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Any suggestions for starting a website?

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Dale Sherman	Any suggestions for starting a website?	Lead	[-]
Feb 21 12 7:54 PM Reply Quote More My Recent Posts	I have a book coming out in September and both my agent and my editor have suggested that I help get the word out by putting together a website for it. I do have some ideas of things I can add to it from my previous books, but I'll admit I'm not completely up-to-speed on what I need to do to get one going. I've been looking a bit at Blogger and thinking about doing something there; perhaps directing people to amazon from there to buy the book when it's available. Yet I have a nagging feeling in the back of my head that I've heard it's not really the best place to go anymore for starting up a general storage house of material to interest fans. Any suggestions?
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Rider		#1	[-]
Feb 21 12 9:25 PM Reply Quote More My Recent Posts	My advice is unless you know what you are doing and are totally committed to making it good, don't even start. A bad half finished website is far worse then not having one. Also your agent should know someone who will be able to take care of a website for you. Really though don't try it on your own.
bobzilla		#2	[-]
Feb 22 12 8:30 AM Reply Quote More My Recent Posts	Here's a few DIY choices: http://www.intuit.com/website-building-software/ http://www.wildapricot.com/ http://www.wix.com/ http://www.web.com/ My company does small web sites, but we're kind of moving away from it, and I would imagine you would need a site that you would want to update yourself a lot. This DIY sites I listed above let you pick from templates (some let you start from scratch) and you can make all the updates you need anytime you want. There are usually different tiers of services, so you can start small and add as you go in some cases. Good luck! As Rider said, you kind of have to go all the way or don't do it at all. A half done web site or one that never gets updates will wind up hurting you in the end.
Rakshasa		#3	[-]
Feb 22 12 11:35 AM Reply Quote More My Recent Posts	Definitely start a Facebook page for the project. You'll reach a lot more people a lot quicker than if you simply start a BLOG or a website. From the Facebook page, you can LINK your BLOG and website, but from what I've seen over the past few years, Facebook is The way to get the word out about a project. Also, of course, start a thread about it here on the CHFB and include a link to your Facebook page. That's my advice. Links To All The Classic Monster Stills I've Posted: http://monsterkidclassichorrorforum.yuku.com/topic/30758
Saturday8pm		#4	[-]
Feb 22 12 1:22 PM Reply Quote More My Recent Posts	Bob, if I may ask, what are you moving towards? Apps? "Lord I love Spring! The birds, the fair weather, the new flowers. It doesn't get any better than this. HOLY CRAP! what's THAT?!?"
MacXoftheMounted		#5	[-]
Feb 22 12 1:44 PM Reply Quote More My Recent Posts	I've ben learning Wordpress and it is dead easy. Granted, I've been in graphics for over 2 decades, but this really is web design for people with little or no HTML knowledge. wordpress.org I've been learning it on lynda.com, a great online training site. According to the first course I took, 12% of the internet is composed of Wordpress sites. MacXoftheMounted.....................formerly known as Professor Von X
bobzilla		#6	[-]
Feb 22 12 2:21 PM Reply Quote More My Recent Posts	Actually, getting out of graphics and the like completely. My girlfriend and I have our own company and have a few clients we'll keep, but we're moving on to other thinigs. The software we use to create web sites is called Freeway from Softpress. Works like a page layout program if you've ever used InDesign or Quark. I like to stay in Photoshop, though. That's always been my favorite. Facebook might be your best bet, as Rak said. I'm one of the seven people on the planet that isn't on it, so I don;t know all the ins and outs of it.
Saturday8pm		#7	[-]
Feb 22 12 9:27 PM Reply Quote More My Recent Posts	bobzilla wrote: Actually, getting out of graphics and the like completely. Oops, I remember you typed that elsewhere. Yeahhh ... it's damn near impossible to make a living on that now. I think at this point we last discussed this, I posted a link to "www.clientsfromhell.org". Sad and ( probably mostly ) true anecdotes within. "Lord I love Spring! The birds, the fair weather, the new flowers. It doesn't get any better than this. HOLY CRAP! what's THAT?!?"
Dale Sherman		#8	[-]
Feb 24 12 11:11 PM Reply Quote More My Recent Posts	Thanks for the thoughts, everyone! I do have a Facebook page setup for my books, but I have yet to activate it. Looks like that may be the best way to go with this, as I just don't have the time, money or energy to have someone else do it or spend a lot of time on it. On the upside, the reason for that lack of time is due to just being informed today that the same publisher has greenlit another proposal of mine and a contract is in the mail! So, if there's a good reason for not being able to spend the time needed, that's the one to have.
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HalLane		#9	[-]
Feb 26 12 4:21 PM Reply Quote More My Recent Posts	Attaboy, Dale. So when are ya gonna tell us about the September book?
Dale Sherman		#10	[-]
Feb 26 12 10:46 PM Reply Quote More My Recent Posts	Heh. Yeah, I probably could have mentioned that, Hal. Long story short - back in the 1990s I wrote a couple of books about the band KISS (a bio called BLACK DIAMOND and a reference guide called - not very creatively - BLACK DIAMOND 2). The books did pretty well and I even got to do an updated edition of the bio back in 2009. Hal Leonard Publishing out of New York has started issuing a series of books about popular bands and other performers in the past year and they sought me out to write one about KISS. So THE KISS FAQ will be coming out in September from them - 400 pages of the type of topics diehard fans usually fight over but that are rarely covered in-print. Fortunately, it's not just a re-do of the previous bio, but more on subjects that I just could not really get into in the lines of a straight biographical study of the band. Like "What the album covers that fans consider the best and worst and how did they happen?" "Did the band's comic book career really peak with Howard the Duck?" "Drug References from KISS" (this was fascinating to me, as the band had always taken a public position of being severely anti-drug). "Were the commonly assumed career-changers for the band over the years really just that?" "What were the oddest piece of KISS merchandise ever made?" And so forth. As it turns out, the publisher is branching over into doing more film-oriented books in the FAQ series and I approached them with an idea for one based around a particular movie genre (I won't go into details about what that is here, however, as I'm afraid of jinxing it). And that's the one that I'll be working on next. BTW - here's the link to the official page for the books already out for those curious: http://www.halleonardbook...nuid=10225&subsiteid=164
bobzilla		#11	[-]
Feb 27 12 8:11 AM Reply Quote More My Recent Posts	That's funny. I was just listening to KISS ALIVE! over the weekend. A friend got it for ma on CD a few years back. I was a huge KISS fan i the 70s. Card carrying member of the Kiss Army! I stopped buying albums after Dynasty. My first concert was Kiss. Can't remember if it was the Love Gun tour or Destroyer maybe. I can't listen to anything after Love Gun (Dynasty is stretching it. Just not the same anymore.
HalLane		#12	[-]
Feb 27 12 9:19 AM Reply Quote More My Recent Posts	Way cool, Dale -- both books sound like our cuppa tea! Did I ever mention my KISS trivia? Back in the mid-'70s, there was all that hoopla about their first Marvel comic book, that magazine size comic that was *"printed in blood!"* I was working at the plant that printed the thing, here in Buffalo, at the time. I remember all the fuss about 'the boys' coming into the plant to have their blood drawn, so they could add it to the red ink. There were pictures and everything. So I'm talking to the pressmen afterwards. Bottom line, they mixed up the ink vats -- KISS never was *"printed in blood".* Something else was, maybe a Perry Rhodan cover or something. Anyway, a Strange But True KISS Factoid! Best of luck with the books and the Facebook.
bobzilla		#13	[-]
Feb 27 12 3:14 PM Reply Quote More My Recent Posts	I have that KISS comic book...somewhere.
Dale Sherman		#14	[-]
Feb 27 12 7:00 PM Reply Quote More My Recent Posts	Hal! I covered this in the new book! I spent weeks trying to track down someone who knew details about the Borden Ink plant from Marvel on down and no one seemed to know a thing about it. The rumor in KISS fandom is exactly as you mentioned it, only that the word was that the newest issue of Sports Illustrated had been printed with the ink instead of the KISS comic. Hal, if you want to email me, I would love to get a few more details if possible!
HalLane		#15	[-]
Feb 28 12 9:02 AM Reply Quote More My Recent Posts	Yeah, it could've been Sports Illustrated, I think we did that one too. Also People, Readers Digest, lots more. I just said Perry Rhodan 'cuz it sounded cooler than Harlequin Romance, but we printed all those.
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Any suggestions for starting a website?

Any suggestions for starting a website?