Upcoming Changes to the Blog
There's something I've been meaning to do for a while. In fact, I've tried it twice before. I failed both times.
That's right, I'm talking about switching to a WordPress blog.
I'll be honest: I LOVE blogger. I find WordPress a lot harder to use. It doesn't have all my blogger friends in my dashboard, or easy access to Google statistics (yes, I know there are still ways to hook it up, but it's more work)...but... the sad fact for Blogger-lovers like me is that WordPress is really where all the love from developers goes.
So if I want to take my blogging to the next level, which I DO, I may have to move.
Nothing's solidified yet, but I thought I'd warn you.
If I do go through with the switch, there will be some other changes as well. I'm going to try to put more audio and video on my blog. (Right now I can only do audio, but I'm hoping to figure out video soon.) Nothing huge, just simple stuff. But it should be fun.
I have a video series planned for November, when I will re-post my How-To book "30 Day Novel," but with video emphasis. The vids won't be able to cover everything that's in the book, but should help re-enforce the point.
I want to keep hosting guest authors with cool books. I don't know about you, but I've been finding a lot of terrific novels to read.
Finally, I'm also going to juice up the goodies for Tara's Tribe, exclusively for thes fan who on my newsletter list, and who help me out by sharing stuff on social media. There are some scenes that I've written for Mask which aren't going to make it into the book. I'll turn that into a short story that I will share ONLY with my list.
I'm really grateful to have the help of my assistant, Katie, in all this, so that I can make my blog a better place and still have time to write.
That's right, I'm talking about switching to a WordPress blog.
I'll be honest: I LOVE blogger. I find WordPress a lot harder to use. It doesn't have all my blogger friends in my dashboard, or easy access to Google statistics (yes, I know there are still ways to hook it up, but it's more work)...but... the sad fact for Blogger-lovers like me is that WordPress is really where all the love from developers goes.
So if I want to take my blogging to the next level, which I DO, I may have to move.
Nothing's solidified yet, but I thought I'd warn you.
If I do go through with the switch, there will be some other changes as well. I'm going to try to put more audio and video on my blog. (Right now I can only do audio, but I'm hoping to figure out video soon.) Nothing huge, just simple stuff. But it should be fun.
I have a video series planned for November, when I will re-post my How-To book "30 Day Novel," but with video emphasis. The vids won't be able to cover everything that's in the book, but should help re-enforce the point.
I want to keep hosting guest authors with cool books. I don't know about you, but I've been finding a lot of terrific novels to read.
Finally, I'm also going to juice up the goodies for Tara's Tribe, exclusively for thes fan who on my newsletter list, and who help me out by sharing stuff on social media. There are some scenes that I've written for Mask which aren't going to make it into the book. I'll turn that into a short story that I will share ONLY with my list.
I'm really grateful to have the help of my assistant, Katie, in all this, so that I can make my blog a better place and still have time to write.
Comments
I use WordPress hosted by Dreamscape and I love it.
Blogger sucks swamp water. Their spam tools are literally years behind the tools you can get on WordPress.
As you can see from my homepage, you can easily do visually appealing blogs with a high degree of functionality. As fancy as my template is, it's actually using outdated technology.
I am not a graphics designer but I have considerable graphic design usability experience. So I had that.
Mainly, my site is based off a pre-made theme. The template is The BioSphere theme by Gradient Pixels.
Gradient Pixels knows what they are doing and if I wasn't as savvy as I was, I would have paid their modest fee for a tech support contract.
The theme itself is highly customizable. You could use the exact same theme but our sites would look considerably different.
Another thing that helps me is I purchase artwork from iStockPhoto. The professional photos and graphics are key to such a visual-based theme