Websites for the Arts  

Websites for the Arts is no longer designing individual websites. Thanks to all our clients who made our venture fun and successful. We wish you the best!

If you are looking for a website designer, we recommend

Now for some FREE advice.

We firmly believe that all writers, published and not-yet-published, need a website. (For those who are not yet published, think about it. You GOOGLE agents and editors, don't you? They GOOGLE you, too. Get those accomplishments in front of them with a website, or--if you have time for the care and feeding--start a blog.)

If you don't have your domain name yet (mine is and this website's domain name is www.WebsitesForTheArts.com), get yours as soon as possible. As websites are becoming more common, someone may get the domain name you want. Try for the ,com version first. If it's already taken, try for the ,net version. (Many folks buy both if available to keep from loosing them to someone else.)

I buy my domain names from www.1and1.com. If you want to see if yours is available, check it out here:

We trust 1&1 for our domains - Get yours for $5.99 today!

 

Check out your friends' and peers' sites. Usually, at the bottom of the page, you should see the webdesigner's credit tag. Click on it to go to the webdesigners website. If you don't see a credit tag, write the website owner. She/he will be flattered and will give you the webdesigner's name, possibly with a recommendation for or against.

Some of you may want to build your own sites. Many website hosts have easy-to-use templates where you type in your content only. They don't give you much flexibility, but they don't take too much time to build, either.

If you want to design your own, then let me recommend two books. Creating Web Pages with HTML SIMPLIFIED and The Non-Designers' Design Book.

Web design is very detailed. The difference of a double quote when you should have typed a single quote will have you scratching your head for hours. So, make sure you have plenty of concentration time set aside when building your first site.

If you can find a First Edition of Creating Web pages, it is the simplest to follow. I have both the first edition and the second one. The second edition adds in newer design elements, which is nice, but explains some of the basics a little quicker than the first book did. (The code for both books is outdated because the books teach HTML instead of XHTML but HTML code still works just fine,)

There are lots of website hosts (the company you rent server space from to put your website on the internet). All the companies have different bells and whistles. The more expensive the package, the more bells and whistles you get.

Some hosts have free, easy to use software to create your websites with. Both www.1and1.com and www.lunarpages.com offer the software for their smaller packages.

I really like the newsletter feature I get with www.1and1.com's larger package. It's easy to set up so that visitors can sign up for your newsletter, then you just fill in a template to create your newsletter and send it to the stored collection of names you've collected. I think it's worth the cost.

Anyway, here are three host companies to compare. GoDaddy's is popular, but I don't have any personal experience with them. Lunarpages has good reviews in the webdesign community and I've heard good things about the website design tool CoffeeCup they give to you free, but I haven't used them. I've had my website with 1and1 for several years and have been very pleased with their service and with their telephone customer support.

 1and1.com  wwwLunarpages.com   GoDaddy.com

Just be sure to check your website in both Microsoft Internet Explorer and in FireFox.

You will also need a way to work with graphics (pictures). Here's another freebie you might find helpful. Do a search for PICASSO from GOOGLE.

The other book I recommend is The Non-Designers Design Book by Robin Williams. Whether you're designing a website, a poster for the science fair or napkins for your sister's rehersal dinner, this little book is priceless in explaining the fundamentals of typography, color and image placement.

 

I host my websites on www.1and1.com. They do a good job for me, are very reasonably priced and have lots of free extras like a newsletter program, free blogs, decent website templates and a graphics library. You can check them out here,

 

If you want to invest megabucks in design software, the industry standard is Dreamweaver. (It's what I use.) You need to know HTML fairly well and you need to have lots of patience as the learning curve is high. Unless you plan to do a lot of design, I'd stick with the hand-coding method that you can learn from the Creating Web Pages book

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If you're like me, you like lots of reference books. Here are some that Amazon has picked:

On my drawing board, I have plans to build a how-to website for Beggining Website Design. In the meantime, I will be starting a newsletter with tips and hints on building better websites (both technical and promotional aspects.) If you want to receive the newsletter and be notified when I get the website up, sign up here. (Your information is never sold, traded, given away, etc.)

Send any comments, etc to me at