the embed option on Google Sites, paste, enter, and voila!

For an author website, I consider mine complex. I could not help but adding more to it. As of right now, I chose not to have a contact form outside of my newsletter and links to social media. I figure they can find me, and I get bombarded by emails in three accounts already. Something like that can be added via Mailchimp or AddToAny. This was a quick rundown so if anyone decides to follow my advice through this, some areas might need more elaboration. Find me on social media a message me. I'm willing to help when I have the time. 

Here's my cute widget! Check out the end result of my website.