Google and Stuff

[EUOL]

Heh.  Yeah.  I'll mention that again to Sprig.

[The Holy Saint, Grand High Poobah, Master of Monkeys, Ehlers]

and speaking of links, I'm looking over the participants at worldcon (hoping to be able to identify some of them as editors to talk to, making little headwya there). They list Brandon Sanderson as a Participant, but don't link to your site like many of the others do. That would be a good way to get a lot of traffic, I'd think.

[EUOL]

Hum.  Little late now, I think.  Perhaps I'll email them.

[House of Mustard]

Excellent.  Now the sales will come pouring in.

In related news, I'm thinking of overhauling the website.  I had thrown it together (with Tage's benevolent aid) before I really knew what I wanted, but now I think it needs some fixin'.

First, the interface isn't as thorough or as self-explanatory as I'd like.  For example, the "Summaries" icon is a whole lot more than summaries.  And I don't know why I have TWO icons that are for Q&As (Tage brought that up when we were working on it, but I didn't believe him at the time.)

Second, I think it's generally pretty ugly.  I made the "Road Sign in the Desert" look before I saw the cover of my book, and it doesn't match.  I think I want to go with something a little more simple and sleek this next go round.  

Any comments?

[EUOL]

I've always found the color scheme and graphics a bit...I don't know, unappealing.  Sorry, I'm not an art guy--I can't explain, I can only give my impressions.

I do like how you have a lot of space on the right for your content.  Your rants and posts are big, and by giving yourself a lot of room there, it makes the entire thing seem balanced.  

[House of Mustard]

Yeah, the background colors/graphics are bland and don't really match the icons.

Here are two sites that I really like:  Both of them are far two complicated, code-wise for a novice like myself, but I like the color schemes and the overall look.

One is for an author/actor, Stephen Fry: www.stephenfry.com

The other is for a singer, Natalie Merchant:
www.nataliemerchant.com

[Tage]

Back to the google subject, I just remembered that TWG and you two passing links around won't do a bit of good, since all the sites are on the same IP address. Google discounts those kinds of links so that people don't just make 1,000 subdomains all with links to each other.

[EUOL]

lol.  Foiled again!

[House of Mustard]

Incidentally, I'm not sure how the Yahoo engine works, but they seemed to pick up my site a lot sooner than Google.

[House of Mustard]

Yeah -- I just checked, and searching for: Brandon Sanderson Elantris, your site popped up.

[The Holy Saint, Grand High Poobah, Master of Monkeys, Ehlers]

If'n you want  can move one of you to my host.

[Mistress of Darkness]

HoM: Your blog needs some sort of space between paragraphs. I can tell that you have them, but they need a tab or a blank line to make reading easier.

[House of Mustard]

Well, that's easy enough.  I'll start doing that.

[Mistress of Darkness]

Cool. The other pages need it too.

Is the second book in the New Order Trilogy going to be titled Arise?

[House of Mustard]

Book 2 is called Watermark.  I don't know about book 3 yet.  Plus, all that could change if the publisher doesn't like it.  'Awake' isn't the official title yet, either.