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Hey KeePers!
So after telling people for about six months or so that if they’re serious about writing they should have their own author website, I finally decided it was high time that I started following my own advice. xD And I’d love to get your feedback on it before I officially “release” it, so to speak.
The website is currently live at http://josiahdegraaf.com/ My goals here are partially to have something I can show to literary agents, partially a way to continue to build an audience, and partially to start publishing a series of short stories I’m currently writing (the first one’s coming out on the KP site Friday!) If you have any feedback/critique, either from a design perspective or from a content perspective, I’d love to hear it!
@hope
@kate-flournoy
@daeus
@audrey-caylin
@dragon-snapper
@jane-maree
@ethryndalEditor-in-Chief Emeritus. Guiding authors at Story Embers.
@Aratrea I really like it!
First thing I noticed— in your bio you said, when you were describing KP, ‘through proficiency and purpose.’ I thought it was ‘with proficiency and purpose.’
If it’s possible, it might also be better to have your page options in a little bit bigger font. It took me a second and a few confused glances to find them.
Otherwise it’s really nice and professional and I really like it. 😀 Nice dramatic castle picture. 😉@Aratrea It looks good. My one thought is that the home page is a little crowded. It’s hard to know what to focus on. If the text below “the chronicles of morshan” were smaller and preferable clumped together in a decorative box thingy, I think it would look cleaner.
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@aratrea Nuts. You didn’t call us KaPeeFers. 🙁
Anyways, looks pretty to me. I like your bio. 😛☀ ☀ ☀ ENFP ☀ ☀ ☀
@Aratrea it looks great! I love the theme and the designs that you used. The layout is easy to navigate and I enjoyed how personable your pages are. I do agree with @Kate-Flournoy about the menu font size though. Maybe one or two sizes bigger would be better. I’d also title the “bio” page differently, something like “About” or “Meet Josiah” to make it a little more exciting 😉
One thing that was a little confusing at first was your homepage, where you highlighted your short story series.That makes it appear as though that is the main focus for your website, rather than, you know, you as the author. I don’t think there’s anything wrong with that; it’s just something I noticed.
My last bit of feedback is for where you have the first three chapters of your novel available for download (the premise sounds awesome). You might want the download to be a link to a google doc so no one can “steal” the chapters or anything 😛 All you would have to do is convert the word doc to a google doc, turn on “view only” in the share options, then anyone can view them without being able to steal any content.
That’s all I have to say. Congrats on getting this up and running! 😀
@Kate-Flournoy Ah; yes. That awkward moment when you forget your own website’s mission statement. xD Thanks for the feedback! I’ll see if I can make those page options any bigger.
@daeus That’s helpful. Were you picturing just a box outline around the smaller text, or for it to actually a box insert that would block out the cathedral picture behind it?
@dragon-snapper Dang it. Missed my chance there. 😉 And yes–I probably had too much fun writing that bio.
@Audrey-Caylin Cool. I’ll do that with the bio title.Yeah; the story focus on the home page is intentional. Once I get a couple of these out, I plan on bundling them into a downloadable eBook and then linking to that download link from the homepage. The home page is doing some double-duty as a quasi-landing page.
Oh–yes. Meant to have that a PDF, not a WORD doc. Thanks for the catch!
Editor-in-Chief Emeritus. Guiding authors at Story Embers.
@aratrea Oh, just an outline.
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@daeus That’s what I had been thinking would look better, but I wanted to verify that. I’ll brush up on my CSS and see if there’s an easy way to make that work.
Editor-in-Chief Emeritus. Guiding authors at Story Embers.
(for some reason this thing isn’t posting properly. >.< Sorry about all that. :/)
@Aratrea what @Daeus mentioned about the lines of text on the home page being closer together (unless I’m misinterpreting) is called ‘line height’ if that helps in your searching.
Some points that I and my web designer sister picked out: (admittedly a great deal of them were my sister, and she very much enjoyed stalking your website XD)– if would be good if one the pages other than the home, if the text was a bit darker. As it is it can be difficult to see on some screens with the grey background.
– You’re using an old WordPress version (4.7) and the update section should have a 4.8 version that’s more secure and all that.
– WordFence is also very good for ensuring security and protection against phishing. (also, as you can see, without it my sister can find out random facts like that you’ve got an old WP version that needs updating)
– You should delete the ‘Generic blog post’ and the ‘hello world’ post as they are both able to be found by google searches and look a bit weird and out of place.
– Also on the same note, your username is your email address, so you might want to change the display name of that – to Josiah, or something.
– Another suggestion is to put a robot test on your contact form, so you don’t get spam filing into your inbox.
– You might want to turn on the https ssl certificate thing. (which you can do here: https://my.bluehost.com/cgi/help/free-ssl)
– The page ‘Fractured Masks’ is actually accessible. If you get to a 404 page on the website, it gives a link to all your pages and that one is on there. So if you don’t want it found, maybe change it to private or draft until you’re ready? (unless you purposefully had it there already)
– On your ‘Meet Josiah’ page, you have “So if you’re interested in taking a look at some of my stuff, you can find a list of all my short stories that are published on this site here.” and the ‘here’ link takes me to a 404 error page, and no list of stories. (whether that was on purpose because you haven’t finished yet or not, I don’t know. *shrugs*)On another note, I like the style and feel of your pages, because they’re so personal and friendly and they just make me want to stick around. So great job with that.
And also. Superhero stories yaaaass. <333 I’m currently playing around with some ideas of those.Writing Heroes ♦ Writing Hope // janemareeauthor.com.au
(although on further research you might actually have WP 4.8 so you might be able to ignore that point. XD)
Writing Heroes ♦ Writing Hope // janemareeauthor.com.au
Wow. OK, you and your sister are seriously the best. Because I wouldn’t have known about half of that stuff if you hadn’t commented. xD If she ever wants to help KP web design, just have her shoot us an email, haha.
-The text is actually black to the best of my knowledge, but it’s a thin font and an overly-gray background. I made the background 50% whiter, so hopefully it’s easier to read now?
-Yeah; on my end it says I’m running 4.8.
-Installed. Ha. Yeah I was not aware you could find out this much if you had enough technical know-how.
-Heh. Well you two can congratulate yourselves on being one of the few who saw my humor attempt in ‘generic blog post.’ xD Didn’t think about the fact that those could be found through Google/404 pages.
-Ah yes. Thanks for catching that.
-Good thought. My current contact form can’t add a robot test and I got tired of researching alternate forms, so I’m probably not doing anything on that at the moment, but I’ll keep that in mind for the future when the spambots find me. =P
-Ah–didn’t realize I could get an SSL certificate that easily. *goes off to do that*
-That should have linked to the Chronicles of Morshan page, but I forgot to update the link when I changed the Chronicles of Morshan web address. It’s fixed now.Thanks. 🙂 I had a fun time writing the different pages up. Greatly appreciate all of that feedback!
Editor-in-Chief Emeritus. Guiding authors at Story Embers.
@Aratrea I’ll definitely tell her that. 😛 (her website is alicemaywebdesign.com.au if you wanted to check it out) I’m glad we could help out! 😀
The text does look better and easier to read now, yes.You did a great job. 🙂
Writing Heroes ♦ Writing Hope // janemareeauthor.com.au
Your website looks great! I love the black and white look. My only suggestion, and I’m not sure if you can change this, would be to put the “contact” button in line with all of your other buttons up top. Currently, it kind of looks like it is “floating in space.” 😉 However, I’m not sure if you can change that! Just a thought…:D
It looks wonderful!
@lifeofkatie Thanks for the feedback! Are you referring to the social media buttons or the link to the ‘Contact’ page? On my screen, the ‘Contact’ page is on the same line as the other pages, but that may not be the case on a smaller screen. What kind of device are you using?
Editor-in-Chief Emeritus. Guiding authors at Story Embers.
@aratrea – I am referring to the link to your ‘Contact’ page. I am on a MacBook Pro and the ‘Contact’ button was underneath all of the other buttons. It very well could be that my screen is smaller than yours! 😀 I understand how everything rearranges depending on what screen size you’re using 😉
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