Designed My Own Website
Well, to be quite frank I think it’s a very basic website. At least when they say an author should have a website I will not get this nagging feeling I am guilty of an unforgivable crime.
My journey to achieve this goal was not a smooth one and I haven’t reached my destination yet, but I can say I am somewhere close. Firstly, I had to find a website builder I would work with. I tried quite a few. Some required that I pay something upfront. Some advertised low prices at the beginning with a blaring warning that prices were introductory only, and after the first month my VISA card would get a shock of its life. Yet others were very conciliatory in their terms, but I couldn’t understand how to navigate around the sites and I concluded I was very dumb and abandoned the project. That was three years ago when I published my first book.
Last week I just decided enough was enough. I couldn’t let some speechless and formless software sitting on my own six year old machine intimidate me. So I selected Wix.com after much deliberation and decided whether Wix liked it or not I would wrench a website out of them.
I had such fun. Their website builder is intuitive and easy to use. You can add so much functionality as a basic website would need and change practically every aspect of the designs. I tried out colors, buttons, lines, banners and templates until I felt I had a working website and clicked publish. Then I read somewhere people don’t like the colors I had used. Trusting the learned researches on Google.com, I changed my colors to blue and a less glaring shade of orange so I could have one color people like and one color people hate. Ha! Who then can say they hate my colors?
Anyway, the site is up. There are as few pages as one can get away with and a working blog. I have to add some apps and find out how to display the number of subscribers on my site. I also have to register a custom domain and connect it so that it all looks very professional.
I didn’t give it my name though, because I want the website to be a place where I can share more than just my work. I want to share my African travel experiences as well as reviews of African Literature, interviews of other authors and explore other forms of African art.
So there you are. I would be glad for your feedback on the website.
www.zorodzaip.wix.com/explorationafrica
