Recommendations For Making a Web Page?

Brian,

I used Wix to build the site and GoDaddy to host the domain. It's not free but it's less than $50 a year total, I think.

I spent about four months on mine, tinkering here and there, getting people's opinions on what looked good and what didn't, and also checking out other author sites. I'm not an artist nor technically gifted, but with enough time and attention I think most people can build themselves a decent, professional looking site.

Brian Rush said:

All right, I want a web page. It doesn't have to be anything fancy and it doesn't have to change very often, just when I get new books up and/or reviews, promotions, etc. All I want is a page that will look nice and will constantly link my books at Amazon and at Smashwords, and to which I can drive traffic by writing & publishing elsewhere.

Click to expand...

Get a domain; base the domain name on your name-as-author.
Get an ISP. The ISP/host should not be the same as your domain register.
Find a host (Blue Host, Dream Host, Go Daddy, many others) that hosts WordPress with a single click install.
Pick a template you like.

I used a free website service for a couple of years, but then went to homestead and made a better site for $5.00 mo. After a while, I upgraded to $20 mo. so that my website is www.johnbushore.com and my e-mail is [email protected]. So when I submit a story or query a novel, it looks more professional. It also gives me additional pages to promote individual novels, set up a store, etc.

I also found a program that makes 3-D ebook covers for less than $20 to download. My site looks 5 times better with graphics like this. My avatar shows one such cover, here's another. Check out my site and let me know what you think.



Take care,

JohnB

Are you just wanting the one page? Or do you want some other pages too like an About Me, contact me, etc?

If you don't plan on doing a great deal with your site, a wordpress.com Blog might be for you. It's a blogging platform, but to be honest, there really isn't much difference between a Blog and a website these days. You can doa great deal

It's free and there are a lot of themes to choose from (some free some not). The only thing you will probably want to do is get a domain name, which is usually only $20

I'm no website expert by the way, but spent the last 6 months creating mine. I had a wordpress.com site and recently upgraded to a self hosted wordpress.org platform. I'm a huge fan of what Wordpress are doing

Matthew (Turndog Millionaire)

I'm not a fan of GoDaddy.

Fair disclosure, I've never used them. I run a large website at my day job and am on a few tech forums - there are *constant* complaints.

While I don't think you would have any issues with a simple page - I am always looking forward to when you might want to expand.

As others have stated, many, many authors use Wordpress to set up their page. You can host it on your own domain if you want to brand BrianRush.com or somesuch.

Be leary of templates that make image or data calls that go to the template host.

Keep your media and design elements local to the server where your data lives.