Why WordPress is the Perfect Platform For Author Sites
Filed Under: Graphic Design, Web Design, creativity
I get a lot of requests for help with WordPress lately (which I am happy to answer), and I’m making a good chunk of my money through my knowledge of the content management system. I thought today I’d give you some background on why I’ve made WordPress my go-to platform when designing author websites.
Broad Support and User Base
WordPress has one of the largest user bases of any content management system. Why is this a good thing? Well, it means that there’s a lot of community support. It means that if there’s a feature you want, there’s a good chance someone has already developed it as a plug-in (there are tens of thousands of plug-ins for WordPress). If you run into a bug or other problem, there’s a good chance that you can find someone else who has already experienced this problem with a Google Search. This all translates into fewer hours and more features for your author website. You get more for less.
What this also means is that rather than having to go out and buy expensive books to learn how to design WordPress sites, I have been able to learn everything I know from reading online. So I have less up-front investment (although still quite a bit of investment in mastering parts of it). Those savings get passed on to clients, ultimately.
Great Back-end Usability
The back-end of a site is the part that only the site author sees. It’s where you go to manage your content, write new blog posts, and so on. Because your readers never see this part of your software, you might be tempted to be satisfied with any old thing–that is, if you’re already a computer expert, and don’t have any trouble learning new interfaces. Not all interfaces are created equal. Now, WordPress hasn’t always had a nice, user-friendly back-end, but these days, it’s quite simple and beautiful. I enjoy spending time inside of the WordPress software, configuring things, and a good portion of my enjoyment is due to that.
And chances are, you’ve already used WordPress. A lot of authors have already used sites like WordPress.com to set up blogs in the past. So this means you spend less time learning an interface, and more time working on your writing.
Power Theme System
WordPress allows you to configure and lay out your site any way you want, and it does it through a straightforward theme engine with well documented template tags. Through a combination of plugins, theme writing, HTML, CSS, and judicious JavaScript, there hasn’t been a design concept I have come across that can’t be implemented in some fashion with the system. And using a good blank theme as a starting base, you can have a theme up and running from an HTML prototype very quickly. You dream it up, and I build it. It’s as easy as that.
A CMS, Not Just a Blog
Some people make the mistake of thinking that WordPress is just for blogs. That’s only a small part of what WordPress can do these days. With a few basic plugins, you can build just about any kind of Content Management System feature you might want. And most importantly to authors, it gives you a user-friendly way of managing and editing that content. Rather than having to spend money down the road paying your webmaster to update your site, you can do it yourself through the back-end. It’s a win-win for you and your webmaster.
Conclusion
So those are just a few of the reasons I use WordPress. I was very hesitant to adopt it early on because I had read a lot of negatives, but each one of those negatives has been addressed by the development team. Eventually, it made less sense to stick with an old warhorse like Movable Type and to move on and work with the younger, more dynamic WordPress. Since I made the move, I haven’t looked back.
If you are an author, publisher, or small business looking for a site built on WordPress, don’t hesitate to contact me via Clockpunk Studios, my design company. I am available to take new work on starting in early September. I have a wide range of prices I can offer you, to fit many budgets. We can build your dream site, or we can get you started with something basic at your own domain very quickly, and add to that later. So don’t assume you can’t afford it. You might be surprised how cheaply you can get up and running with your own WordPress-backed site.
Forcing Creativity
Filed Under: Graphic Design, My Writing, Web Design, creativity
Some will tell you that it’s not possible to force creativity, or that the results from “forcing” creativity are sub-par to the work that “just happens.” I’m here to argue the opposite.
For some creative folks, such as myself, sitting around waiting for inspiration to strike, for the mood to be right, and for the stars to align is a recipe for getting jack shit done. We will write off our lack of productivity by saying something like “I just don’t have anything to say” or “the muse isn’t with me today.” I’ve used both of these excuses even recently to myself.
Hogwash. The truth is, nothing motivates me more than a deadline that has some teeth to it. A good example was the Federations anthology. I knew about it for months, and I had piddled around with a couple of ideas. Nothing really settled out, though. The deadline was literally 48 hours away when, the idea of losing a good opportunity to sell work to a favorite editor hit me. I didn’t want to miss out on an opportunity like this, and that was before I knew which luminaries of the field are in the book. With that driving me, I wrote “The Culture Archivist” and sent it to first readers. Got it back, revised it again, and sent it to JJA. It went through some editorial revisions, and then it was in the book.
The truth I must admit to myself is that I am a creatively lazy person at times. I want it to be easy. And it’s not. It never gets any easier. You just get better at it. But you still have to overcome the same inertia that was there when you first started out. That takes a combination of willpower, and if you can manage it, discipline.
This holds true for every creative endeavor of mine, whether it be photography, writing, or design. The hardest part is just getting started. And you have to force yourself to start. Because if you don’t even get started, you’re not bloody well likely to finish it, are you?
Force yourself to create using any means necessary. Some of these might work:
- Ask your spouse or significant other to withhold sex until you finish. Double motivator–you’ll want it done and your spouse will be really encouraging!
- Go on a bread and water diet until you reach your initial goal. (Do not do really do this, seriously. Eat healthy.)
- Use an internet blocking program when you work on the computer. These are usually time based, but I suspect that 4 hours or so without the internet will get something written and/or made.
- Instead of the stick, try the carrot. Promise yourself a $50 shopping spree if you finish the work, or a night out for dinner.
External forces have always been the best motivator for me, but with many projects, there’s no external force. As a freelancer, I don’t have a boss beyond the client, and the client isn’t always motivated themselves to finish the project. So it’s important for freelancers to learn to self-motivate.
A desire to create something great is often not enough motivation. Sometimes, you have to prod yourself into getting started. But once the ball is rolling, it tends to stay in motion for as long as you can afford the time. For me, the single best thing about creating things is losing myself in the process. Time becomes meaningless and my left-brain takes a nice long nap. Call it what you will–the zone, in the moment, or something else- it’s one of the greatest rewards of being a creative person. That pleasurable experience is almost reason enough to make things. The finished product is just a bonus sometimes.
What are some methods you use to motivate yourself when you have the desire, but not the will? How do you keep yourself on task? Share your methods with us.
Tomorrow, I will talk about strategies for making time to make things around a busy life.
Crucial Freelancer Skill: Estimating Your Time
Filed Under: Graphic Design, Web Design
In my business as a web designer, the first thing a client often wants from me, after we discuss their project, is an estimate. For me, this is purely a matter of estimating how much time a proposed project will take. But that’s not as easy as it sounds.
As I advance in skill, some projects tend to take longer. They look nicer, but they cost more. And that’s something I failed to take into consideration on my most recent project. I’m going to eat quite a bit of time because I overstretched myself in the design and coding phase. It took me quite a few hours longer than I had estimated with the client, and I still have a couple of promised components to go too. My mistake, certainly not the client’s.
Another mistake I made was not doing my site proposal process. In my site proposal, I outline the different aspects of the process and how many hours I think it will take for each area. I named a single figure for this rush job, and didn’t put enough time into evaluating the job.
Every mistake is a learning opportunity. Here’s what I’ve learned from this project:
- Always do a site proposal document first. Setting the scope out in paper makes it clear when, if the client requests something that isn’t in the proposal document, it will cost more.
- Take into consideration that you will take more time as you become a better designer, spending that time on little details that make a design go pop.
- Research the technical feasibility of features before you offer them and include them in your designs. (oops) Otherwise you can end up burning hours of your own time trying to figure out if something is even possible.
It’s been a long couple of days this week, but this project is nearly done. I’ll do some training tomorrow and figure out that last bit of technology when the company I contacted writes me back. I’m looking forward to adding the project to my portfolio.
Now, to take a break for a couple of hours and rest, before diving back into another project.
The Hidden Spring and the Abandoned Hog Farm
Filed Under: My Writing, Photography, Photoshop, Top Post
My stepfather Mike drives me out into the country to show off some discoveries he made while walking through the woods looking for cast-off deer antlers. He and an older man by the name of Chester often go looking for such things.
We drive nearly up to the Missouri border and park in an area under control for the Corps of Engineers. Hills surround a low field that has yet to be plowed under. Corn stalks still stand here and there like soldiers on the battlefield at the end of the war, while others blow across the ground in the breeze. Purple clover carpets the soil beneath the stalks, good nitrogen for when the farmer eventually does plow and plant for another season.
The sky is strung with low-hanging gray cotton clouds, thoroughly obscuring the sun. It’s a welcome change from the sunny bright weather of Colorado, actually. Overcast days are rare where I live now. A sharp, cold wind blows, making me pull my coat around me tighter. We walk down a muddy road. Water is everywhere, but it hasn’t been raining much, so it seems to come out of nowhere, and I wonder aloud about it. Mike nods and leads me up the side of a hill. Water trickles slowly down the slope through the grass which has become matted down in places with the wet. We follow the water up into a treeline, stepping among fallen logs until we come to a stone ridge at the top of the hill. We move around along the ridge until we spot the source; an old spring.
A half-circle of limestone pieces, fit together with no mortar, precision work that I become very familiar with through the rest of our exploration, has been set into the hillside three feet deep. the water half-fills the hole. Someone, perhaps as much as a hundred years ago, found this tiny upwelling of fresh water, dug it out and reinforced the walls with stone from the hillside. No one lives around here for miles, but that wasn’t always the case. (More below the photo)
I take photos, trimming away brush and debris, cleaning up the scene as best I can. The water is green with thick algae, and lichens and moss coat everything. The grass and weeds have yet to grow back, although sky-blue wildflowers have sprung up here and there beneath the trees.
Mike gives me a grin as if to say “you haven’t seen anything yet” and we set off back down the hill and along the muddy road, around a pond fed by yet another spring. We walk below the earthen dam that holds back the water, and alongside a field, following muddy tracks of a doe white-tailed deer that passed not more than a couple of hours before us. We find an old horse-drawn plow, rust-red in tall grass, the plowshare still biting into the soil. The gears and levers still function. I pull them and marvel at how a 50+ year old plow can be still relatively intact. All that it misses is the seat and chains to harness to the work horse.
From the plow, we follow the base of the large hill until Mike points out a disused wagon trail whichs cuts back and angles against the slope, climbing to the summit a hundred feet or so above the pond and field. The trail is steep on either side as if heavy wagon loads were carted up and down here until . When we reach the top, it’s not hard to imagine what loads were brought up.
Among the thicket of young trees, maybe 30, 40 years old in places, some older, Mike has found a complex of 3 foot high limestone walls that fences in more than a football-field’s worth of space. The walls show the same details and craftsmanship of the walls of the hidden spring. The stones are not cut of quarried. They are field stones that have been gathered and carefully fit together, tens of thousands of them.
First we examine a cut into the hillside, a cellar almost, walled off with limestone as well, with some pale stones showing signs of having been exposed to intense heat. Here, Mike thinks, was the smokehouse where the pork was hung and cured. This was a hog farm once. The walls seemingly haphazard were added to over time as the steadily wealthier owner added pens. I dig around in the rubble around the smokehouse and find bits and pieces of old bottles and some porcelin. Mike leans down to me and exclaims “Will you look at that!” I look up and he’s found an old horsehoe, rusted bent nails and all.
“It’s a lucky horseshoe,” I say.
“Well, it is now,” Mike says.
Mike points out a small alcove of walls with a narrow entryway, not more than four feet by six feet, and explains that this is where they would have kept the boar away from the sows, letting him out only a few times a year to sire young. It seems like a frustrating life for an animal, to hear and smell beautiful women just on the other side of a wall, but only able to get to them so very rarely. We move on.
Peeking out from just behind the bare trees, I can see a solitary brick chimney standing twenty feet into the air. We explore the concrete foundation which has heavy iron bolts set in to fasten the walls joists which have long since rotted away. I kick away at the fallen leaves and find old roof shingles, corrugated aluminum siding, and rotting wooden floorboards. It’s impossible to look at all of this and not start ot picture the people who lived here, to imagine their animals. I begin to wonder if they had a barn. They clearly had a wagon drawn by horses. I wander the grounds and sure enough, I find the buried foundations of another building, small, but not far from the opening in the walls where the wagon trail led into the ruins. This, I believe was the barn, where the horses were kept, and the walled area around it their yard.
How old is this place? When did they leave? How much money must they have had to have raised hundreds of hogs here? The questions the stones illicit are endless. We wander, tracing the outlines of the farm, and I try to picture it, try to travel back in time with my mind’s eye. I imagine that the farm was first built in the late 1800s, perhaps by a civil war soldier home from the war, weary from the killing. Weary of people, he buys a parcel of land far away from the embryonic towns of Northeast kansas. It’s not ideal, but some instinct left over from the war instructs him to build his home and farm atop a large rise where he can see for miles around, see the river cutting through the hills and carving steep banks below. there’s not much hardwood for building, so he begins to fence in his property with piece of yellowstone that litter the ground. Perhaps he hires a couple of hands to help errect his home, and he takes a young wife from one of the nearby railroad towns, maybe even Osawatomie. He purchases his first hogs and begins to raise animals. He plows a field below the hill and plants corn and wheat. It’s hard work, but not as hard as killing men, there’s that much.
His wife gives birth to three sons and a daughter, and it’s not long before they are put to work expanding the fences, building more pens for the hogs. They strip the hill bare of stones to make their fences, but they don’t simply pile the rocks together loosely. The hogs could push over poorly built walls–no, they fit the pieces together carefully. Sometimes they take a sledge to a piece to break it into smaller pieces, but mostly they use the pieces exactly as they are when they find them, simply fitting them together with thought and patience.
The years go by in hard, fulfilling work. The farm prospers. His daughter and two sons move away to the nearby towns, marry, and raise families. He is made a widower when his wife succumbs to a fever in the summer, some tickborne disease. The second son, the one for whom farming had always seemed to be his fate, takes over on the farm after his father dies from pneumonia after a hard winter. The son buries his father in a grave on the hillside and sets a limestone into the ground to mark the spot. He is illiterate–his old man had never placed much stock in education and did just fine without it–and so no words are etched into the marker. The grave overlooks the acres that the old man has bought up with the growth of his farm and the lucrative sale of hogs and pork.
The son spends some of his inheritance and builds a new house, this time with a concrete foundation. It’s small, enough room for a couple of people to live comfortably. He marries a woman, but they never have children. The depression comes, and things get harder. Few can afford to buy his pork and hogs. Eventually, they sell the land to a nearby rancher and move to the city to try their fortunes there.
And my crystal ball goes hazy. I wonder if there are descendants somewhere who were raised on stories of life on the old hog farm, but who have never seen what I have seen, never visited their ancestor’s lands. My family were farmers, not so many generations ago, but I don’t know the lands they worked. Arkansas somewhere, I am told.
With the ruins explored, Mike and I walk back to the truck in the drizzling rain. I feel today as if I have somehow reached back into time and touched the life of some faceless stranger. History is a funny thing, and I feel closer to it here than I do anywhere else. I don’t know why.
