Thanks to jennreese, I have a new website. It's at sarah-prineas.comIf you've got a minute, would you mind looking it over and telling me what you think
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Visually clean, readable, not too cluttered, and I like the sidebar navigation--it's responsive when you roll over, and it's text-based. This makes the Web Standards geek in me very happy. But please, please don't center all of your text--it makes it hard to read, and looks unprofessional. Left-justify is generally the best option. Courier/monospace fonts are very readable, but bolding everything is also a web-design no-no; if everything is bold, then nothing is, and bolding actually decreases readability. On the non-main pages, it'd be nice to keep the full menu to the side; that way people aren't forced to return to the home page every time they want to see a new page. it may be my monitor, but the short stories page has incredily small text; this is especially odd because the Home and About pages have unusually large (though not garishly so) text. Organization on the short stories page would also be nice; if you have PHP/MySQL on your new hosting site, I could totally whip up a "
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Thanks for the comments! One thing about Safari that I don't much like, or maybe it's the Mac, is that sites come up with VERY small font, and I'm constantly going control/+ to enlarge it (also because my glasses prescription is out of date). So the font size and bold (except on the stories page, obv) is an artifact of that. But I will go change.
On thing I like lots about the google page is, it's really easy to change and update, because it's already on line. But I have a feeling it's a short-term thing, that a page with any really interesting visuals and/or content is going to be a little more complicated than google site builder can accomodate.
Yep! I now have nine free critique points on OWW. So now I have to whip somethign else into HTML-y shape so I can post it up.
I've never really had much of a problem with Safari, really, but I prefer a fairly small font size anyway. How are you defining the fonts? CSS, tags...? (I guess I could just go look at the source code.) (...except that the CSS here gives me beanbirds. are they really loading every style for every page? Ack!) ...looks like you have some HTML font tags in there, which are deprecated. (And the b tags, too.) Which are probably what's messing things up. CSS fonts defined in ems don't generally have so many problems
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Wikis let you keep track of intricate systems of information. So, yeah, magic systems, worldbuilding--the Noumena wiki keeps track of all the worldbuilding and character development in the Noumena universe, as well as providing a space to work on episodes and the like.
I've looked at wikipedia, of course, but I didn't realize you could have your own wiki. So it's like hypertext, sort-of. Do you have to build a separate page for each link?
Is there a wiki...generator (dunno if that's the right word)? Do you know if any writers/creative types do wikis for their created worlds and then let their readers/fans add to the wiki? That would be a cool, dynamic thing to have on a site and, when the time comes and I actually have readers, it would match my philosophy on writing and reading (text belongs to the reader). Thanks for the idea!!!!
Basically, a Wiki is a little program all of its own. You install it on your website, and then it'll do all the legwork for you. The only formatting you have to do is Wiki formatting--things like putting bold text '''in three quotes''' and putting links to new pages [[in brackets]]. It'll build the pages for you automatically; it's very easy and user-friendly once you get the formatting rules down, and those are all pretty simple.
I don't know of any big-name writer wikis, but I do know a few people who have Wikis up--eclective's Loa wiki, kadrin's Setengald wiki (which may now be defunct). A lot of activist groups maintain Wikis, like the Multiplicity wiki, and a lot of fandoms also keep detailed wikis such as Stargate's SG-1 Solutions, Star Trek's Memory Alpha, and Star Wars' Wookiepedia.
So, you could definitely set one up in the way that you're describing. It'd be a lot of fun to see where it would go!
MediaWiki is free from the Wikimedia Foundation. It does take PHP and MySQL to install, though, and tweaking the permissions takes a little bit of code-diving, but if you have a webhosting service with PHP/MySQL I could set it up for you with not too much difficulty :). Then I could lock it so that only you could edit/read, until you wanted to open it to the unwashed masses.
I'll ask Jenn if the hosting site does php/MySQL. I'm not sure exactly how she set that up.
Thanks SO much for this info! I really do want to do this, once I get a real site up and running--which probably won't be for a year, I'm guessing, depending on how publicity stuff for the novels is going to work.
Assorted noteselysdirJanuary 22 2007, 06:07:45 UTC
Cool site!
I think some of the people commenting don't realize that this is currently hosted at googlepages.com, and is thus limited to what Google Page Creator can do
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Re: Assorted notessallytuppenceJanuary 22 2007, 16:25:26 UTC
Thanks, Jed!!!!
I'll make all of these changes. As you note, the page creator limits my options, so I won't be able to do anything with the vertical separator or any of the layout stuff.
However, I will go and fix all the typos. Gah! I hate typos!!
Okay, I fixed some of the bold font and made font larger on the stories page. I re-did the formatting on the main page, left justifying it, and the line breaks didn't work the way I wanted them to--they looked stupid. I want it to look sort-of (eek) like poetry (there's some internal rhyming, so that's why). Is it really, really terrible to center the text?
I'll go back in and put the entire menu on each page on the menu bar, too, when I get a chance.
Hmm. Centered text, when it's the main body of the text, is a big faux pas. As a quote or a poem, it's not so bad; problems arise when it looks like it's just the body text, which you'll run into if the text is large enough to stretch from side to side. So, as an aesthetic, it's best to have some white space around the centered text. Multi-line centered prose is a no-no. (Long prose quotes are generally put in tags.)
Visually clean, readable, not too cluttered, and I like the sidebar navigation--it's responsive when you roll over, and it's text-based. This makes the Web Standards geek in me very happy. But please, please don't center all of your text--it makes it hard to read, and looks unprofessional. Left-justify is generally the best option. Courier/monospace fonts are very readable, but bolding everything is also a web-design no-no; if everything is bold, then nothing is, and bolding actually decreases readability. On the non-main pages, it'd be nice to keep the full menu to the side; that way people aren't forced to return to the home page every time they want to see a new page. it may be my monitor, but the short stories page has incredily small text; this is especially odd because the Home and About pages have unusually large (though not garishly so) text. Organization on the short stories page would also be nice; if you have PHP/MySQL on your new hosting site, I could totally whip up a " ( ... )
Reply
Thanks for the comments! One thing about Safari that I don't much like, or maybe it's the Mac, is that sites come up with VERY small font, and I'm constantly going control/+ to enlarge it (also because my glasses prescription is out of date). So the font size and bold (except on the stories page, obv) is an artifact of that. But I will go change.
On thing I like lots about the google page is, it's really easy to change and update, because it's already on line. But I have a feeling it's a short-term thing, that a page with any really interesting visuals and/or content is going to be a little more complicated than google site builder can accomodate.
Reply
I've never really had much of a problem with Safari, really, but I prefer a fairly small font size anyway. How are you defining the fonts? CSS, tags...? (I guess I could just go look at the source code.) (...except that the CSS here gives me beanbirds. are they really loading every style for every page? Ack!) ...looks like you have some HTML font tags in there, which are deprecated. (And the b tags, too.) Which are probably what's messing things up. CSS fonts defined in ems don't generally have so many problems ( ... )
Reply
(most of what you just said, I have no idea what you're talking about...!)
Wikis, though! So what's their purpose, on a website? I can see, maybe, worldbuilding? Or maybe keeping track of a magic system?
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Is there a wiki...generator (dunno if that's the right word)? Do you know if any writers/creative types do wikis for their created worlds and then let their readers/fans add to the wiki? That would be a cool, dynamic thing to have on a site and, when the time comes and I actually have readers, it would match my philosophy on writing and reading (text belongs to the reader). Thanks for the idea!!!!
Sorry for all the questions!
Reply
Basically, a Wiki is a little program all of its own. You install it on your website, and then it'll do all the legwork for you. The only formatting you have to do is Wiki formatting--things like putting bold text '''in three quotes''' and putting links to new pages [[in brackets]]. It'll build the pages for you automatically; it's very easy and user-friendly once you get the formatting rules down, and those are all pretty simple.
I don't know of any big-name writer wikis, but I do know a few people who have Wikis up--eclective's Loa wiki, kadrin's Setengald wiki (which may now be defunct). A lot of activist groups maintain Wikis, like the Multiplicity wiki, and a lot of fandoms also keep detailed wikis such as Stargate's SG-1 Solutions, Star Trek's Memory Alpha, and Star Wars' Wookiepedia.
So, you could definitely set one up in the way that you're describing. It'd be a lot of fun to see where it would go!
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Thanks, this is really useful. I'm not ready for a wiki yet, or maybe just one for myself at first.
Sorry, one last question. Do you buy the program? Or is it free online somewhere?
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Thanks SO much for this info! I really do want to do this, once I get a real site up and running--which probably won't be for a year, I'm guessing, depending on how publicity stuff for the novels is going to work.
But wiki. Yeah. It's right up my alley.
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I think some of the people commenting don't realize that this is currently hosted at googlepages.com, and is thus limited to what Google Page Creator can do ( ... )
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I'll make all of these changes. As you note, the page creator limits my options, so I won't be able to do anything with the vertical separator or any of the layout stuff.
However, I will go and fix all the typos. Gah! I hate typos!!
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I'll go back in and put the entire menu on each page on the menu bar, too, when I get a chance.
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