Monday 18 January 2010

New Websites

I've been hard at work for the last couple of months creating a website called Author Online. The idea was to create a system whereby authors (published, self-published or aspiring) could get a fully-featured custom-designed website for an affordable price. We use a standard database and admin back-end, and custom-design the front-end for the customer.

And I've spent the last few days using the system to create my very own site: Keef Williamson - that writer chappie.

Actually, the system can be used for anyone who has creative work to show off - artists, musicians, photographers etc. I'm looking for customers if anyone has any ideas...

Enjoy!

8 comments:

Macthomson said...

Now this is totally intriguing. For me it comes just as my day job goes into fan-hitting shit mode and today I finally put on my to-do list the prepping of one of my manuscripts for Authonomy.

Wishing you well with the project and seriously contemplating signing up... Sandlander

Grumpy Goat said...

I am intrigued by the zoom bar on the photo gallery. Is this HTML, Flash, or what?

Keef said...

Mac: great!

Goatboy: it's Javascript extended by Prototype and Scriptaculous. Or, to put it more simply, magic.

Alexander said...

Brilliant scheme Keefie!

Mac... save your time and effort. Authonomy will waste both...

CafeMark said...

Congratulations - looks good! I've mentioned it on a Guardian talkboard, and will try and publicise it elsewhere when relevant. I've got my own site being worked on ( www.lenguahelp.co.uk ) but it's going to take a long long time before I can build up a comprehensive database. Try looking at "deep" or "sight" to see different examples in English (and their Spanish equivalent). Anyway, once again, well done, and good luck,

nzm said...

Hi Keith

Take a look at this video that was produced to promote a photo book titled "The Black Passport" by Stanley Greene.

I could imagine the same being done for novels - using images and a voiceover (author's?) narrating parts of the novel, and then embedded into the author's website?

The Black Passport video was made, in part, over Skype. Greene narrated the voiceover to the video and the images were also downloaded to the video maker using Skype.

Keef said...

Michele: yep, you can embed YouTube vids into most pages on the site (news, blog, book info & sample chapters). And it's also a doddle to embed an MP3 - here's one I made earlier http://www.keefieboy.com/blog.asp?id=33

nzm said...

Yes - done that too, but more thinking about the concept of using images and vid to promote a novel - much like your podcast, but put to images.

Would take some extra doing to shoot/find related images - not as easy, say, as putting Greene's actual imagery plus words to vid. It would be like creating a storyboard!