My blog is now my official website

I started this blog and it was great. I was really getting into the whole blogging community thing! Loved it! But I still needed a website for general info and such. I used my free webspace that my ISP allows me and used their template. Very blah and boring...very basic. But it was free. No money in the budget for website building these days.

But then Blogger allowed you to have pages on your blog. This was FAB!! I added some pages and the blog now had all the info I needed....so why keep a crappy looking site???

I just changed my site forwarding to the blog. So happy about this change. Now everyone will only see my fab looking blog!!

Does the look of a Blog really matter???

When it comes to graphic design and web design and all that good stuff...I am about as dumb as it gets. I know how to use a computer...I can do some maintenance.....I manage pretty well and when something major happens I call up my uncle and he takes care of it for me.

I had a website for my floral business when I was still doing it. It was pretty awesome. I didn't do it, of course. I paid a cousin and his friend to do it. When I needed a website for my writing, I didn't have the cash to pay anyone so I went with a template. Then when I started blogging...again...free template.

Do both of them look nice and presentable??? Yeah, I guess so. They're both neat and tidy. Check out my website if you want to take a peek. Do they serve the purpose?? Definitely. Original??? Not even slightly.

I do have some ideas of what I'd like them to look like, but bottom line, I do not have the money to pay someone to make them all pretty.

And how much do readers care what the blog or site actually look like?? Both of mine are easy to read...I am turned off by hard to read sites and blogs...especially those with dark backgrounds and funky fonts.

In this world of judging books (and most things) by covers, is an uninteresting looking blog page or website a deal breaker??? Or is the content more important?? I'm finally stepping into the publishing industry...and I am a reader myself...I know how important a fantastic cover is.

Website is up and running!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Now it's nothing fancy...but it's there!!

We have Time Warner's Roadrunner as our ISP and they give us free web space. I used it before, when I had my floral business. Had my husband's cousin design it and take care of it and it was great. He did a fantastic job! But then I closed up shop and the website too.

But now.....now I have reason to have an official website again!!!! Don't really have the money to pay someone to design a new site for me and I really wanted to be able to make changes to it myself..instead of going through someone else. So I sat down yesterday and today and played around with it myself. It's extremely basic...but it has what I need for now. I'm not real fond of the banner across the top...but the space is free....how much can I really complain????

I was a bit bummed though...stephaniehaefner.com was already taken...though when I typed it in, nothing came up except a godaddy.com thing saying it was taken. I could have had a .net or a .org...few others...but I don't know....I really wanted a .com. Got stephaniehaefnerthewriter for three years and maybe by then stephaniehaefner.com will be free to take!

And I even paid for domain registration all by myself and set it up to forward to my free web space!! So proud of myself!! I am usually not good at this kind of thing at all!!! But I used Yahoo and it was all really really easy!!

Check it out when you get a chance: www.stephaniehaefnerthewriter.com