Advanced Fiction Writing Blog

We’ve now been discussing for quite a long time the things you need to think about before you sit down to design your web site. If you’ve followed the whole discussion, and have answered all those 9 questions for yourself, then you now have a pretty good idea of what kind of site you want/need/can afford.

What’s next?

That all depends on you. It should be clear that there is no simple answer for everybody. There are a whole boatload of simple answers, each of which is great for some people and terrible for others.

But in a word, what comes next is design. “Design” is a process where you brainstorm up a good solution that meets all your requirements. Your requirements may be impossible. (For example, if you want a glitzy, database-driven site with lots of interaction, heavy graphics, and you want it yesterday at no cost, but you don’t want to do any of the work yourself, then you are in pipe-dream land. Can’t be done, although you might get most of that by just launching a blog.)

If your requirements are possible, then you need to sketch out the action plan to get from here to there. That’s your design. Only then should you start building the site (or getting someone else to do it).

A good design should take account of the possibility for change and make it as easy as possible to make changes across your whole site as quickly as possible. Let me give you two examples of that:

1) You may have noticed that I changed my little header strip just for today. (It’s the box above this blog that starts out “Successful Fiction Writing = Organizing + Creating + Marketing” and then has a bunch of products with links.) Just for today, Thursday, Feb. 21, 2008, I added a little link in red that says “24 Hour Special (Feb. 21, 2008)”. I added one line in one file yesterday, and that change showed up on every page of my web site. Tonight at midnight, I’ll change that line in one file, and the new change will show up on every page of my web site. That’s good design. Many web site designs would require you to manually make that change in every page. If you have hundreds of pages, that could be a real nightmare. A good design lets you make changes quickly.

2) Somebody emailed me today to say that he couldn’t sign up for my e-zine because my signup box was rejecting his email address, which ends in “.info”. I have a little JavaScript program that does some simple checks to make sure people don’t accidentally make some of the common typing errors. That program assumes that the email address will end with 2 or 3 characters after the dot. I changed it so it would take up to 4 characters. I only changed one file, but it instantly fixed all the signup boxes on every page of my site. That’s good design.

Good design uses something called “Cascading Style Sheets” to help set the look and feel for your web site. This is usually abbreviated “CSS” and it makes it easy to define the fonts, colors, background images, margins, paddings, and many other things EVERYWHERE on your site, just by changing one file. If you’ve ever had to change any of those manually on every page of a site, you know what a nightmare that is. Good design uses CSS for that. You can do most of your page layout using CSS, rather than using tables in HTML. That’s good design.

Good design is about being lazy — setting things up once, and letting the computer make sure that the same thing happens everywhere on your site. You may think this is obvious, but you’d be amazed how many sites have a terrible, wretched design. But I digress.

We’ve covered a lot of ground in the last few weeks. It’s time for questions. I can’t answer all possible questions, but I’ll make a stab at as many as possible. Ask what you want. We have some excellent web designers who read this blog, and some of them can likely answer questions that I can’t.

What would you like to know about designing your web site or blog? Post a comment here.

We’ve been discussing author web sites and blogs for quite a while now. A couple of weeks ago, I posted a set of important questions you should ask yourself before you build that site or blog. I’ve now discussed most of those in some detail, but there are a couple left to deal with. We’ll hit those tonight.

But first, a couple of questions came in today:

Anne asked:

I have a question that is not exactly related to the topic but I have needed to ask for a long time. Does it cost anything to get your work copyrighted? How do you go about it? I have some ideas for stories but I haven’t written them on my blog yet because I was afraid someone would steal my idea.

Randy sez: My standard disclaimer: I’m not a copyright attorney and am not qualified to give legal advice. So everything I say here should be considered as just my understanding of the copyright situation. When you write something, it belongs to you and is yours under copyright law. Nobody else has the rights to use it, although they do have some limited rights to use parts of it if they give you due credit and they follow the rules. Getting your work formally copyrighted is a way to prove that you are the real author, but it doesn’t change your actual rights. Normally, my publisher pays for the copyrights for my novels. I put a copyright notice at the bottom of my web pages.

Putting your stories on your blog might be considered as publishing them, and many publishers would therefore not be too interested in republishing them. And if you put your stories on your blog or web site, your ideas might well be borrowed by others. (You can’t copyright an idea — you copyright the expression of that idea. If somebody writes their own version of your story, you might be out of luck.)

Karen wrote:

While learning what all those icons were for I found IWeb pages that have a selection of styles to use for a simple site. They don’t have the flexibility other sw has, but for a first time exposure site, I’m hoping it will do fine. I haven’t selected a hosting site yet, but have bought all my domains and anything similar, as you suggested.

Now, Ran, you know your talking to someone that when it comes to computers I don’t know my keyboard from my cat food, but, if I host these IWeb pages on a site by GoDaddy, will I be able to change things later when I need to apply PayPal or links to Amazon?

Randy sez: I love my Mac too, but I was not real jazzed with iWeb. I played with it just a little and found that pages it produces are actually pictures of pages. They are still searchable because the text is saved in something called “alt” tags, but it seemed to be not the sort of tool I need for my own web development. There is no denying that iWeb is super easy to use.

To answer your question, yes, you should be able to change things later, no matter what hosting system you use. To see an example of a small web site made with iWeb, check out James Scott Bell’s web site at www.JamesScottBell.com.

Now let’s get to those last two questions that every author should answer. I’ll consider some of the possible responses, and discuss the implications of each choice.

Question 8) When do you want your site done?

Answer a: Yesterday, when my book came out!

Randy sez: It would have been good to create your site a few months ago, so you could put the URL in your book for interested readers. That way, your book would be a nice advertisement for your web site (although the web site would probably not be much of an advertisement for the book — it’s simply too late for that to happen). But all is not lost. Create a web site today with a domain that exactly matches the name on your book if you possibly can get it. Put a blog on it. You can do that in one day. Some of the folks who read your book will guess you might have a web site and will guess what it is. Have something on your blog that will meet their needs. This might be as simple as: “Sign up for my newsletter so you’ll know when my next book comes out.” You can use this base to help promote your NEXT book. You may think this is dumb, but this is in essence exactly the strategy most authors use. It’s not a great strategy, but it’s SOMETHING.

Answer b: Today would be great

Randy sez: Decide why today would be great. Is there something very urgent that requires it to be today? If so, see my response to (a) above. But if not, take things a little slower. Answer all nine of the questions. (You can find them all here). Write down your answers. Make a strategy. Find a good webmaster if you plan to hire that task out. Give them your answers. Talk to the webmaster. Talk to web-savvy friends. Buy me a Snapple at a writing conference and pick my brains. Then build your site. A little design goes a long way. Fixing a badly designed site is five times the work of doing it right the first time.

Answer c: This week

Randy sez: See my response to (b) above. There is rarely a good reason to rush into a web site or blog.

Answer d: This month

Randy sez: It’s very reasonable to work through all the questions, find a webmaster, and get a good prototype done in a month. It might take longer. It might be quicker. If you’re in a rush, make sure there’s an excellent reason to rush. People say, “Marry in haste, repent at leisure.” I say, “Build a site in haste, repent for all eternity.”

Answer e: Within the next few months

Randy sez: There’s nothing wrong with taking a lot of time and doing it right, especially if you have many other things going on. A few months is a reasonable time span, although it’s leisurely. You could do it all in a month, if it’s a high priority. If it’s not, then take those few months.

Answer f: Someday

Randy sez: See my answer (e) above. My response is the same.

Answer g: I have a web site, but it needs revamping

Randy sez: It’s never too late to think everything through carefully and define your requirements precisely. This may be a golden chance to do it right this time. If you’ve had a web site up for months or years and the thing is starting to look like all the vamp has gone out of it, then a revamp might be just the ticket. You may want to totally restructure your web site. But that could lead to a problem. Suppose you’ve got a ton of incoming links to your site, and now you want to move all those pages around (or even move to a new domain?) There is something called a .htaccess file that will help you redirect all those links. I did this a year ago when I moved my domain from www.rsingermanson.com to just plain www.ingermanson.com. I set up a .htaccess file on the old site to repoint all those precious links to the new site. For a time, the search engines got a little confused, but my high rankings for many search phrases recovered pretty quickly.

Question 9) Do you want the search engines to bring visitors to your site?

Answer a: Yes

Randy sez: Good for you! You do need to make sure that each page has a dominant topic. Webmasters and internet marketers often talk about “search engine optimization”. There are few topics where so much misinformation is so widely believed. If you look around the web, you’ll hear many different opinions. It is best to listen to those who actually achieve high rankings than to listen to those who haven’t. My own source of info is James Brausch, who I think has done simply the best job of anyone on the web of doing hard numerical research. Check out his blog at www.JamesBrausch.org. I’ve not found anyone who knows more than he does.

Answer b: No, I could care less about search engines

Randy sez: Wow, that’s a rare attitude. Why in the world would you have a web site if you don’t want search engines to bring people to your site? I’m not criticizing, of course. I’m merely aghast.

Answer c: I have no idea, but I suppose it sounds good

Randy sez: Yes, it’s good. Search engines brought order to the web. It’s because of search engines that I can sit down at my computer and find out critical information in less than sixty seconds that used to take a trip to the library. And I can do it a 1 AM, the night before my book is due. (Yes, I have done this. I have literally done exactly this.) If you have a web site that you want people to visit, you should care about the search engines. If you don’t want people to visit, then, um . . . why bother?

Today, I want to continue looking at the questions that you should answer before you build your web site. I posted a list of these a week or two ago and have been working through this list adding more details on them. Before I get to that, I’d like to respond to a couple of comments that my loyal readers posted today:

Lynn wrote:

Randy, one of the things my husband and I have been discussing over the last few months has been to add downloadable audio and possibly video files to our website. This idea came from a discussion with a number of people who listen to mp3s or books on cd (my husband does this every day when he drives to work). My question is on the layout of a website to allow for this. Would it be better to have a list of these files on the front page or a link to a page that has a list of files (right now we only have pdf files for download)?

Randy sez: This is a good idea and could be quite an attraction. I would not put them on the main page unless that’s what the whole site is about. (If it is, then do it that way.) But it’s probably better to have one page devoted to your digital downloads. If you do this, be sure to compress those MP3 files pretty tight. I’ve found that 11 MB per hour of audio works pretty well. (Normal audio is 600 MB per hour of audio). You might want to upload the video to YouTube and then just display it on your own page. I’m not quite sure how to do that, but lots of people do it, so it can’t be too hard.

Lara wrote:

I’m late to the conversation here, but wanted to point out a good (FREE!) open source web site development program. With a little front-end programming by my software engineer husband, I was able to put together my entire website on my own using Joomla.

Randy sez: Sounds great! I don’t know much about Joomla. I’ve heard of it, and from what I gather, it’s a Content Management System. I would be interested, Lara, to hear more about it. If you want to email me a few paragraphs about it privately, I’ll summarize it here, since it would be of general interest to my blog readers.

Charlotte wrote:

Do you have any ideas on using one wordpress installation for several blogs? I would prefer to do all my customizing at tone time, and not for six or eight installations individually for time and energy constraints if nothing else.

Randy sez: No, I don’t know how easy or hard this would be. I’ve never tried this. You should be able to create one WordPress “theme” and use it on all your blogs. (A “theme” is the cusomizable part of your blog that determines how it looks and how it’s laid out. I took the default WordPress theme and modified it to get my own.)

Now let’s turn to Questions #6 and #7 on my list. I’ll reiterate that you MUST answer all 9 questions at some point. If you don’t, you are going to wind up with a site you don’t want or can’t use. #6 and #7 have to do with how much energy and money you’re willing and able to expend on your web site and/or blog.

Question 6) Can you do the techie stuff?

Answer a: No, I can’t do it and won’t learn; I want to pay somebody else to do it all

Randy sez: This is going to limit your options, because it means that any time you want to make changes to the HTML of your web site, you need to pay somebody to do it. If you want to add content yourself, it would make sense for you to pay somebody to set up a nice Content Management Site (a blog is a simple example) that would allow you to add new stuff whenever you want. You’ll not be able to make certain types of changes to your site, but that might be just fine with you.

Answer b: No, I want to use a simple Sitebuilder web site that I can use to create my site without paying anybody; I understand that this means I can’t make super complex sites, but I just want something simple for now

Randy sez: Again, this may be a limitation on you, so be aware of that going in, and try to find a Sitebuilder that will allow you to do the kinds of things that you know you’ll need to do. If you need to be able to add info about your books, graphics of your books, etc., then make sure the system you use lets you do that.

Answer c: No, I need somebody to set it up, but I’d like to be able to make a few small changes, if somebody shows me how

Randy sez: If you have a webmaster build your site, let them know this upfront. Tell them you want them to use a technology that can be edited by a beginner. For example, if they build the site using FrontPage, then you can use FrontPage to make minor changes and you probably won’t mess things up. Likewise, if they build the site using DreamWeaver, you can use DreamWeaver (or a simpler program named Contribute which is designed to work with DreamWeaver sites) to make minor changes to the site. “Minor changes” here means things like changing the text on the page or maybe even using a page template to create a whole new page that you then edit.

Answer d: No, I need somebody to set it up, but then I want to learn how to do fairly major things

Randy sez: See my comments to Answer c above. Tell your webmaster this is what you want to do. Make them tell you in advance what tools you’ll need to buy in order to work on the site. Make them tell you how much time it’ll take for you to learn how to use these tools, and how much it’ll cost you. Any webmaster should know the answers to these questions and be able to explain them to you in plain English.

Answer e: No, but I can use one of those programs like DreamWeaver or FrontPage that does all the hard stuff; I’m willing to spend some time to learn to use them

Randy sez: Good for you! Both of these programs can produce quite complicated web sites. It would be wise to get some training. The truth is that an amateur can create a bad structural design using these tools (just as an amateur artist can create bad art using powerful graphics tools like PhotoShop or FireWorks). There are classes at many community colleges that will get you going. And there an infinite number of books on how to use these tools.

Answer f: No, but I can learn how to hand-code my pages; just tell me what books to buy!

Randy sez: This was my own approach, and it’s served me well (with the caveat that I don’t do my own graphics — I hire that out). The books go quickly out of date, and they’re all geared to different kinds of people. Go to a good bookstore, look at the Web Design section, and look at every single book on a given subject. Pick the two that seem best geared to you and buy them. One will turn out to be a lot more useful than the other, but you won’t realize this until you’ve read 200 pages of each. Start with books on HTML. Then learn CSS. After that, a good book on PHP might be useful.

Answer g: Yawn, of course! I know HTML, CSS, PHP, JavaScript, SQL, Ruby, Perl, Java, or I can learn them from a book

Randy sez: Then you are where I am now (except I don’t care for Perl and haven’t really got far into Ruby yet). Each of these tools has its place. If you know all these, go to it. You’ll soon have a great web site.

Question 7) How much do you want to spend on your site?

Answer a: I want a free site

Randy sez: You can build a free site. There are places that host a free site. There is a major disadvantage, though. If you get a free site, the domain will not be yours. And if you ever decide to move your free site, any links that go to your site will break. If you spend a few dollars per month to have a site on your own domain (for example, my domain here is www.AdvancedFictionWriting.com), then you can move your site to a new hosting service at any time, and all the links to your site will still work. So be careful! Are you sure you really want it free? One of your free options is to put up a free blog on Blogspot.com or WordPress.com. Lots of people do this. Some of these blogs are quite successful. But as we discussed a few weeks ago, your web site doesn’t get that traffic, and that might be a problem for you.

Answer b: Nothing up front, and less than $10 per month for maintenance

Randy sez: Hmmmm, this has about the same disadvantages as a free site. See the above comments.

Answer c: A few hundred bucks up front, and as little as possible for maintenance.

Randy sez: For this price, you’ll need to do most of the work yourself, or pay for a small site. A small site can be a GOOD site, of course. A blog, in fact, might be a good option, since it should be quite to cheap to pay somebody to create a blog for you. Any good webmaster should be able to create a blog on your own domain and teach you how to use it for a few hundred bucks.

Answer d: A couple of thousand dollars up front, and less than $100 per month after that

Randy sez: You can get a very nice web site for that kind of money. Of course, that might be overkill. You should look at your answers to Questions 1 through 5 to see if you need that much web site. (Maybe you do, maybe you don’t. Only you know the answers. It all depends what your goals are.)

Answer e: Cost is no object; give me the best!

Randy sez: I don’t hire myself out to do web sites, but . . . if cost is REALLY no object, send me a million dollars via certified check and I will give you a very nice site. Very nice. Of course, once again I’d caution you to first make sure that you really need a Ferrari, if a Honda might do the job for you. Again, this comes down to the things you really need your site to be able to do, and you are the sole judge of that.

Today, we’ll resume our running discussion of blogs and web sites and what you need to do to develop them. First, I’ll tackle a few questions from readers:

Cori asked:

Randy, I am interested in starting a blog. If we quote someone, maybe you let’s say, and we give you attribution, are we supposed to seek permission first?

Also, what is the cyber acceptable procedure for including links on a website or blog? Do we need a signed contract of acknowledgement from the originator?

Randy sez: The usual copyright rules still apply. If you quote an entire article on your web site or blog, you’d better have permission from the real author. With Google at hand, it’s easy for me to check if somebody is quoting my articles without permission (and sometimes they do it without even an attribution, so it looks like they wrote it).

If you quote a sentence or two from a blog or web article, that’s generally fine, but you should link to them. That’s not only polite, it even helps them.

As for links to other web sites or blogs, I’ve never heard of anyone complaining about an incoming link! Those are good! If you want to link to my web site or blog, feel free! Even if you don’t want to, do it anyway!

Incoming links strengthen a web site. There is no down-side to an incoming link. No need to ask permission. Just do it.

Camille wrote:

ehhhmmm…. good question Cori. Maybe I should have asked that one before I put a link to Randy’s blog in my last blog post. (I had some very scathing things to say about this blog and the appalling lack of in-your-face advertising.)

Randy sez: Thanks, Camille! Scathe me all you want, as long as you link to me!

Sesgaia asked (regarding the YouTube contest I blogged about last week):

I’m curious- how does something like this contest figure in to an already existing goals plan? Would it be considered an interruption, or would it just require re-arranging other priorities? Because it certainly seems time-consuming…

Randy sez: From a time-management perspective, a contest like that is an interruption. When an opportunity like that comes in, I ask whether the payoff is worth the time investment. If not, then I skip it. For me, the time to create a YouTube video is not much. I spent about half an hour total writing my script. I filmed a test video on my iMac using the built-in camera. Right now, the audio quality isn’t great and I need to make a couple of tweaks to the physical environment, but I’m almost ready to shoot the final version. For me, the biggest problem has been that I didn’t have much experience making a movie with iMovie until I tried this, so I’m burning some time learning that. However, I was planning to produce some video products in the next few months anyway, so I might as well learn it now as later. For me, the time is worth it, but it’s also delaying my current Short Term Target, but that’s a price I’m willing to pay.

OK, let’s move on to talk about web site requirements some more. Some days ago, I posted a list of 9 questions you should ask yourself before you design your web site or blog. I’ve discussed 4 of those in more detail. Today, we’ll look at #5, along with some possible responses:

Question 5) How interactive do you want your site?

Answer a: I just want to show information; the user just needs to be able to get from one page to the others by clicking links

Randy sez: Good! This is simple and you could easily learn to do those links yourself. So you have options. You can build your whole site, or have a pro do it and then update it yourself.

Answer b: I may have a few forms on my site, (for example, a form that sends email)

Randy sez: Forms are a simple type of interaction, and you can easily do those without any help from anyone, if you take the time to learn how.

Answer c: I want fancy graphics that move around; show me some glitz, Baby!

Randy sez: Sigh. Once again, make sure you have a good reason for this, because this is going to cost you in terms of time, energy, and aggravation.

Answer d: I want my users to be able to leave comments (for example, comments on a blog)

Randy sez: This is relatively easy to do, at least within a blog, because all you need is blogging software, which is freely available.

Answer e: I want users to be able to enter information into databases so my site can display that or do computations (for example, an income tax calculating web site)

Randy sez: This is much more work, unless you can find software somewhere that does exactly what you want. But normally, this requires you to create a database and then write software in some language such as Perl, PHP, Java, or Ruby to hook up your web pages to the database. It’s doable, but be prepared to pay for it, either in time or money.

We’ll look at the next question on the list tomorrow.

We’ve been discussing blogs and web sites for a couple of weeks now, and I’d like to get caught up on comments that have come in the last couple of days. Next week, we’ll pick up again and continue discussing how you define your web site and/or blog requirements.

Bonne said (regarding the Simpleology YouTube video contest):

I don’t have the right camera ~ just the little one built on top of my Mac.

Randy sez: That’s all I have–an iSight camera on my iMac plus the iMovie software. That’s all I need for the video I’m going to make. I wrote my script and timed it and I need to shave 34 seconds off it before I make the video. I hope to get it made over the weekend. And yes, I’ll put up a link to it when I put it on YouTube. I plan on having some fun with this video.

Beth Goddard wrote:

Can I ask a blog and website related question here because I’m still mulling over all the information from last week? I happen to share my name with a British actress and I get tons of hits from people from the UK searching on Beth Goddard. I don’t know if this is a good thing or a bad thing. My thinking is hey, if even one of those people buys a book . . .

I suppose my only option, if this isn’t a good thing, is to rework my website and blog under a different form of my name. Any thoughts?

Randy sez: Traffic is traffic is usually good. In this case, it probably won’t help you but definitely won’t harm you unless you were getting millions of hits, which would tend to jam up your site. I wouldn’t worry about it too much. These folks probably aren’t interested in you–they’re interested in the actress, and you aren’t her.

Gerhard posted some excellent comments on the web site I analyzed on Wednesday that seemed to be almost invisible to Google (www.ThePathOfFaith.com). He made some good points, so check those out in yesterday’s comments. By the way, if you Google that URL now, there are three results in the search, two of them from this blog. So we’ve added some link power to that site.

Several of you posted comments discussing whether I should have more graphics and/or links to my products on my blog. I appreciate your interest in my well-being! Thanks to all of you.

I have always liked to keep the ads to a very low profile on both my web site and my e-zine. The e-zine in particular has never accepted paid ads from anyone. Once in awhile, I’ve taken a guest article, and quite often I’ll mention one of my products or a product of somebody else that I myself use. I don’t remember whether I’ve ever recommended a product unless I own it or unless it is essentially the same as a product that I use. (For example, I use 1shoppingcart.com to handle my emails and I recommend it, but I also recommend prosender.com and aweber.com, which are very similar in quality. I only need one email system, but the two that I don’t use are less expensive, so it seems very reasonable to recommend them.)

In general, I prefer to keep the “ad static” as low as possible. Whenever I release a new product, I send out a short notice to my e-zine readers. That’s about the extent of it. I know this is “not the way things are done.” I subscribe to most of the other writing-related e-zines, and it appears that my ad ratio is very much lower than everyone else. I like it that way.

As for this web site and blog, I want to strike a balance between the two extremes: “too many ads” and “how do I order this product I want?” As yet, I’ve resisted the urge to put Google AdSense ads on every page. It’s possible that I could make my products a little more visible, but I also feel that “less is more.” Again, that runs counter to the prevailing wisdom, but it’s my site and I’ll run it my way. Let me assure you all that it does just fine.

Next week we’ll pick up the topic of web sites again. There is still a lot to say!

Want to write a best-selling novel? Of course you do. So do I. So does everybody with a pulse.

The question is how to do it.

Since today is Valentine’s Day, I don’t plan to blog tonight. So I thought I’d post a quick blog early in the day about something that just came across my radar. We’ve been talking about web sites and blogs for a couple of weeks, but let’s switch gears just for one day.

Mark Joyner, the Simpleology guy, author of four #1 bestsellers, will soon be launching some new courses. I’ve taken several of his courses, and am in the middle of one right now on Viral Marketing which I really like a lot. Mark has a great ability to break things down to simple, simple, simple terms. I’ve read way too many academic journals, so I appreciate simple stuff.

Mark’s new course will be on “How to become a best-selling author.”

Hey, sign me up! That was my first reaction.

Then I saw the cool contest Mark is running right now. Create a 2-minute YouTube video and post it by February 26. The top three videos will win some prizes, INCLUDING a custom-crafted marketing plan created by Mark specifically for each winner.

Just for entering this video contest, you get an e-book valued at $147 on how to write exceptionally fast.

Check out the rules for the contest on Mark’s web site.

I’m going to start writing the script for my 2-minute video this afternoon. Hope you will too!

A reader asked a question a couple of days ago that posed an interesting mystery. I’ll quote it again here, because this is a topic of general interest.

Sylvia wrote:

I just remembered that a friend of mine did her own ministry site. She posted all her articles on it. Later, however, when she did a “search” for it, it wouldn’t come up on Google. I don’t know if she tried some of the other search engines or not. A ministry site that can’t be found is of little value!

She called a tech, and got such an involved answer that she finally thanked him and hung up. What can she do?

Randy sez: Yesterday, I asked Sylvia to email with the URL of this missing web site so I could investigate. She did, and gave me permission to discuss this on the blog here.

Here is the URL of the site: www.ThePathOfFaith.com.

I had a look at the site today. It’s quite “pretty” but it is, apparently, completely ineffective because Google and other search engines seem to be ignoring it. What’s the deal?

The deal is that Google actually does index the site, but it’s lost in the noise. Here are some of the things I did to test that:

1) First, I Googled the actual URL of the site: “www.thepathoffaith.com”. (I didn’t enter the quotes, just what’s inside them.)

The result was one single entry, the home page of the web site. We conclude from this that Google knows this site exists. That’s the first step. The site is not being blackballed for some strange reason. But there are obviously no incoming links to this site, because if there were, the search above would have found them. (As an experiment, Google “www.AdvancedFictionWriting.com” and see how many results you find. It’s about 1950 as of this minute.)

2) There is an “Articles” section on the site. As I understand it, the purpose of the site is to make these articles public. I clicked on the button to take me to the “Articles” section. I was taken to a page that told me to go to the Site Map in order to get to the articles. This is a needless roadblock for site visitors, and it may explain why nobody links to it–the articles are pretty well hidden. It would be far better to put links to all the articles on this page.

3) I went to the Site Map and clicked on the first article. It’s titled “A Barrier to Trusting God” and begins with the phrase “Mandy struggled with trusting the Lord”. I Googled this exact phrase (including the quotes). The reason for using the quotes is that it tells Google you want to find all articles that contain that exact phrase, with all those words in exactly that order.

Google responded with one result, which was in fact the article I was reading. So that’s the second result–Google has indexed the entire site. However, if you Google that phrase in the normal way that people usually do (without the quotes) then that page does not appear on the first three pages of results from Google. The reason is that the site is not considered “important enough” by Google to rate a result near the top.

How does Google decide which sites are “important” and which aren’t? Part of that answer lies with their famous “PageRank” formula, which determines the rank of every page on the web, based on how many incoming links that page has. The formula is not complicated, but solving the formula requires some basic linear algebra methods which I don’t dare go into here.

The owner of the site could help things immensely by getting some incoming links to the site. In fact, she’s already begun, because my blog now links to her site. So within a day or two, if you do a search for her URL, you’ll see that there are now two results. I won’t be surprised if the first result is this blog entry, but we’ll see.

All of this ties in nicely with what I’ve been saying the last couple of days. A “pretty” web site may be completely ineffective. There are many ways to be ineffective:
* Nobody knows about the site
* Nobody links to the site
* Nobody comes to the site
* Nobody “takes action” after visiting the site

“Taking action” is what happens when a site visitor does what you want them to do. That’s up to you to define, which is the whole point of setting the requirements for your web site. You need to know why your site exists so you can guide your visitors to do whatever it is you want them to do. If you don’t know, they won’t know, and so they won’t do it.

If you want people to be inspired by your site, then the bar is pretty low. You just have to have good inspiring content and make sure people arrive at your site.

If you want to sell thousand-dollar widgets on your site, then the bar is a lot higher. You have to get people to your site, make them a sales pitch, close the deal, collect the money, deliver the widget, and do it all well enough to avoid chargebacks. That’s a whole lot harder.

Let me comment a little more on “pretty sites” since that drew some comments today.

Rob wrote:

As humans, we are visual creatures. So, if someone creates a barebones or cheap-looking blog and website, then it can make it hard for customers to take an author seriously. It’s like you’re sending a signal to the world, “I care more about saving money, than investing in myself and looking like a professional.”

Believe me, content always trumps graphics..you must offer real value for any book or message to sell. But, it’s also important to “package” your message professionally, which establishes more credibility with your audience. It’s hard to take someone seriously if they look “homemade.”

There’s nothing wrong with saving money on a website or blog, but make sure that it looks professional enough to save your career.

Randy sez: Folks, Rob is a marketing expert who really knows marketing of books. Check out his blog at http://wildfiremarketing.blogspot.com/. I had a nice chat with Rob a couple of weeks ago on the phone and we’re on the same page on a lot of things.

I think both Rob and I will agree that “prettiness” is not everything, but it counts for something. The question I would urge every web-site owner to ask is this: “How much does prettiness count with me?”

If you are a professional speaker or a high-level author, then you probably need a pretty site, because that’s what’s expected of professional speakers and bigshot writers.

If you aren’t, then you probably need a much lower level of “prettiness”. Now I would never suggest that you intentionally make an ugly web site. But content is king and always will be on the web. Get great content and get the word out well. As your profile rises, make changes to your “prettiness” as appropriate. An unpublished writer simply doesn’t need a $3000 web site with Flash, dazzling graphics, and hard-to-read grayscale fonts. I would argue that a nice template for a blog might be a reasonably “pretty” and yet inexpensive investment for the beginning writer.

I just got home from critique group and answered a billion email messages, so I’m going to just answer some of the comments you posted today. Tomorrow, I’ll continue with our ongoing discussion on web sites and blogs. Yesterday, I posed the question “Are Pretty Web Sites Effective?” A number of you responded. Let’s look at those comments:

M.L. Eqatin wrote:

But one other question on pictures: Dreamweaver lets you put in little alternate text tags for every picture. Don’t the search engines read those? Somebody told me that google will pick up the picture tags first.

Randy sez: Yes, pictures can be tagged with the “alt” tag, and the search engines will notice those. So, if I have a picture of myself, I might add an “alt” tag that says, “Randy Ingermanson, America’s Mad Professor of Fiction Writing.” And the search engines would see that. That would be good.

However, suppose I had a pretty banner with my picture and the words (in graphic format as part of the banner): “Randy Ingermanson, America’s Mad Professor of Fiction Writing.” Would the search engines see those words? The answer is no. The search engines can’t interpret pictures of words. That’s why “alt” tags exist–to let the search engines know what’s in the pictures.

Heather wrote:

Magically, after complaining about not receiving your newsletter for months and months, this past letter came through. It’s like asking the clerk to help you find a book after searching for hours only to discover it’s been in front of your nose the whole time.

Randy sez: If you have either a Comcast or Yahoo email address, odds are high that they’ve been filtering out my e-zines lately. This is an ongoing problem, and I would love to fix it. Today, I changed my e-zine subscription so that all new subscribers receive a confirmation email with a link that they MUST click in order to complete the subscription. I boo-booed and accidentally had my system send out emails asking all my uncomfirmed subscribers to confirm. They can if they want, but I don’t think it’s mandatory. Those who do should get my e-zine more regularly than those who don’t.

Sylvia wrote:

I’ve noticed that your e-zine, and many of the comments that are posted on your blog, fill up only about half of the page. For reading that is great! For printing it out — it takes a lot of paper. I’m sure there must be a reason for that, and I’m not sure it is worth taking up space on your blog to answer it. Just thought I’d ask.

Randy sez:

Email programs break lines in different ways. Some will break an overly long line at 60 characters, some at 80 characters, and some won’t break it at all.

That’s a problem, so the rule for e-zine writers is to manually break all lines at around 55 characters or so. That way, they can be guaranteed not to send emails that some programs will display as horribly jagged looking blocks of text.

That’s a problem for those who print out my e-zines. (A surprising number do–something that I never would have guessed when I launched the e-zine.) A 55-character line only takes up half the page or so on a piece of paper.

For blogs, the main text column needs to be quite narrow for comfortable reading on the screen. If you print out the page, that means it’ll be narrow on paper. There, you have the option of manually stretching the page, but it’s still a bit awkward.

I don’t know what the best answer is. The primary mode of reading both my e-zine and blog is on the screen, so I optimize it for that. But it does mess up things for the paper-lovers. I guess you could cut and paste the text into a text editor and remove all the line-breaks. It’s a hassle, but that would at least work.

Sylvia wrote:

Me, again! I just remembered that a friend of mine did her own ministry site. She posted all her articles on it. Later, however, when she did a “search” for it, it wouldn’t come up on Google. I don’t know if she tried some of the other search engines or not. A ministry site that can’t be found is of little value!

She called a tech, and got such an involved answer that she finally thanked him and hung up. What can she do?

Randy sez: If you email me privately with the URL of the web site, I’ll look into it and see if I can come up with a reason why Google is not indexing it. I have solved puzzles like this before for my friends. There is always a reason.

David wrote:

The local extension of our nearest community college is offering an evening class, about 15 to 18 hours of instruction, on web pages using FrontPage. I’m thinking of taking this. Any thoughts? Is FrontPage good software for a beginner? From your in-post statement, you seem kind of down on it. I just can’t see plunking down a few grand for a professional site during my unpublished phase.

Randy sez: Go fer it! FrontPage is neither awful nor spectacular. It works quite well and I know at least two good internet marketers who use it. It’s easier for a beginner to use than DreamWeaver, but DreamWeaver is more powerful for experts.

Mary wrote:

I think it depends on the person who wants the site. It’s the same with yards. I’m in love with flowers and herbs and garden paths, so I garden a lot. It’s important to me. I also love graphics. It’s important to me that my website reflect my bent toward the aesthetic.

I truly believe you can have both. I have a nice looking website that I can change the content on, the best of both worlds.

Randy sez: I would agree. An effective blog or web site can be extremely beautiful, just like a great car can be beautiful. But it’s possible for an effective blog or web site to be pretty plain, just like a great car can be plain. There are some folks who try to make us believe that “pretty” and “effective” are the same thing, and that we therefore MUST plunk down the big bucks. ‘Tain’t necessarily so. I think public speakers are held to a different standard. A public speaker needs to dress well and have a very professional looking site. But writers? Uh uh on both counts.

Bruce wrote:

You might want to comment, even if ever so briefly, on your definition of “pretty”. I can think of several conflicting definitions, such as:

“Graphic intensive”

“Layout, white space arrangement, readability”

“Artistic color palette”

“Easy to navigate”

Randy sez: All of these are components of “prettiness.” So is the existence of Flash or JavaScript-driven graphics that show a lot of moving parts. (I met one webmaster who insisted that any site without motion on it was useless. He was about 20 years old and was not particularly adept at marketing.)

Please don’t get me wrong. All of these “pretty” things on a site are nice to have. But they’re not essential for a marketing platform. Millions of dollars are earned every year by people with pretty dull sites that are not “pretty” by any definition of the word.

We’ve been discussing web sites and blogs for the last few weeks. Today, I’ll pick up where we left off on Friday. But first, there’s a student in the back of the class waving her hand wanting to ask a question:

Susan asked:

How complicated is updating a blog on a website compared to one on Blogger? Doing it myself is not an option, and since I’m not independently wealthy, neither is hiring a webmaster to add a new post every few days.

Randy sez: It’s just as easy either way. That’s the beauty of blogging — you set it up once, and then when you want to post, you log in to your site and type a blog entry, without having to ask your webmaster to do anything for you. (You have to log in because otherwise, ANYONE could post entries to your blog posing as you, and you don’t want that.) It is a bit more work to set up the blog on your own site to begin with, but the rewards are high.

Last week, I posted a list of 9 questions you should ask yourself (and answer) before you ever start designing a web site or blog. I’m discussing each of these in more detail now, because your answers determine what kind of site you’ll want to create, the technology you’ll use, and how much time, energy, and money you’ll have to expend.

Question #4 is going to generate some controversy, I’m sure. I’ll discuss some possible answers to this question:

4) How “pretty” do you want your site to be?

Answer a) Extremely beautiful and cutting edge, with lots of motion and graphics

Randy sez: If this is your answer, the next question you should ask yourself is “Why?” This kind of site is going to be expensive. It’ll be hard for you to change, unless your webmaster takes care to make it easy for you to change. (For example, if he installs a blog in the site, that part of it will be easy for you to add content to. But the rest of the site may be far beyond the skills of mortals.) If the webmaster does it in Flash, the site may not even be indexed by the search engines. Remember, a picture may be worth a thousand words, but search engines still think in terms of words. I have seen web sites in which all the text was actually a picture of text. Search engines won’t index that, because they can’t see it.

Answer b) Professional looking

Randy sez: Professional looking is good, as long as it doesn’t detract from your goals. It is not my job, of course, to tell you your goals. It may be that your goals are in line with a professional-looking web site. Be sure that they are before you pay for one, because again, it’s going to cost you money if it’s a full-blown site. You can of course get a beautiful looking blog at no cost, because all the blogging sites have great-looking templates.

Answer c) Nice looking

Randy sez: There’s actually a continuum from super-glitzy sites down to professional down to nice looking down to awful. The nicest looking ones generally cost the most. The key thing is to figure out just how “pretty” it needs to be to do the job. Which means you have to define what “the job” actually is.

Answer d) As long as it doesn’t look like the south end of a north-bound rhino, it’s fine

Randy sez: This kind of a site will cost you even less. This is the kind of site you usually do yourself, using FrontPage or DreamWeaver or whatever, including the graphics. Sites like this can look “OK” but they are going to make a statement about you. Be sure that the statement your site makes is the one you want it to make.

Answer e) I don’t care if it’s ugly as sin

Randy sez: We have all seen incredibly ugly sites. The possibilities are endless: Pink text on blue background. Flashing banners. Dancing text. Tiny text that is fixed at fifteen inches wide. Unreadable Olde English fonts (or a handwritten font in gold ink on a white background.)

The question is whether a great-looking site or a horrible monstrous site makes a difference.

Of course, that’s an impossible question to answer. “Makes a difference” in what way?

Let me point you to a few different web sites, all of whom belong to tremendously successful internet marketers.

Tom Antion’s site. This is a pretty primitive site, as Tom himself will tell you. He did it himself in FrontPage, and it looks like it. But Tom’s laughing all the way to the bank, earning millions of dollars from that site and others like it. Tom is one of the best internet marketers I know. He’s not a techie. He’s a marketer. I’ve learned a ton from him.

Alexandria Brown’s site. Ali Brown is the “E-zine Queen” and she does a great job of teaching how do an e-zine. I learned most of what I know about doing e-zines from her. Notice that her site is pretty basic. It’s one page. The movie at the top looks squashed in my browser, though it might look fine in other browsers, I haven’t checked. Ali makes a lot of money from her site also. Why? Because she gives away good solid info and she has a good line of products to sell.

James Brausch’s new blog. This site is just a blog. It’s got a clean, utilitarian design. There are no Flash intros or glitzy graphics. James is a leading expert in such things as traffic, copywriting, and product creation. And if you look at his blog, you’ll see he spells that out: “Traffic + Copywriting + Products = Successful Internet Business”. He also makes a ton of money, and he deserves it, because I don’t know of anyone better at some of the things he does.

Perry Marshall’s web site. This is another small site. Notice that it doesn’t look like Perry spent a ton of money on a webmaster. It looks like it could have been done in FrontPage. Perry, by the way, is one of the world’s leading authorities on using Google AdWords as an advertising service. If found Perry a couple years ago when I wanted to find out more about AdWords. So I checked to see whose ad on AdWords placed highest. I figured those people would be the experts. Perry was right up there among the top 2 or 3.

What’s the moral of the story here? You can have an immensely effective web site or blog without having a “pretty” site. Of course you can an immensely ineffective site or blog that isn’t pretty. From what I can see, there’s not a lot of correlation between “pretty” and effective, at least if you define “effective” to mean “earns money.”

I am sure that many people are now going to tell me that a web site or a blog for a novelist is “different” and that it’s more important for a novelist to have a “pretty” site than for a mere million-dollar earning business mogul. I would be interested to hear why that is so.

Yesterday, I posted a LONG discussion on how to figure out the requirements for your web site. I made a list of 9 questions you should answer before you ever start designing your site. I’d like to discuss those next.

Craig wrote:

I’m teaching a course on web design for homeschooled middle and high schoolers. Could I use your list of questions in this post with them?

Randy sez: Yes, just tell them where you got them. By the way, folks, if you’re finding this discussion useful, go ahead and spread the word.

OK, let’s look at that first question on the list I made yesterday, along with the possible answers. For each answer, I’ll tell you what design constraints that’s going to impose on you.

Question 1) What is the purpose of your web site?

Answer a: To let me express myself

Randy sez: If that’s your only goal, then you may not need more than a blog. If that’s one of your goals, then a blog should probably be part of your site.

Answer b: To let me tell the world about myself

Randy sez: Again, a blog might fill the bill here, depending on how much there is to say about you. Or you might want a small web site with a few pages (unless there is just an awful lot about you that needs saying).

Answer c: To tell the world about my books

Randy sez: A blog could in principle do this, but most authors with a few books want a web site with one page per book. Be aware that the world quite honestly doesn’t CARE that much about your books, so you should think seriously about making your site about more than just your books.

Answer d: To market my books

Randy sez: If you actually want to MARKET your books using your web site, then you’ll be wanting to attract people to your site who never heard of you. That means you need a way to bring in traffic to your site, and it should be free traffic, because you simply can’t afford to pay for traffic on the royalties from your books. Attracting traffic means that your web site needs to be about MORE than just your books. (Otherwise, the only people who come to your site will be people who ALREADY know about your books, and that’s not really marketing, is it?)

Answer e: To market other products or services

Randy sez: The same goes here as for Answer d above. Depending on the profit margins for these products and services, you might be able to pay for traffic using something like Google AdWords. But it’s always better to get free traffic than to pay for it, so it still makes sense to make your site about something that will bring in traffic. More on this later.

Answer f: To give away my ideas for free

Randy sez: That’s very altruistic! Good for you! Giving away ideas for free is a Good Thing To Do, and I highly recommend it. I’ll note that you aren’t required to give away every one of your ideas for free. You can give away some and sell some. I happen to think this is a smart thing to do. You might very well get a lot of free traffic, you’ll definitely do something good for the world, and you will earn enough money so you can afford to come up with more ideas to give away for free. It can turn into a vicious circle of goodness if you don’t watch out!

Answer g: Some other purpose

Randy sez: Oh, that’s helpful. Make sure you know what that purpose is, because it will determine what sort of site you need.

Answer h: Any combination of the above

Randy sez: Figure out which combination it is, and then read my remarks above for each one that applies.

That’s enough for one day. We’ll look at the next couple of questions on my list tomorrow.