Updating Your Website
- By: Jessica Faust | Date: Apr 05 2012
Websites for published authors are becoming more and more important, not just for your readers but for the future of your career. I can’t tell you how many times I go to an author’s website to check out not just the author’s books and career but for quotes and reviews. Which is why it’s important to keep your site updated as much as possible. If you have a section for reviews but nothing is there, it looks like you’ve gotten no good reviews.
I know how hard it is to keep up a website, I know that there are plenty of things I’ve missed when I don’t update enough, which is why, over time, I’ve simply removed those sections from my site. If you find you can’t blog regularly or haven’t blogged in months, then simply take down your blog. I think it looks better not to have one than to have a neglected one. The same holds true of reviews. If you can’t remember to get in there once a month and update those sections, then simply remove them.
Jessica
I'm feeling a little weird about something I just added to my website; I recently had a short story published in an online magazine, so I made a new tab/page thing for my publications. But it feels so weird having one thing – and a short story in an online magazine which I am having trouble accessing at that – listen on that page on it's own. Should I consider deleting this section of my website until I have more to show for myself more often? Or is this a completely different circumstance to the blog itself or the reviews?
This is great advice, and something even us unpubbed writers can use. We don't have to have all the features of a published author's site (like a blog).
I try to update my site fairly often, but it doesn't always work out. My blog is on WordPress software, so it's easier to update (and right now, I'm doing the A to Z Blogging Challenge, so I'm posting every day). A friend of mine complained recently that it took her four hours to update her site through GoDaddy, so it's important to choose a reputable hosting site, too.
I try–I really need to update my entire site, as the software I use is about twelve years old–like dinosaur eggs by comparison! But I do update the pertinent parts, keep excerpts current and something available about all my books and what I'm doing on a regular basis. I've discovered that keeping a counter on the bottom of the page reminds me to keep it current–it tells me how many people actually stop by, a reminder that it's not just sitting there, unloved and unviewed.
Sound advice.
I'm not published, but I do try to keep up with mine, howver, other than the weekly blogposts I can go months and realize I should have posted an excerpt of a finished work, or a contest result. Between FB Google+ and Twitter, and chapter links, and loops, and other friends websites and news, its a wonder we ever find time to write. ; )
updating a website can be easy if you use a simple, online content management tool like Word Press. Check it out if you haven't seen it yet. You can build and host a professional website for free or for very little money (to purchase the template). And updating a website via a CMS (content management system) like wordpress CMS is so easy.
check it out; https://wordpress.org/
🙂
Lia Mack
fellow writer
As an agent- how important to you think it is for unpubbed folks to have a website/blog? Do you check them if you have a promissing submission?
Thanks!
Good reminders for certain. I have been re-evaluating my blog of late so it has been a while since I posted on there. I plan to rectify this shortly as I think I may have a better direction for the blog I've been running for 3-ish years now. I think I need to update the section on my writings, what's in progress and such that I'm currently working on. I do try to keep things fresh on there but it's hard some times. Especially when in the thrall of writing a new book.