Apps I'm using to build my website

I've known for awhile that I needed to do a website, but I wasn't sure where to start. This was particularly annoying since, two cities ago, I used to build websites for my day job.

But it's a new world now and I don't have the snazzy (and expensive) tools I used at work, like the Adobe CS Suite and high-end HTML editors. Plus there's style sheets and Flash and other cool dizzying technologies. In my days of website building we used HTML and PERL. And we thought animated GIFs were just insanely cool. I'm about 10 years behind.

But I had an unexpected windfall of free time this weekend, so I decided This Was It. I was either building this site or writing up a description of what I wanted so somebody could do it for me.

I started by surfing author sites--a LOT of author sites. I decided to go with a very simple layout that used minimal graphics--partly because I like the look and partly because I didn't want to monkey with making graphics or have to find someone to make them for me!

Then I looked for HTML editors that would help me to build the pages. I found Coffee Cup Visual Site Designer, which I downloaded as a 21-day free trial. It's quite nifty. I don't know if it would be friendly enough to someone who's never built sites, but for someone who understand the basic concepts of design but doesn't want to monkey with code, it was perfect. Once I got my home page built, I knew I could do the whole site.

I also embedded content in my pages with some cool tools (all free!):
--flickrSLiDR embeds a slideshow of  images that inspired the setting of CANDOR (which I stored on flickr)
--Playlist offers a list of songs that helped to inspire we while I wrote CANDOR
--Quibblo let me build a fun online quiz

So I am proud to say my site is nearly, nearly done. As soon as I have a book cover--or a placeholder graphic for it--it'll go live. And I'll be sure to post here when it does!

If anyone has nifty ideas about creating placeholder cover graphics, or you've seen someone do it effectively, please let me know.

Next challenge: book trailer.