I did a revamp of my…

I did a revamp of my main home page, to give it a more professional look. I've added a small photo of myself, moved all the erotica book photos off, to make it reasonably work-safe, and collapsed a lot of the categories, so much more is available above the fold. I think it's hugely improved, even though there's now somewhat less info on the page. It's a lot more manageable at first glance now.

I think I'd still like to do two things: a) add a few categories: academic, Sri Lanka, maybe erotica and sf, so people looking specifically for that info can find it easily, and b) turn the list into two columns, which I think I need to re-learn how to do tables for? Is that hard? Do y'all think it would look better in two columns, or should I leave it as is?

10 thoughts on “I did a revamp of my…”

  1. I’m irked by the term “mainstream lit” in the sentence that begins “I’m a writer and academic, author of mainstream lit., literary erotica, poetry….” It feels defensive, and also reactive: does anyone actually call it “mainstream lit” except people who write non-mainstream lit? If they do, they’re silly. Why not just say you write fiction, literary erotica, poetry etc?

  2. I’d vote for creating two columns, if it’s not too much trouble. The page feels off-balance to me, especially with the photo hanging from the top far right.

    And I second Karen; “fiction” ought to do the trick.

  3. The page looks good! Nice pic!

    I do agree with Trey that it looks a tad unbalanced with all the blank space at the right. I’d vote for either a two column layout, or perhaps a nice graphic or something, to fill up the space a bit.

    To do a 2-column layout, you’ll need to use either tables or CSS. CSS is more powerful in terms of letting you do wacky things with your layouts, but for a simple two column layout, tables might have less of a learning curve. In any case, there are tons of tutorials out there on the web on how to do two column web pages. Try looking on webmonkey.com.

  4. ‘Mainstream fiction’ is a fairly standard marketing category in the biz, actually, but it’s distinct from ‘literary fiction’ which is actually what I write. Jackie Collins vs. Michael Ondaatje, for example. I was muddled in the earlier draft and didn’t even get the term quite right — fixed now, thanks.

  5. Thanks, Wendy — that was exactly what I needed. I am now the table queen! What do you guys think? Should I futz with the layout anymore, or just fill in the missing links?

  6. I like the new look for the first page, it looks much better as two columns and looks more professional. Just one tiny bit of feedback from
    the aesthetic point of view, how about having additional spaces in between the bottom of the two columns and your closing paragraph? It would look better with a line break or two, imo. (Sorry, I know this is late, judging from the date of the post)

  7. I think that it’s somewhat browser-dependent; in Safari, I was already seeing space there. But I’ve added a little more. 🙂

  8. Yup, looks better there (on Mozilla Firebird). And you’re right about the browser thingie – forgot about that. Always gives me a headache when trying to make everything work in different browsers.

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