{"id":2630,"date":"2020-03-17T20:57:12","date_gmt":"2020-03-18T00:57:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.shanafigueroa.com\/blog\/?p=2630"},"modified":"2020-03-17T20:57:17","modified_gmt":"2020-03-18T00:57:17","slug":"author-websites-the-essentials","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.shanafigueroa.com\/blog\/author-websites-the-essentials\/","title":{"rendered":"Author Websites: The Essentials"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"626\" height=\"398\" src=\"http:\/\/www.shanafigueroa.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/03\/website-pic.jpg\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-2632\" srcset=\"http:\/\/www.shanafigueroa.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/03\/website-pic.jpg 626w, http:\/\/www.shanafigueroa.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/03\/website-pic-300x191.jpg 300w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 626px) 100vw, 626px\" \/><figcaption>Websites! Looking something like this, but better!<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p>Every\nauthor needs a website, it\u2019s a simple as that. It\u2019s your central hub for\neverything, like your online house. Luckily for you, what\u2019s actually on your\nwebsite is pretty simple. The basics are: <\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\"><li>Home (your default landing page)<\/li><li>About You (aka Author Bio)<\/li><li>Your Books<\/li><li>Blog<\/li><li>Newsletter Signup<\/li><\/ul>\n\n\n\n<!--more-->\n\n\n\n<p>You\ncan add whatever else you want for shits and grins\u2014I certainly have!\u2014but those\nare the essential tabs.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The reason a website is so important to an author is because it\u2019s the only one-stop-shop for all your books, the place where people can sign up for your <a href=\"http:\/\/www.shanafigueroa.com\/blog\/author-newsletters-all-your-burning-questions-answered\/\">newsletter<\/a>, where people can engage with you, and where people can get info on your upcoming work.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>A\ngood way to decide on your website layout is to simply sit down with a pencil\nand paper and jot down a mind map of what you want on your website. It might be\nas simple as the basics above, especially if you\u2019re just starting out and don\u2019t\nhave a lot of work to promote yet. If you\u2019re writing non-fiction or fiction\nheavily influenced by real events, for instance, you might include more tabs\nwith relevant info or links to other sources. It\u2019s up to you, and you can\nchange it later.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>At\ntheir core, author websites are basically all the same; the difference is how\nthe information is presented. You\u2019re promoting your books by letting people\nknow about your books, and also a little bit about yourself. That\u2019s it. I\nrecommend perusing the websites of other professional authors, finding one you\nreally like, and copying that layout.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The\nhard part is futzing with the aesthetics to get everything on your website to\nlook the way you want it to. It might require some computer know-how the\naverage person probably doesn\u2019t have, especially when you run into problems. I\nresolved this issue by enlisting my husband, a computer programmer, to do it\nfor me (favors of a sexual nature might\u2019ve been exchanged\u2026). <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>There\nare <a href=\"https:\/\/www.websitetooltester.com\/en\/how-to-set-up-my-own-website\/\">several\nservices<\/a> that allow you to create a fully-formed\nwebsite, like Wix or Weebly, and others that allow you to manage internet\ncontent to essentially create a website, like WordPress. The difference is like\nbaking a cake: you can either buy a mix if you want something simple and don\u2019t\nintend to change the recipe (Wix\/Weebly), or you can make it from scratch and\nget creative (WordPress, or straight-up coding your own from the internet ether\nif you\u2019ve got the skillz).<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>I\nuse WordPress because that\u2019s what my husband set up for me when I asked him to\nhelp me make a website, though I\u2019ve since learned enough HTML code to maintain\nit mostly by myself. Sometimes I still need his help though, and it goes\nsomething like this: <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Me: Can you add a newsletter signup\nform to the left of my webpage?<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Hubby: That\u2019ll be three blow jobs.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Me: Two.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Hubby: Two and a hand job.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Me: Fine. Put it on my tab. <\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Good\nthing hubby doesn\u2019t read these posts!<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Anyway. You also have the option of just hiring someone to do it for you, but I\u2019m not a fan of hiring anyone to do anything for you, writing career-wise; I\u2019ve tried\u2014<a href=\"http:\/\/www.shanafigueroa.com\/blog\/do-you-need-a-professional-editor\/\">editing<\/a>, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.shanafigueroa.com\/blog\/13-nuggets-of-advice-on-marketing-your-novel\/\">marketing<\/a>\u2014and it\u2019s never been worth the money. Since author websites don\u2019t need to be complicated, I suggest just sucking it up and doing it yourself.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Or,\nyou know, <em>sucking<\/em> and getting someone\nelse to do it for you, like I did. That is, honestly, your best option.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>So\nnaughty!! Heh, I kill me.\n\nWhy hello, gutter, how are you? I\u2019m a little bored, actually. That\u2019s how\nI ended up here.\n\n\n\n<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Every author needs a website, it\u2019s a simple as that. It\u2019s your central hub for everything, like your online house. Luckily for you, what\u2019s actually on your website is pretty simple. The basics are: Home (your default landing page) About You (aka Author Bio) Your Books Blog Newsletter Signup<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2},"_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[496,631],"tags":[656,662,657,658,660,659,661],"class_list":["post-2630","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-business","category-newsletters-websites-social-media","tag-essential-website-tabs","tag-sex-for-website-support","tag-website-mind-map","tag-website-services","tag-weebly","tag-wix","tag-wordpress"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p9Vyi8-Gq","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shanafigueroa.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2630","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shanafigueroa.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shanafigueroa.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shanafigueroa.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shanafigueroa.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2630"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/www.shanafigueroa.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2630\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2634,"href":"http:\/\/www.shanafigueroa.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2630\/revisions\/2634"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shanafigueroa.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2630"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shanafigueroa.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2630"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shanafigueroa.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2630"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}