Part 3: Design
Now, let’s talk design. This is perhaps the most subjective element of building your website, because your website, after all, should reflect your personal aesthetic.
Here’s my thinking and why I chose to go with such a spare, minimal theme at least for now: if you’re going the DIY route, it’s best to stay simple. Simple works.
WordPress, like most other website building programs, makes it easy to choose a somewhat personalized theme from their hundreds of templates. It’s really just a matter of perusing the choices and picking the one that seems right.
But I think a lot of great writing is getting lost behind the clutter of overly designed websites.
If you’re a writer, you want to put your writing front and center. Don’t make people search through flash videos and stock images to find your writing—you know you sweated over that piece!
A few other website design items of note: It seems to be a trend now to use a black background for websites. I can see how that might be compelling if you’re a Science Fiction or Horror writer—building a mood and all that. But many people find it difficult to read light text on a dark backdrop. Why risk losing part of your readership because people can’t make out those words you’ve sweated over?
And here’s one more readability issue: When you’re picking out fonts, the sans serif fonts (like Arial and Verdana) are the easiest to read online. I made this mistake myself when I rushed to get this site up. I realized several days into it that the default text font was Times New Roman, which is just painful to read online if you’re writing something substantive.
Just wanted to give you something to think about. Maybe others feel differently—if so speak up, I encourage it. I consider this a collaborative effort.
Tomorrow I’m going to address advertising on your website and whether Google ads and the like are really worth it. I’m still figuring this one out myself. I know my Ad Director/Publisher pal (glg) will want to share his expertise with us on this front.
-Maria Schneider
{ 4 comments… read them below or add one }
I like your breakdown on what makes a website tick. Keep up the hard work.
I like the side-column design myself. A little pop of color, a bit of organization, and voila! A workable, readable website.
Advertising elements are okay as long as they don’t dominate. The trouble is some bloggers are so intent on earning residual income they fail to realize just how unreadable their sites are with all the ads. When I see sites like that, I go elsewhere.
Ahhhh! Black backgrounds! Run away!
I don’t even think they make sense for horror or science fiction sites. I hate a dark background – they don’t even have to be black.
Worse still are image backgrounds. That idyllic picture of the lovely Irish glade from last year’s vacation may be great, but please don’t make me read words over it!
The same goes for textured backgrounds. If it’s very subtle, a texture can work (a light parchment, for example), but most textures are usually very hard on the eyes.
~jon
I run a website that started out with a black background and white text because it was designed to promote horror books and their authors. Sometime in the third year I switched to a hosted WordPress site with my oun URL (theundeadrat.com). After an initial stumble, I replaced my first disastrous theme choice with Copyblogger by Chris Pearson and activated it.
Well, I spent the next few months organizing the website so I didn’t get around to making the background black with white text — and the praise I got from a couple of horror writers about the clean lines, the beautiful white and red colors and black text changed my mind about ever going back.
I’ve updated my theme since then (oddly enough I’ve stuck with Pearson themes all the way) but I’ve never strayed from a white background and black text.
–Greg “The Undead Rat” Fisher