Website help

One of my goals for next year is to set up a website for my writing. It doesn’t need to be complex, just a front page with a few linkages to stories that I’ve written. Eventually it will become the page from which I promote some book projects I have planned. It’ll probably be a fairly typical author’s page. I don’t think I’ll move my blog onto it though. I like my blog here in LJ for now. The biggest requirement is that the webpage set up needs to be simple enough that I can modify it by myself without waiting on anyone else. I’m fairly certain that a simple html editor or website builder will be able to manage this for me, but I don’t want to spend piles of money.

Any suggestions?

18 thoughts on “Website help”

  1. Basic HTML is really, really simple. With the sort of thing you’re talking about, I’d say just learning the coding yourself, and you can do that for free. http://lissaexplains.com/ is rather eye-blinding and has some annoying advertising, but has more than enough information for you to learn how to do it.

    I prefer hand-coding my HTML because as far as I’m aware, even the really nice programs like Dreamweaver insert /some/ extraneous code crap into it, which can make trouble-shooting a pain in the butt. HTML was meant to be simple, so don’t be frightened by my referring to it as “code.” It’s not, really. The kind of stuff you’d be doing would be paragraph breaks (done simply by typing <p>), italics or bolding (<i> or <b;&gt), changing the background color (<background color=”what you want it to be”>), that sort of thing. It’s really easy.

    My friend has some free graphics sets available at http://woodgrove.hermitism.com/ , but to get the sort of setup she does is a bit more complex than you probably want. Still, just an example of the sort of thing you have available and can do without spending a penny.

  2. Basic HTML is really, really simple. With the sort of thing you’re talking about, I’d say just learning the coding yourself, and you can do that for free. http://lissaexplains.com/ is rather eye-blinding and has some annoying advertising, but has more than enough information for you to learn how to do it.

    I prefer hand-coding my HTML because as far as I’m aware, even the really nice programs like Dreamweaver insert /some/ extraneous code crap into it, which can make trouble-shooting a pain in the butt. HTML was meant to be simple, so don’t be frightened by my referring to it as “code.” It’s not, really. The kind of stuff you’d be doing would be paragraph breaks (done simply by typing <p>), italics or bolding (<i> or <b;&gt), changing the background color (<background color=”what you want it to be”>), that sort of thing. It’s really easy.

    My friend has some free graphics sets available at http://woodgrove.hermitism.com/ , but to get the sort of setup she does is a bit more complex than you probably want. Still, just an example of the sort of thing you have available and can do without spending a penny.

  3. When I used to make websites I used frontpage, which is an incredibly awesome program. I think it’s also fairly pricey, too. Yahoo! Pagebuilder is easy, but I assume you want to host your own site.

  4. When I used to make websites I used frontpage, which is an incredibly awesome program. I think it’s also fairly pricey, too. Yahoo! Pagebuilder is easy, but I assume you want to host your own site.

  5. I would suggest using some kind of templating engine that applies a bunch of standard formatting to either plain text or markup of some kind (wikitext, html, whatever you’re comfortable with). I don’t know of any decent off-the-shelf systems, since I prefer to roll my own, but anything that allows you to specify layout and formatting separate from the content without having to rebuild everything if the layout changes is a good plan.

    Alternatively, you could use one of the free content management systems, such as Drupal. You should be able to turn off most of the stuff you don’t need.

    If you want any help setting up something like this, give me a shout. I’m horrible at the artistic side, but I have run a few websites in my time.

  6. I would suggest using some kind of templating engine that applies a bunch of standard formatting to either plain text or markup of some kind (wikitext, html, whatever you’re comfortable with). I don’t know of any decent off-the-shelf systems, since I prefer to roll my own, but anything that allows you to specify layout and formatting separate from the content without having to rebuild everything if the layout changes is a good plan.

    Alternatively, you could use one of the free content management systems, such as Drupal. You should be able to turn off most of the stuff you don’t need.

    If you want any help setting up something like this, give me a shout. I’m horrible at the artistic side, but I have run a few websites in my time.

  7. Personally, I would say get some web space and install Joomla (www.joomla.org) – it’s a whole graphical interface that would allow you to enter in your writings, and you can make it as simple or complex as you want.

    You just need to make sure that wherever you get hosted, that you have PHP and MySQL.

  8. Personally, I would say get some web space and install Joomla (www.joomla.org) – it’s a whole graphical interface that would allow you to enter in your writings, and you can make it as simple or complex as you want.

    You just need to make sure that wherever you get hosted, that you have PHP and MySQL.

  9. I use 1st Page 2000
    http://www.evrsoft.com/

    It’s free, and let’s you have complete control. You get to see the raw HTML, but it also does decent previews and can even be set up so you can preview the page in any browser you have installed on your system

  10. I use 1st Page 2000
    http://www.evrsoft.com/

    It’s free, and let’s you have complete control. You get to see the raw HTML, but it also does decent previews and can even be set up so you can preview the page in any browser you have installed on your system

  11. I’ve been meaning to do something like this, too. Thought about using googlepages, haven’t come to any decisions.

    Please do let me know once you’ve picked a platform to use. I might want to hitchike on your idea…

  12. I’ve been meaning to do something like this, too. Thought about using googlepages, haven’t come to any decisions.

    Please do let me know once you’ve picked a platform to use. I might want to hitchike on your idea…

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