web sites

[Mike Wyant Jr]

I’ll drop mine as well. Half blog, half review site, it’s mostly a place for me to infrequently drop stories I’ve taken out of rotation.

https://www.michaeljwyantjr.com/

[David Farland's Team]

Thanks for sharing guys!

[Deleted User]

I need to do more with my website, but I happily share mine when I have a chance!

Len-Berry.com

[Amy Hopkins]

My replies keep vanishing – apologies if I suddenly pop up more than once.

Monica, MailerLite is free to use up to 1000 subscribers. It has full functionality even at the free level, and the paid tiers are reasonable (much cheaper than most WYSIWYG mailing providers). It’s really easy to set up the wordpress popup via the plugin and it’ll let you embed forms, or have a lead page. Under the websites area I have a post logging the steps I have gone through while setting up my A. R. James site, and it explains a little more about the setup.

Also, when you link books on your site it’s best to drop off the ‘ref’ part of the link. You can delete anything after the ASIN.EG https://www.amazon.com/Albans-Choice-Monica-Zwikstra/dp/1999078306/ref=tmm_pap_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=1582776124&sr=8-1 can just be https://www.amazon.com/Albans-Choice-Monica-Zwikstra/dp/1999078306/. Also, it’s pretty easy to clean those up and make them an underlined word or phrase like: Buy it on Amazon here! This is epsecially handy if you sign up for amazon affiliates. It’ll hide the affiliate tag (though you still need to disclose to readers you are using one!) and just make the site look cleaner and more professional 🙂

[Pat Hauldren]

I thought I put mine here. Maybe it was on FB.

http://www.pathauldren.con

I am using a mailchimp plugin for my popup newsletter form. MadMiMi is also a good one.

I also have a top of the page bar promoting my newsletter, which auto sends a welcome letter and a free piece of flash fiction, a very old one. Then my blog posts get sent automatically when I make one. I don’t post a lot, just when some event is coming that I’m attending or a publication or some research I’ve found fascinating that I’m working on and how it relates to my story. I’m keeping the newsletter thing fairly simple and not bombarding them.

It’s not like I have a NYT pub … yet LOL.

I use WordPress hosted by Hostgator.com using the Neve template designed with Elementor and its plugins. SiteOrigin is good (plugin page designer) as it is a drag and drop or wysiwyg. (I love that term. I shoulda named one of my kids that.)

I really prefer black and white simple layouts, but I’ve been told by several people those are nice once but not great for return visits. And I can see that. Images make our sites more interesting.

Comments and ideas on my site are very welcome. I’m still working on it, but I need to know what works for you as a viewer and what doesn’t. Does the first big image background give you a hint on my theme? In what I write? Is it easy to navigate? Is there any text that you can’t read or looks odd? I’m playing with parallax scrolling and making each section of the page fit a certain way. Some I set to minimum height, some to “screen size” so it should adjust to your screen size. Do you get a feel for who I am/what I write from the landing page? etc etc

Thanks all.
Alley / Pat

[Pat Hauldren]

Love the color theme on your site. I like brown with variations. It feels warm and down to earth. And you’ve kept it easy to read and access. Good job!

Pat

[Pat Hauldren]

Mike, nice job on your site. I viewed it on my phone, so I’m not sure if your features post about Patron was supposed to “stick” while the other posts (about twotter) scrolled under it? If so, that’s good lol. Just wondered.

One thing I prefer when I view a writer’s site is something identifying the writer somehow before jumping into a list of blog posts. It’s me, I know lol. To me, a first page should present you and/or your most recent work or thing. You have done that with Patreon but I kinda felt like it was too generic “above the fold” and needed more you. I liked your about page, maybe a little bit of that or a recent pub and image and then the blog? Of course, feel free to ignore me haha. Even just a “published” image and link is a great start.

What you have is very good. But I found your other pages more interesting than the landing page. Just my opinion. And I’m nobody lol.

Thanks for sharing.

Pat

[Pat Hauldren]

Hey Monica. We talked before about sites. I love that you have your pic right up front. Good job. I think (there I go thinking again) maybe putting your podcast interview under your image better than the group info you have now. I’d move the group info to your “about” page. Unless you are a Clarion graduate or something, your local groups won’t mean much to other viewers. Then when you have a publication, put that on your landing page. Thanks for sharing!

Pat

[Pat Hauldren]

Was there a link to your site and I missed it, Amy?

[Amy Hopkins]

Pat that is one of the posts I couldn’t seem to upload 😀 Hopefully it works better now.

My main site: https://amyhopkinsauthor.com
My new site: https://arjameswrites.com

[Catherine Girczyc]

I have 3 websites but nothing that is catgirczyc.com or .ca.
(I worry about people not being able to spell my last name.)
1. My main website is a largish WordPress site that I’ve been keeping up for some years:
http://www.catscreenwriting.com
This has been a general blog for me and has most of my creative resume there. It’s not as targeted as people from APEX were suggesting we have, due to the name and the content.

Yet, I’ve had catscreenwriting for years, and I like it, there are a few followers, etc.
If I do an SFF novel that is published, I’m questioning whether I should set up a whole new site, just for prose and named either after the novel or series or named after me (catgirczyc) ? I wonder if we know what the benefits are of such a targeted website?
2. I have a sister site for a film-set romance novel I self-published. https://catdailies.blog/ Since that novel has had 2 sales so far & one of them is me, testing… I might be taking it down. It was a great experience to use Draft2Digital.com to make it and then see it on all the sales sites. One thing I learned from Cat Dailies (the pseudonym) was that searching anything with Cat in it on the internet is very difficult 🙂 You get all the daily cat pictures coming up first :)! So that pseudonym may be retiring.

3. I also have a portfolio site for my career in technical writing and communications on Homestead (Used to be Intuit):
http://www.girczyc.biz
The portfolio site is perfect for targeted users – for example, on a resume or for my TechWr students at VCC to check.
It’s very targeted to tech writing and only costs me $15/month.

For a new ‘prose’ site I looked at Homestead and it would be a lot more money to get a site with mail now there, too.
I pay quite a bit for WordPress now (2 sites, with the domains, etc.) but not enough to get the ability to have a mailing application like MailChimp embedded, I have to up my subscription again to get the ‘business’ version which adds about $350 in Cda per year. Not certain I want to do that.
Any thoughts?

[Jan Nerenberg]

Trying to figure out how to navigate. I set up my new web site as: jannerenberg.com. My old one was Right, Write, and Word Wright on Blogger. My new one has a link to my old Blogger posts. Spent three weeks: 1-Researching, 2-Host Gator & tutorial setup, and 3- WPLive to refine. It was fun in hindsight. Any suggestions?

SUGGESTION: WordPressLive is $149 p/month for as long or as little as you want. They are brilliant. Best to call weekdays in the AM. They can walk you through anything WP related. It was the best money I spent on my site.

[ELDRIDGE STIMMEL]

Find me at authoreldridgestimmel.space. Feel free to link to me!

[Amy Hopkins]

Mailerlite is free up to 1000 subscribers, and its pricing tiers are pretty reasonable once you pass that. It has full functionality even at the free level – you can segment, create funnels and other stuff. There is a plugin for WP to add forms and popups, too. I have those enabled on both of my sites 🙂

My websites are https://amyhopkinsauthor.com (established site for my main author name) and https://arjameswrites.com (new site/in progress site for an up and coming pen name).