Updatey Goodness

This is what happens when I make grandiose plans… I get muddy and my tailbone hurts. I can’t believe it’s been that long, but 9 months ago I made a grand plan, made it public on my blog, and then virtually disappeared off the face of the earth.

To sum up, because it’s much too long, I had some health issues, money woes, a computer crash, another computer mishap, another health issue, and actually did quite a lot of work for clients … leaving my website and blog very much like the house of the professional carpenter. I should know, my father is one (a carpenter, I mean, not a house, blog, or website).

To the update: The Linux operating system plan is a no-go for my primary work computer, since quite a lot of the software I use is available for Windows only. I did a lot of research hoping to find replacements, but that was a bust on some pretty critical applications. At least for now. I am working on moving as many systems as possible over to open source solutions and sharing my software dollars with their developers when I can.

During my inadvertent hiatus, my website was hacked. It was a frustrating, though not terribly difficult, experience fixing the mess, and pretty embarrassing considering how careful I am with other people’s websites, but all security holes are now plugged and all malicious code removed. I’ve also changed the design to something I kind of love. I was unsatisfied with my old design, worked out something colorful but not very functional in between creating this design for a client, and then, you know, mishaps occurred. Upshot, the client went out of business and gave the design back to me (I don’t duplicate designs), and so I tweaked it for my own purposes and here we are! … if by here we mean pretty new design but all the links don’t match and I need to drastically update the content. Working on it.

In the future? Learn more about Linux for my own purposes, find more open source solutions to my work flow, acquire an inexpensive system I can install Linux on for my kids. I think it’s the future and they ought to know how to navigate it at least as well as they know how to search YouTube for train videos and bad gummi bear music (and then, maybe they can explain it to me). Even if it, specifically, isn’t the future, no knowledge is wasted. And if they have their own computer maybe they’ll stop kicking me off of mine to watch Sesame Street’s performance of the Mahna Mahna song…again.

Deep Breath

I think it’s time I moved to a Linux operating system. Despite the Linux server where this and the other websites I host live, and my smarter-than-me techy friends, I’m an absolute N00b when it comes to Linux. So I’ve long thought I should know more about it, but there are so many other things I need to learn!

So, what triggered the move now? One of the things I like best about the Open Source community is the high ratio of givers. There are a huge number of people I’m honored to have encountered through my forays into open source.  Today’s person is Ken Starks, the guy behind the Helios Project. See, there’s this guy who builds Linux computers and gives them to kids who can’t afford one. He posted about a recent computer donation, and I commented, and long story short(er) here we are.

He and Larry Cafiero sponsor Lindependence.  Lindependence is a program to turn other OS users into Linux users, one town at a time.  I’ve heard a lot of good things about Linux. I like the idea behind it, the quality, and the community of it in particular, including the high preponderance of users like Ken Stark and Larry Cafiero within that community. (to learn more about Lindepencence, check out the website here.)

I’m posting this so that anyone who wants to join me (Lindependence 2009?), or is curious about how this works (or just wants to see me implode from information overload), can follow along. Over the course of the next little while, I’m going to be posting about the move. First, I plan to learn what I can about it, how to use it, how to solve any problems I might have with software and so forth, in particular making sure that my clients (many of whom will never switch from Windows) will stay happy, and by December 31, I plan to be a reasonably savvy Linux user.

Maybe I’ll run dual OS for a while–there’s enough room on this machine if I clean up some of the draft files I have floating around, but by the end of December, I plan to have switched over to Linux for good.  Or I may discover that I’ll need to keep the Windows OS for some reason, or continue to use both. I guess we’ll see.

I’m giving myself this much time because I’m incredibly swamped right now. The kids just started school, and with Aidan, our youngest, being both autistic and albino (with the complementary poor vision) there are always teacher meetings, IEP tweaking sessions,  follow-ups with his various therapists, and the obligatory doctor visits at the start of every school year.  I’m juggling a million small press obligations, I’m building a couple of websites and a really complex CMS for a client that sometimes has me stumped, and I’m trying to keep learning.

But our oldest needs a new computer for college, our daughter will be needing one when she moves into middle school, and the youngest really responds to educational software. He’s 5 and beginning to read and write, understands rhyming, knows his colors and how to count to 100, and he draws some of the most amazing pictures I’ve ever seen from a 5 year old. I’m thinking all of this means that now is a good time for me to learn how to build a computer economically. Maybe I can even start a Helios Project Cleveland within the next 5 years. Ambitious plans, but I think I can make it work.

It’s time for that deep breath.

A List for Effective Marketing

For most of us, marketing is a crazy-confused thicket of contradictory advice.  The best way to market oneself, in my opinion, is to follow the golden rule, or do as you would have done to you.  And again, for many of us, that boils down to: don’t cheat. Splashy eye-candy that doesn’t provide value is cheating. Biased “information” that doesn’t provide the truth and/or is a thinly-veiled advertisement is cheating. Sock-puppetry? Cheating. Comment-stuffing? Cheating. Spam? Oh yeah; that’s cheating.

Below the cut are some inexpensive (but often time-consuming) ideas you might want to implement if you need to market yourself and don’t want to cheat. Because I work with authors a lot, it’s written with them in mind, but even if you’re not an author, it probably applies to you.

(more…)

My Favorite WordPress Plugins

I was talking WordPress with my husband a couple of days ago, and we realized that he and I frequently use–and/or consider most important–different plugins. He said he’d like to know which are my favorites and why he should adopt them. The reason he (or anyone else) might want to adopt them is because they make WordPress even easier to use and they don’t require a degree to install, configure, or run. My lowest bar for a plugin is that it not annoy me. The highest praise I can give one is that the results delight me. So, here we are, the plugins I find delightful.

1. My new favorite plugin is Lighter Menus by corpodibacco. With 2.5.1 the administrative side of things changed. I found it confusing and annoying to get where I wanted to go. The Lighter Menus plugin puts all the admin navigation in a tidy little drop down bar at the top.
(more…)

Getting the most out of your typesetting professional

If you hire someone to typeset your work, the easier you make the job, the happier your typesetter will be. If you take a few extra minutes to be sure you’ve given the typesetter all the information he or she will need, you’ll find that many typesetters will welcome more work from you, and may give you a discount (I certainly would), on the work you request.*

This is the basic progression of events: You send the typesetter your manuscript, describe your trim size, and let the typesetter know if your printer accepts spreads or single pages. If your printer will print spreads, that means the interior margin can be wider than the exterior margin, making it easier to read the book when it’s open without sacrificing too much space on the outside margin. If your printer only accepts singles, the margins must be the same size on both the left and the right.

Your typesetter sets up the master(s) in InDesign (or some other layout software. Layout can be done in Word or Open Office, but the fine-grained controls aren’t there and it’s much harder to get a truly professional look.) The master is the design template. Depending on the type of manuscript, there may be two or many more masters. For an anthology where the authors’ names and titles have to appear on each page of each individual story, there are often twice as many masters as there are authors/stories.
(more…)

Author, Author!

Think about the last book you picked up. Chances are, somewhere on the front of it, especially if the author was relatively unknown, someone famous wrote something nice about the story you were holding in your hand.

“Brilliant! The next great American Vampire novel!” Famous Author

After you dismiss the rumor about how Famous Author is paid to do that, shed the bad advice you’ve most likely read somewhere. That is, “You should never pay for a blurb.”

How in heaven’s name did the unknown author get the famous author to say that? It would mean the famous author read it! (Absolutely, entirely, right now, dismiss from your mind any rumor you may have heard about how Famous Author really doesn’t read the book; he or she is just paid to say that. That’s unprofessional behavior and unlikely; a rumor probably started by those sour grapes people who can’t get a blurb.)

(more…)

Website Style

A creative individual, the head of a religious organization or charity, owner of a boutique, or a business that wants to project big business professionalism–they’re all going to want a different website style. But there are a lot of design options out there. How do you decide what not to include in your website?

Conventional wisdom consistently lists the following:

Dated gimmicks. Flashing, pixelated GIFs; poor navigation structure (even or especially if it looks “cute”); smiley faces; pictures of puppies and kittens–They’ll make you look like you’re well behind the curve in all of your business dealings, including the one you’re trying to sell (and even if it’s a personal website, you’re selling something–yourself).

Large graphics. This is less of an issue than it used to be as people move more toward high-speed Internet access, but I recommend visiting the local library to try to put yourself in a visitor’s shoes. You’ll have, on average, a half hour. How much of your half hour of library Internet time is eaten up waiting for your website to fully load? Even 5 seconds can be too long for some people.

Poor SEO planning. Flash websites–last I heard–aren’t SEO friendly, though there are ways to improve that, even with Flash sites. Blogs are getting better, but also have trouble managing good SEO. Search Engine Optimization means you’re found when people are looking for what you’re selling. It’s important to be sure that the site is constructed in such a way that the search engines can find it and list it appropriately.

Other things to avoid? I hate the ones above, but the ones following the cut are my top five: (more…)

Inspiration

I wear a lot of hats, so the sites that interest me fall into a variety of categories.

Website Design

Endicott Studios… Beautiful images, beautiful stories…

CSS, Design Inspiration. One of my very favorite websites to visit now and again, especially when I need inspiration, has been the CSS Zen Garden site. Since 2004, designers have been sending in beautiful designs that demonstrate the flexibility of CSS. The content of the site never changes, only the way it looks, from a movie theater to a garden, a sci-fi thriller theme to a daguerreotype. The brain behind CSS Zen Garden, Dave Shea, wrote a book about the beauty of CSS that’s pretty important reading for anyone who wants to design beautiful websites that people can actually use. As of this writing, CSS Zen Garden is down, but I hope it comes back. Dave Shea thinks it’s still relevant and so do I. (more…)