So... I'm Back. Sort of.

Once again, I have the "I've been busy" excuse for why I haven't posted anything lately. I've been focusing on my writing, on my book tour, and on myself for the past couple months. I've made some progress on some things, and am still waiting to see progress on other things.

I've made some good progress on my writing. I completed my goal for Camp Nano and hit 15k words in 30 days, and since then, it's been slower, but still going. I thought I got stuck, but it was more weariness than writer's block. I just needed a break, and after having had one, I was finally able to jump back into it a couple days ago and I got going so well that I lost track of the time. A good sign :)

My book tour is off and running this week! It started on Monday, and now that I've been through my first week, I'm exhausted! It was really frustrating being at work and not being able to check in on the host blogs during the day--even though there aren't THAT many people following along. While I don't expect my sales to take much of a leap, I am hoping that it helps me build some "brand" awareness for my writing, and so far, it's been really great to read the comments and feedback from the few people who have stopped by.

I officially took about a week off earlier this month to not do anything. I was seriously burned out on everything, and I really needed a break. I mostly sat around watching Netflix (I'm into the West Wing now for some book research O.o) and catching up with my soap opera, but it was awesome. Then I started getting a ton of posts (in advance) for my book tour stops, and I had to get back into it. It was a much needed rest, however, and I'm glad I had the sense to do it.

Since my tour is already half over, I don't have much work to do on it except checking in for comments and sharing the posts, trying to get people to visit, comment, and interact. I have one more post to write, the topic didn't arrive until today, so I'll have to work on that this weekend, but that's not a problem.

As much as I like the story I've been working on, I did spend quite a bit of time on my "break" procrastinating and doing character outlines and plot mapping for a few other ideas I've been kicking around. I had a blast with all that, but I can't start writing any of those until I finish the one I'm working on now. I know myself too well, and I know I'll never get back to the first one if I start a new one.

As to the blogging, I'm so far behind and out of touch, it's ridiculous. I haven't been on here since mid-April, and I got back to Happy to Entertain for a couple weeks before my overwhelm hit and I took another break. Not to mention my three other blogs... I am hoping since it's summer, I will have more time to post. Less TV, longer daylight hours, and not having any upcoming publishing plans will definitely help. I just have to get back in the habit again.

Despite not having been blogging about it, I've been seeing a shit-ton of movies already this summer, and I've been keeping up with my shows and all the finales that have been going on this month. There have been some really good ones (Star Trek, Now You See Me, Hangover 3) and some not so good ones (Gatsby). I actually recorded a YouTube video (it's private, so don't bother searching) of a review of the movie, but the video isn't showing up right on YouTube, so that's why I haven't shared it. It shows fine on the video manager and on my computer with the recording and sound and everything, but for some reason, on the video's page on YouTube, the color's off and it's split like a mirror and it's just wrong. Disappointing. I had wanted to share it, because I thought it turned out pretty well for my first ever self-recorded video.

Oh, if you haven't noticed, I redesigned the blog, again. I actually went through the trouble of dumping everything over to WordPress.com because I was thinking of switching to get a cleaner look, but then I remembered why I moved Happy to Entertain off WordPress and onto Blogger in the first place--free WordPress sucks.

While I like the widgets and plugins (self-hosted only) and the fact that there are categories AND tags, it's way too limited with the design elements. It won't even read Javascript or Flash in the widgets, not to mention iframes, and you can't even edit your own CSS without paying an extra 30 freaking bucks A YEAR! Total bollocks. It's cheaper to buy a domain and add it to my existing host for my self-hosted WordPress blogs! On the one hand, their domain purchasing is pretty great because it includes hosting, but you still have to "upgrade" to edit your CSS which makes that domain purchase money not worth spending.

Anyway, I spent two days messing around in WordPress trying to find a way to make my blog look like I wanted it to, and I decided, for all the trouble, I think I'll just go back and update my Blogger design. I am no expert at coding, so I can't replicate some of the elements I'd like (like a full width header image), but I think it looks quite nice, and I've also gotten rid of some sidebar stuff that I didn't think was necessary. Hopefully you like it too, and if you don't, tough shit. :P

Also, last piece of catching up, I've become addicted to Etsy. Who knew? I had heard about it a while back, but I didn't realize how much stuff they actually had, and how much of it was pure awesome, until about two weeks ago. If I suddenly came into some extra money, even a hundred bucks, most of it would probably end up being spent on that site. As it is, I can only get one or two things a month on my current budget, but that's ok. Probably for the best. Not like I really NEED any of it, it's just pretty :)

My eyes are starting to get blurry from looking at too much blog design stuff today, so I'd better switch off to something else for a bit.

This was my jams today while blog (re)designing:

Come on try a little, Nothing is forever.

There's got to be something better than in the middle.

Coming Down to the Wire

Writing stats, 1 day, less than 5 hours before NaNo: 

• 50,009 words completed on my sci-fi work in progress
• 1,000 words or less from finishing my sci-fi work in progress. YES!
• 4 character descriptions (approx.) shy of what I would like to have before I start NaNo
• 1/2 of an outline done for my NaNo plot
• 1 internship accepted at a rate of:
• 5-10 hours per week
• 1 potential part-time job offer in the works

  Figures I'd start having actual commitments to people right before NaNo starts. Like I said last week, when it rains it pours.
  Finally got the new website project transfer completed and redesigned! It's up and running and looks beautiful.
    As far as NaNo goes, I think the biggest problem I'm having is that I've never tried to write a story like this before and my imagination is coming up short. It's a sci-fi alien comedy story. Sort of in the fashion of Douglas Adams, but I'm not that funny. I just had a bit of insight this morning into a direction I could take it, but I still don't have a solid character description for any of my main characters. I have names and a couple of minor personality traits. That's it. Starting to get scared.
    However, now that I've decided which items on my to-do list can be put on hold once NaNo begins, I feel a little better. I just am going to feel guilty every time one of them gets pushed back. My goal is to make better use of my weekends, and with Thanksgiving coming up, I'm hoping a lot of the television shows will go on break for a couple weeks. I am going to have to cut way back on those and watch them on Hulu, which I have found allows me to multi-task better than live shows. In any case, the blogs are probably going to be fewer and farther between, but maybe that will allow me more time to choose more interesting topics.
    In other news, I set up my first free Kindle promotion for the ebook version of my latest book and it has been doing pretty well. I was a little nervous nobody would even look at it, but a fair number have and have downloaded it! Now I'm just nervous that nobody will like it. I hope that the people who do read it (and didn't just add it to their libraries on principle because it was free) like it, and those that do like it leave reviews! We'll see how it plays out over the next few weeks. If it starts getting bad reviews, I may have to start writing under a pen name, though probably not Constant Writer ;)
    As to Hurricane Sandy, I hope everyone out east is staying safe and keeping their spirits up as the storm wraps up. I can't imagine what it's like to see that kind of devastation in your own backyard, but I hope that everyone knows that the entire country is sending out good thoughts, prayers, and well wishes in your direction :)

Stay strong and keep your head up.

Battle Royale: Internet: 4 Me: 1

  I've been trying to transfer my friend's website for about two or three weeks now. Originally, the domain was purchased through Blogger/Google and hosted through a partnership with Enom. It was an easy process, REALLY affordable, and it offered easy design options with the Blogger templates. Then, we wanted to redesign, but Blogger is pretty limited to the templates unless you are an HTML and CSS whiz.
    The first redesign I had little to do with, but this recent one has been a nightmare, mainly because of how difficult it is to transfer a domain from one host to another if you're not a professional IT person. I know my way around pretty well--set up my site and a subdomain on my own. But this new one was just problem after problem.
    On the bright side, it's finally transferred, and we're hoping to wrap up the design within the next day or two. At least now we know about how the process is supposed to go, but it really sucked learning the hard way on this one. Like I said, nightmare.
    It has been a busy week, dealing with problem after problem with the domain setup and design. In addition, I had two interviews, two prove-yourself tests (social media plan and paragraph revision) for two different positions (both of which I have been offered), plus, I still haven't finished my current book and Nano is only 5 days away.
    I am really getting nervous about Nano this year. With all this other stuff I have going on, and barely having time to write my book as it is, cranking out 50k words next month is starting to look really scary. I still think I can do it, but I am going to have to drop the blogging quite a bit, and the social media (between Twitter, Triberr and Goodreads, I'm amazed I get as much done as I do!).
    Anyway, looking forward to checking out a local minor league hockey game for the first time this year and getting a break from all the hubbub!

When it rains, it pours.

Back to the Future: Part 2

If your blogroll is
that long, do everyone
a favor and put it on
its own page!

  Yesterday, I started enumerating some of the issues I found in a number of blogs that I had visited, looking for people to review my book. The list and explanation came out so long that I broke it into two posts: here's part 2:

3) Layout problems were incredible. Lots of these bloggers have sidebars that keep going and going and going and going down the page, sometimes far beyond the end of the posts they display on their home page. Now, this particular issue is really easy to do because sites like Blogger and WordPress let you add as many sidebar items as you want, but that doesn't mean you should get carried away. Not all of that junk needs to be on a sidebar, which is something that a visitor sees on EVERY SINGLE PAGE of your site.

    Case in point, this one on the left. See where the red ad is. That's the end of the content on this page. I spray-painted over the names and face of the author to be nice and protect them from being the known object of ridicule, but seriously, if your blog roll is that long (it took me 3 or 4 screenshots to get the entire page from top to bottom), put it on its own separate page, not in your sidebar.

    Not only were the sidebars excessively long in some cases, many blogs also had photos and widgets that stuck out over the edges of the sidebar area. This is a rookie mistake. Many new bloggers only check out the "administrative"/back-end of the site where they create posts and set up the layout on their own, so they don't realize that stuff is going to look different on the "front-end" of the site that visitors see.

    Usually, if a blogger is really focused on making their site a place people want to stay and read posts, they start previewing posts and checking how the site looks on the front-end when they make changes or want to add a new widget. I would venture that many of these bloggers hadn't seen the front-end of their blog in months if not longer.

    Another point, don't do the thing where your page just keeps loading older posts as a person scrolls down. People hate how Facebook does it because it always loses your place, and it drives me nuts because you can never find out what's in the footer. An archive is completely sufficient for people to view your older posts. Nobody is actually going to read all 214 of your posts in order in one go. 

4) Layout problems lead to load time issues. What's load time? It's how long it takes a web browser to display your site from the time someone clicks a link to the time the page and all its bells and whistles finish displaying. If you're running twenty tabs on your browser at once, this is going to slow down any web page. But if all those sites have a ton of photos, Javascript, and 3rd party applications running on them, it's going to slow down the load times even more.

    For example, if you open 20 tabs on Craigslist, you're not going to have much trouble with load time. Most pages are comprised of basic HTML and text. But if you try to open a bunch of sites like Facebook, Twitter, Netflix, Pinterest, Chipotle, HBOGo, etc. that have auto-reload functionality, Flash or Javascript code, or lots of (especially high-resolution) photos, all at once, they're all gonna take their sweet time loading.

    And some may not load correctly because the browser is so bogged down trying to open all the pages with complex code on them that not all the requests to the server are completed. When this happens, you end up with a site that has gaping holes where photos or widgets should be, marked by X's, blank boxes, or half-loaded pictures. 

    Nobody wants this. Especially not your readers. Worse than that, especially for new visitors, if the page doesn't load fast enough, they might leave before it finishes and decide not to come back.

    You know what else slows down page-speed/load time? THIRD PARTY APPLICATIONS/WIDGETS/PHOTOS. This means your "Networked Blogs" widgets, your Flickr/Photobucket slideshows, GetGlue widgets, or ANYTHING you got the code for on another website to add to your site. Even if it's an image link from another site. Every time somebody visits your website, these applications and widgets have to send a request to these third party/external servers to find the information that populates them. Because the web browser is now sending requests to several different servers at the same time, it takes longer for all of them to respond.

    This is not to say you need to get rid of all the third party functionality on your site. Just use them in moderation. Try them and see how long it takes for your page to open. If it's more than 3 to 5 seconds, it may not be worth it. I use third party functionality on my blog, but most of my widgets are native to Blogger or are images I uploaded myself. Images are usually not a big drag on load time unless you have a LOT of them or unless they are all being pulled in from external websites.

Summing Up:

    For me, I look at these kind of issues two ways: 1) long, disorganized sidebars, links and content show you really have a lot to share, and you want to show off your appreciation for readers, fellow bloggers, etc. On the other, if these issues are really bad, e.g. it takes me longer than about half a minute (including load time!) to find what I'm looking for due to either bad navigation/organization or slow page speeds, it kind of ruins your site for me. You might have a lot of great information to share, but I'm not going to stay on your site long enough to find out because your site is an eyesore or tests my patience taking too long to load. I am on my computer enough as it is that I don't want to have to spend more time waiting for all your third party apps or gigantic headers to load. I've got other things to do.
    The only reason I stuck around long enough on most of these sites is because I was on a mission. I wanted to find people in the writing/book community to begin relationships with in the hopes of promoting my book. So I was patient. If I had been a reader looking for reviews on a book I wanted to read, I wouldn't have stuck around for many of them.
    All in all, take pride in your blog. It's a part of your online identity, and people like me who don't know you personally are judging you by it. Make it your own, but make it accessible and enjoyable to the people who also care about it--your readers.

Design matters. Ease up on the widgets!

Back to the Future: Part 1

  I feel like I took a trip into 1999 last night. I've mentioned my recent entry into self-publishing, and I've been on the prowl for marketing options for my book. (Something I'm not crazy about, as I explained in last week's post.)

You remember sites like this. I hope you've updated yours
to fit into the 21st century a little better!

    So, I've been searching for blogs and websites where I can write guest posts, do interviews, or solicit a review from the blogger, and I am sorry to say that even in this modern, tech-savvy, drag-and-drop web-builder world, too many people still have awful-looking blogs and websites. Why do I bring up 1999? Because that was a time when you only build the most basic of websites if you didn't know much about coding or design. And some of these sites I looked at gave off that same feel--like the person who created them had no idea what they were doing and just slapped a bunch of stuff together and called it good.
    To be fair, some people had really beautiful sites. But they are in the minority. I must have looked at over a hundred different blogs and websites last night, and I was plagued by slow load times, an excess of 3rd party widgets and plugins, gigantic headers, ridiculously confusing navigation, poorly arranged photos and widgets that didn't fit the content/sidebar areas of the site, and things that were just plain ugly, like background images, colors, logos, poor quality photos, etc.
    I worked at a web design company, so I probably notice this stuff a lot more than the average person, but, especially with the slow load times, I don't know how these people have so many page views and so many followers with a site as disorganized/ugly/confusing as that!

  Because of all the problems I found, I'm going to break the analysis and advice into two parts. Part 2 will be up tomorrow.

1) Some of these people had gigantic headers, like took-up-almost-the-ENTIRE-screen big. Most of them were really pretty, and often, these were some of the better designed sites, but as far as attracting new visitors go, gigantic headers like that are one of the worst things you can do, no matter how pretty is it. Why? People spend the majority of their time on a website homepage ABOVE THE FOLD (i.e. the part of the webpage you see when you first arrive on a website without scrolling down at all).

Apparently these guys specialize in gigantic headers. Which might work for some products,
but for most sites, a big header is taking away from all the other great stuff you have to offer.

   Aside from not giving a new visitor any idea of what you do beyond what's in your header image, these big images can really take a toll on your load time/page speed (i.e. how long it takes for a web browser to load all the elements on a webpage from the time that a person clicks a link to the time that the page finishes loading.)

2) Confusing navigation was another issue. The majority of the sites were book blogging sites that published book reviews and accepted review requests from authors and publishers. The majority of them also had a review policy page which explained what types of books they accepted, among other details like whether they preferred print or ebook format.

    However, I would venture to say that at least a third of the sites I looked at had hidden this page somewhere on their site. If it's a big part of what you do, it should be ABOVE THE FOLD, and it should be easy enough for someone to find if that's what they're looking for. This means it should be in the navigation menu or in a widget or text box at the very top of the page. Some people had them hidden in "about" pages, "contact" pages, or profile widgets, and some of them were just little links hidden halfway down the homepage in between two other garish images or flashy widgets.

    That's it for today. Consider your website or blog and ask yourself if you commit any of these faux pas that can wreck your new visitor stats. Make sure to check back tomorrow for the rest of the list!