Category: Web Design

I did it?

Oh, my ever-lovin’ knocked noggin, I think I actually updated my website!

It took forever because my FTP software no longer links to the server, and I have to dig around behind the scenes and I, well, make mistakes. I upload things to the wrong folders, have to start again.

But!

It’s not perfect, but I think it’s done. I still need to check some links.

These are the pages I’ve updated, and, please, note, if you’re a frequent visitor (hahaha), you might have to hit Refresh to make the new pages load.

Home

Books

Bio

Deceiving Derek

Catching Claire

Before Brady (now on preorder!)

Just Janie (currently exclusively on preorder at Apple Books)

Trusting Trey – TBA

That only took, like a week.

My next website is going to be a heckuva lot easier to maintain, I hope.

I took my author photo in my bathroom

So, this is what’s going in the back of the Love & Other Calamities Romantic Comedy books:

Yeah, I took my author photo in my bathroom! With my phone.

It’s in black and white in the books (unless a reader reads on a tablet with colour), and it looks fine. Good enough! Until I can set up the “big camera” and take proper self-author photos for my new website.

But my website is still old, and when I imported the picture into the new home page, it looked weird. It was suddenly obvious that’s a shower curtain behind me.

A couple of YouTube tutorials, and this is what I’m hoping to pull onto the home page instead:

Not bad for my first time using Affinity Photo. I like the blue behind me. I managed to accidentally cast a shadow. A splash of over-exposure and it’s not so obvious that I’m, ahem, mature.

I like my Cruella tinsels.

Wish me luck getting the new website pages built!

I’m updating my website, and I’m not sure how it’s going….

When I say I need to redesign my website, I mean I have to start over with completely new software. This current site is built with an ancient copy of Dreamweaver and the Fireworks software that no longer loads on the ancient PC that sits in my office ONLY to update the website. I used to have an old copy of Photoshop on there, too, and no idea where it went. This makes creating new graphics a challenge.

Here’s the thing. I’m not allowed (by C’est Moi) to rebuild the website hopefully using the How to Build a Website on WordPress course on a special template/theme/whatever they’re called I bought, oh, 2 years ago before I realized just how long my 2018 car accident was going to affect my ability to write actual books. What I am allowed to do is update this current site because I still believe in websites.

So I’m trying. My software no longer connects to my server, so I need to update and build the books without worrying that they might look horrible in Internet Explorer (which thankfully no longer exists) and then go in through the back end and upload via FTP.

So, seeing as I can’t completely start over on the website until all 5 books in Love & Other Calamities are on preorder, I’m bumbling about doing the best I can with my ancient software, and cross your fingers that when I load those pages, they’ll look reasonably okay.

I’ll post on the blog when I’ve uploaded the pages. There are a lot of pages to upload. First, I need to resize some current graphics on the iMac, zip them to the PC, and finish building the durn pages.

Meanwhile, my imagination is itching to come up with a new series but I still have to revise and edit the last two books in Calamities. But the covers and blurbs are done like a lizard burning in the Galapagos sun!

Yippee-ki-yay, mudderfugger.

I’m baaack???

My site changed servers a few months ago, and because I’ve been busy recovering from a car accident and working on updated versions of Deceiving Derek and Catching Claire in Love & Other Calamities – and also writing the next three titles in the series, Before Brady, Just Janie, and Trusting Trey – I didn’t realize my blog was broken. I kept trying to publish new posts, to no avail. I spent hours on tech support with my host, to no avail. They even switched my customized Muse Interrupted theme to the 2021, theme and I still couldn’t publish a post.

Most aggravating.

I was about to hire a website designer to fix things when I decided to do ONE LAST TEST. And, well, whatever was glitching for weeks before I went away to trek through Ireland for a month is no longer glitching!

This is good because I really, really, really need to redesign my website, and I want to move it to a WordPress-based site because my web design software is on an old computer I only keep for the software. I need to get with the times and make things mobile-friendly.

So redesigning my site is on my To-Do list for this year.

That said, because I’ve been away from publishing for so long, like 5 years, I made the decision not to put any of the books in Love & Other Calamities on pre-order until all 5 are revised and edited. I’ve learned that when it comes to my neck, skull, and shoulder injuries I just need to put my health first, and besides who wants to read a connected series with months and months between releases?

If you’ve stumbled upon this post and you’ve been wondering, What happened to Cindy? Yeah, I got whacked, multiple times, from behind. And it wasn’t as fun as it sounds. 🙂 I’m now seeing a pain management specialist, getting nerve block injections every 3 months or so, and, on top of my other therapies (of which there are many), I finally feel like I can get on the path to publishing again. I can’t spend much time at the computer. I do 2-3 hours a day of physio, strengthening and yoga just to TRY to get to 4 hour days – with breaks that interrupt my flow. I would really love to get 4 to 5 4-hour writing days a week. I’m not there yet. I can get maybe 2 hour days. I can do a 3 hour day but will pay for it the next day.

I am determined, even as I am reminded that those 6 hour days are lost to me forever. So I’m gonna go ahead with my plan not to put Love & Other Calamities on pre-order until the editing process is complete.

For my readers, that means some aggravating waiting. But I thank you for your understanding.

When the updated versions of Deceiving Derek and Catching Claire are on sale, I’ll let you know here. I won’t be creating new website pages for the series – I will just be putting the links here and/or pointing you to pages hosted on a site like Books2Read or my SleekBio. When I design my new website, I WILL create separate pages for each title, but because of my injuries it seems not a very wise use of my limited time to make 3 new website pages on an old computer with old software and THEN redesign the entire site.

Thank you for your understanding!

PS. You never know, I might change my plans and update my old site before redesigning the new site. If so, I’ll also announce that here.

What’s Whitelisting, Anyway?

I can’t claim to have a lot of knowledge about techy stuff, but recently I learned about whitelisting or “always approving” (which sounds better, IMO) emails from David Gaughran’s weekly email newsletter for authors. Basically, whitelisting is a way for email users to put you (or me, in this case) on an Approved list so your (er, my) emails don’t wind up in the Spam or Promotions or Junk or dratted Cyber-Goop folders.

Cyber-Goop is sticky, icky stuff. Although, it sounds cute. It should. I just made it up. So don’t go trademarking it on me now.

As it so happens, I want my readers to receive my emails. You know, the ones they signed up for. So today I sent out a stripped-to-the-bones plain Jane email about how to “Always Approve” my email address. If you’re pretty sure you’ve signed up for my email newsletter but have never received it, feel free to hop on over to my brand new handy-dandy Whitelist Instructions page. It opens in a new window but lacks a link back to my website (how did I let that happen?).

The page does have a link to the developers at the bottom, so if you’re an author who would like Whitelist Instructions for your own site, click through and scroll to the bottom for the developer’s link.

No, I’m not writing my email address in this blog post. Whenever I do that, I wind up with robots trying to get jiggy with me. And that just won’t do.

If you want to sign up for my email newsletter, I’d love to have you! But you gotta work just a little bit for it. You have to visit my Contact page (oh, the horror!) and fill out the form that is handily-dandily perched right up top.

If you really, really, really want to email me, there’s an email form on the Contact page right below the Newsletter Signup. Yes, I know, I’m aggravating. Someday, like within the next 8 – 16 months, I’ll bust a move away from my HTML site and onto designing something more mobile-friendly, but for now we’re stuck here.

Other new things around the site:

Why don’t I post the new covers on the blog? Well, I will. I promise. Just not today. (Although you can glimpse them in the sidebar).

New Newsletter Sign-Up From Success!

Lo and behold, I have successfully updated my blog sidebar, including adding the new sign-up form for my fancy new newsletter, which is shinier and prettier and all-around way more amazing than it was before (hard to imagine, I know).

See it, see it? It’s in the upper right hand corner of my blog. (Hint, if you’re not reading this post on my blog, you can’t see the newsletter sign-up form, so maybe you should visit my blog right now and have a look).

See how you can choose whether you want the newsletter targeted to your regular ol’ email inbox or, yes, OR, optimized for your smartphone? Please, no applause. I don’t have a smartphone so I have no idea how my newsletter looks on one, although I did choose a simple layout to make it look better on a phone than it otherwise might. Plus, a couple of test bunnies have assured me the newsletter looks FANTABULOUS on their phones.

Go ahead and test out the form by inserting your email address, clicking the format of your choice, and clicking Subscribe. If you already belong to my newsletter, you’ll get a message telling you so. If you don’t already belong to my newsletter, you’ll probably get a chance to opt out via one of those newsletter sign-up confirmation emails. If that doesn’t happen, then you’ll have to suffer until the next edition of the newsletter appears, at which point you can click the unsub link at the bottom of said newsletter.

But why would you want to unsub? :::blinking innocently:::

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Categorized as Web Design