Author Web Sites

Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by Rhonda R. Carpenter on May 14, 2009 at 12:39pm

It depends on what you want from the site R.E.. For example are you just going to do a wordpress format and run a bog and put up your stories and feeds or are you talking about developing a full blow book site. Which can be very pricey. What are they charging for the domain and are they hosting the site? how much room are they giving you for your dollar? Oh by the way did you get your prize?
Rhonda

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Permalink Reply by R.E. Chambliss on May 14, 2009 at 1:07pm

Hmm... here's where I really show my ignorance. I'll try to explain what I want but part of the problem is I don't really know the options!

Anyway, the domain name "rechambliss.com" is registered, but there's no site yet. I want a fairly basic site, but more than just a blog. I want people to be able to go there and get info on me and my book (someday books). I don't know about having a podcast feed there. I don't think so. I'll just link to podiobooks.com. (I'm not sure what the advantages are with having a separate feed.) I'll also include my amazon.com link, and maybe links to sites on indie publishing, women's prison advocacy groups (since my main character is in prison), and writing. I'm sure it'll grow as I grow! But my time being limited, I want to start small.

What do you think?

Oh and I'm horrible! I can't believe I never thanked you for the prize. It's gorgeous! Thank you so much!

-Renee

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Permalink Reply by Arlene Radasky on May 14, 2009 at 3:36pm

Hi RE, Just wanted you to know that I am not ignoring you. However, since I have a MAC I bought my domain name and transferred it to .MAC and use iWeb for my website. It is $99 a year but I have lots of other benefits besides just me website-online storage, email, large file transfer and more. But again, it is all through .MAC

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Permalink Reply by R.E. Chambliss on May 26, 2009 at 11:20am

Hi Arlene!

Hope your recovery is progressing smoothly! I have a mac too, and just bought ilife 09 which contains iweb. I'm leaning towards MacHighway to do the hosting. They look to be a good choice. We'll see!

Thanks everyone for the info!

-Renee

Arlene Radasky said:

Hi RE, Just wanted you to know that I am not ignoring you. However, since I have a MAC I bought my domain name and transferred it to .MAC and use iWeb for my website. It is $99 a year but I have lots of other benefits besides just me website-online storage, email, large file transfer and more. But again, it is all through .MAC

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Permalink Reply by Rhonda R. Carpenter on June 19, 2009 at 1:11pm

Sorry Renee I didn't see this message.

You will have more flexibility with a application like wordpress. It will give you all the options and more than you need.

Who is hosting your site?

The benefits and drawbacks to having your own feed:
Two feeds are said to give you two audiences. The difference is the feed from podiobooks is as is will be and in your private feed you can do chatter at the end. Some listeners like that. (I did not do a personal feed yet, but I am considering it for later.)
The player in your site is not hard to do.
Drawbacks is it is more time in editing and tagging.

But I think if you haven't done anything yet you should think about wordpress. It doesn't' have to be just a blog. look at http://www.goddessprints.com http://www.lonewolfsageco.com http://www.jcutchins.net http://www.rhondacarpenter.com

You will see how versatile it can be.

Let me know if you have questions,
Rhonda

R.E. Chambliss said:

Hmm... here's where I really show my ignorance. I'll try to explain what I want but part of the problem is I don't really know the options!

Anyway, the domain name "rechambliss.com" is registered, but there's no site yet. I want a fairly basic site, but more than just a blog. I want people to be able to go there and get info on me and my book (someday books). I don't know about having a podcast feed there. I don't think so. I'll just link to podiobooks.com. (I'm not sure what the advantages are with having a separate feed.) I'll also include my amazon.com link, and maybe links to sites on indie publishing, women's prison advocacy groups (since my main character is in prison), and writing. I'm sure it'll grow as I grow! But my time being limited, I want to start small.

What do you think?

Oh and I'm horrible! I can't believe I never thanked you for the prize. It's gorgeous! Thank you so much!

-Renee

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Permalink Reply by Queenie on September 6, 2009 at 11:28am

Hi All! I host my sites with http://startlogic.com. It's $80 per year. I like it because I have virtually unlimited storage space (needed for those heavy audio MP3s) and I can host as many domains as I like for one price. You can have as many WordPress installs as you want, plus a bunch of other services like ZenStore and phpBB forums. I have a ZenStore right now but there's no items for sale at this point.

My websites are:
http://foreverfifteen.com
http://queeniemusic.com
http://kimberlysteelemusic.com

My forum is:
http://foreverfifteen.com/ffworld

I would recommend starting with a modified WordPress template, meaning, take the picture files and adapt them with photo-editing software, adding your own logos and colors, etc. WordPress has plugins for podcasting that make it way easier to do feeds and stuff. Then, once you're up and running, see if you can get an uberfan involved in the admin & maintenance part. One of mine, David Gilson, is a great help in the upkeep of both foreverfifteen.com and my FF World forums.

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Permalink Reply by Emerian Rich on September 11, 2009 at 6:11pm

I use needa.com. They are good unless you start using a lot of bandwidth. I never host my mp3's on the site, always with another service like Mevio. But they are overall great. I just had a couple of bad weekends (I just happened to be at a con handing out my cards!) when my site was down and they had no idea why supposedly.
I've used them for about 6 years... 2 incidents. It's about 15.00 a month and I host www.emzbox.com, sweetdreamsnovel.com and horroraddicts.net all through the same co. I am also a hardcoder... so I love thier ease of access to the cpanel. People who use Frontpage or other online software to build their site, may be lost. Wordpress would be best to "test" on. Free. Easy. And you can point your domain to whatever site you like.

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Permalink Reply by Sarah Peters on September 12, 2009 at 9:57pm

I just installed WordPress to my own site and avoid the "free" site. That way, I can also try to make a little money using stuff like GoogleAds and the like.

Right now, any way to offset hosting costs is a good thing.

Emerian Rich said:

I use needa.com. They are good unless you start using a lot of bandwidth. I never host my mp3's on the site, always with another service like Mevio. But they are overall great. I just had a couple of bad weekends (I just happened to be at a con handing out my cards!) when my site was down and they had no idea why supposedly.
I've used them for about 6 years... 2 incidents. It's about 15.00 a month and I host www.emzbox.com, sweetdreamsnovel.com and horroraddicts.net all through the same co. I am also a hardcoder... so I love thier ease of access to the cpanel. People who use Frontpage or other online software to build their site, may be lost. Wordpress would be best to "test" on. Free. Easy. And you can point your domain to whatever site you like.

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Permalink Reply by R.E. Chambliss on September 19, 2009 at 7:30am

Thanks, everyone. I ended up going with DreamHost and so far, so good. Since I decided to host my own feed, I went with them because they have unlimited bandwidth and storage and weren't that pricey. I used iWeb to design the site, and Easy iWeb Publisher as my FTP software (I didn't even know I needed FTP software at first!).

Now, I'm trying to figure out how to get the podcast on iTunes. iWeb has a "Publish to iTunes" menu option, but for some reason, iTunes isn't recognizing the feed address (I think!).

Thanks again!

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