Deborah Woehr

Yesterday was a whirlwind of activity. I spent all morning developing and designing a single-page website for Prosperity with the Freeway program I mentioned in a prior post. There was a bit of a learning curve, and I’m still trying to figure out how to link to my PDF file so visitors can download the ebook version. Otherwise, the site is up and running on my server as of midnight.

You can click on the image to get a better view or follow http://www.deborahwoehr.com/Prosperity/index.html to see the site in action. I’m very interested to know what you think of it.

Update: The link for the download is fixed.

I’ve been looking for an easy way to create websites for quite some time. But none of the software programs I tried (Mac or PC) worked the way I had hoped they would. They were cumbersome, and the end result was poor. I was elated when I discovered blogs, but you can do so much with blog software. WordPress is great for building simple sites, and I probably could do more with it if I had the patience (and time) to master HTML and CSS. Forget Dreamweaver; that program is way too intensive.

The fact is, I don’t. I’m a writer and a graphic designer, not a coder. Earlier last year, I found a program called SiteGrinder, which allows you to create websites directly inside Photoshop. I was ecstatic until I realized that the developers hadn’t upgraded their program for Intel Macs. The year went by, and I became busy.

Then in January, I got curious about SiteGrinder and found that they had since upgraded to include Intel Macs. However, I didn’t have the budget at the time. I was searching for Mac software on Amazon yesterday when I found Freeway. I had tested it back in 2003 with frustrating results, but the single review made me curious. So, I went to their website, read pages of glowing reviews, and decided to download their trial.

While I’ve yet to test out making roll-over buttons and other technical tweaks, I was very impressed with how easy it was to create my landing page. If you’re familiar with page layout software, this program will be a cinch for you to learn. The hardest part was coming up with the design concept. Once I solved that, it was a matter of importing the design I’d created in Photoshop. Now, I have to start all over again for the rest of the pages, but I will finally have the main site exactly as I’d always envisioned it.

I’ve passed the first milestone in this NaNo contest today and am anxious to see how many more words I can churn out before I call it a night. My goal is to reach 15,000 by Sunday night.

The second milestone concerns the website I built for my husband back in July. He came home this evening to announce that he got his first customer from this website. I am so stoked about this!

How are you all doing with the NaNo?

As of today, we’ve lived in our house for two years. My husband and I were remarking about how fast time flies as he was telling me his latest project for the house – gutting and redoing the master bathroom. That room has been in dire need of attention long before we moved into the place. We’re down to one bathroom for four people, which will be a challenge but doable. At least I don’t have teenage girls.

I spent the majority of Saturday reading and taking copious notes on ways to earn a living as a writer, since I’m still “in between assignments.” I’m not stressing about it anymore, but taking this time to enjoy the rest of the summer and finish the writing projects that have been ongoing for quite a while. I broached the subject of working part time to my husband on Friday, stating that I don’t want to have to rely on anyone to pick up my boys. He was agreeable. We both agreed that we’ll have to give up certain aspects of our lifestyle, such as fast food and smoking.

I’ve decided that I’m ready to take the plunge in quitting smoking. I had talked to my doctor about quitting about a year or so ago. She had written a prescription for Wellbutrin for me, which I never filled. I wasn’t ready then. I’ve set the appointment to get another evaluation and prescription. Now that I have two goals set, the quitting process will be easier (I hope).

Back to writing, my goal for this week is to finish the web content for my husband’s site. I have the rough draft for the home page complete. There were a couple of things he wanted removed, so we’ll be going over that as well as the other pages for the site. Once we finish that, all that will be left is design tweaks. Then comes the marketing.

The next item on my list is determining whether I want to redo my home page on this site to announce my writing services or set it up on another domain. During my Saturday reading, I learned that it was best to specialize in one or two things. You can offer a variety of services, but your potential customers need to know what you’re best at. I wrote a list of skills late last week and determined that I’m best at desktop publishing and copyediting.

The latter is tedious work, which I wouldn’t want to do full time. Desktop publishing is another story altogether. I love designing books, ebooks and marketing packages. I haven’t had much time to really delve into the CS3 programs, other than to gain a working knowledge. Now, I’ll need to make time, while building a decent portfolio.

I’m giving some serious consideration to resurrecting my Elance account, which I’ve had since 2003, in order to gain clients. If you can land the right assignment(s), then the cost of the membership will pay itself off. This happened to me the first year. I wasn’t so lucky the following year, mainly because my competition was all too willing to work for free. I still haven’t decided if it’s worth the bother.

A couple of you may be wondering if I have deserted my Lulu blog. I haven’t. I found myself at a standstill when I finished the last post on the Lulu publishing options. I’ve spent the last two weeks hemming and hawing over whether I should publish God’s Last Twilight. When I couldn’t make up my mind, I sent a copy to some readers early last week. Once I receive their feedback, I’ll make my decision. Then I’ll pick up where I left off.

One of my top goals when I returned from my vacation was to crack open this book and take a shot at building my first WordPress theme. I tried to follow the author’s step-by-step instructions but got totally confused and frustrated. This section is not for the complete WordPress novice, especially if they don’t know a lick of php or css. I know the difference, although I’m far from a whiz. Hence, why I bought this book.

In one portion of the exercise, the author blended the css code in the middle of the php code. If you’ve worked with WordPress files, you know that style.css and .php files are separate. I spent at least four hours the Sunday before last, trying to get the code in order and functioning properly. In the end, I set the book down and haven’t touched it since. I’d recommend this book for beginner bloggers because Hayder does cover the blogosphere as a whole. For theme design, fugeddaboudit. Look elsewhere.

Out of frustration last week, I took the files from this theme, uploaded them onto a test file on my server and knocked the hell out of them to see if I could produce a traditional website interface from WordPress. I stopped when the theme started to break and didn’t touch it until today. For some reason, luck was with me today because I got the skeleton of my husband’s website up, along with a Contact and a map page. Step two in this project involves learning how to write exceptional web copy that will draw in some more business. That’s for a later post.

Right now, I’ll put up my feet and celebrate this small victory.

I’ve barely begun to scratch the surface with Illustrator CS3’s bells and whistles. Last night, I played around with the 3-D feature and came up with text and shapes that resembled Word’s “Word Art.” Next, I tried fiddling with text effects and thought, “Why not try to make a logo for The Writers Buzz.” I’ve been wanting to do this since I started the site, but couldn’t come up with any design ideas that would adequately convey books and buzz.

Right now, I’m staring at the image I created and unsure whether or not I like it. My inner critic has to but in on everything I create. I’m going to have to stare at this for several days. If any new ideas spring into my mind, you’ll see another sample.

I finally figured out how to work with MySQL to separate the database into sections in order to upload everything into the new site. Yes, it took me forever and a day, I know. I’ve yet to master pHp and MySQL.

I had some major problems with the admin (getting locked out of the blog once I uploaded the database) and receiving only the topmost portion of the content. The rest of it turned up 404 messages. To put it bluntly, this process turned out to be a major pain in the ass.

I’ve reinstated the memberships of those who contributed regularly via posts and/or comments. I’m still in the process of reinstating the rest of the members, which I plan to finish by the end of this weekend.

I’m keeping all of your old usernames, but have changed your passwords (because the database wouldn’t provide them to me). I’ll send you an email with the new password shortly.

Writer’s Blog Alliance

Today made up for my two weeks in Hell. The domain Finally transferred to the Namecheap site. Now, all I have to do is figure out how to transfer it over to John’s server without any more hiccups.

I found an article late Saturday night that explained how to transfer your website without experiencing significant downtime. The Number One Rule they gave was not to tell your current web host!

Anthology

The edits are finished. The second proof is on order. I could have kicked myself for opting for the cheapest mail service because it took so stinkin’ long for the book to arrive. Tonight, I opted for the 2nd Day service while cringing at the shipping costs.

I’m writing this post for those of you who don’t yet have a domain for your blogs and are thinking about getting one. You’ll find several webhosts out there who lure customers in with a free domain. I acquired the majority of my domains this way, thinking that I would save money by not having to pay a monthly fee for GoDaddy in addition to webhosting fees.

Although I have saved money over the long run, they did charge me for the domain after one year. I paid around $70 for The Writers Buzz. These hosts don’t announce this charge in big bold letters, so I thought I’d make you aware of this.

Because of the transfer fiasco with Writers Blog Alliance, I would not recommend signing up for a hosting package with a free domain. Instead, I would register through GoDaddy or some other domain registrar service. That way, I can transfer it wherever I want without huge hassles and delays.

Last week, I had to jump through hoops to start the transfer process for WBA and thought this was going to go smoothly. I’ve never transferred a domain before, and after the crap I’ve been through the last ten days, I never want to do it again.

Back in February (approx.) SBC Yahoo decided to delete my account when they reformatted their system, forcing me to sign up with Gmail. Fine. I changed my email address on all of my websites via the C-Panel and billing. Everything was updated, I thought.

Apparently not. I’m still not clear exactly what part of the domain I didn’t update, but I’m thinking that it might be the “Who Is” portion. I don’t know. The managing director of my webhost was very unhelpful.

To shorten this story, I now have to wait two days before my email address change “propogates.” Then I have to wait another seven days while the transfer goes through again.

Have any of you tried to transfer a domain from one host to another? If so, did you experience these types of problems?