Step Away from the Keyboard

Late last week, an author emailed for help.  He was trying to put together some promotional items for his book.  He was building a post card and about to go mad.  I advised him to step away from the keyboard and seek help from fellow authors.

I just finished a Workshop that centered on promoting my books.  This led to the realization that my site was cluttered, clunky and in need of a re-model.  So in need that when I asked a question about my menu, the leader replied that she didn’t even see a menu.

So, a new menu became my starting place.  There are many ways to completely screw up a menu and I think I found and tried most of them.  I even had a double menu at one point.

Someone else said I had too much going on.  Who really reads the tag cloud and the twitter feed?  After all, she said, readers are coming in from twitter they already know what is there.

I had to close the control panel more than a few times.  I watched episodes of Breaking Bad with Netflix.

With things totally messed up here on my site I reached the point of ‘what the heck.’  There appeared to be no way I could do anything worse.  Aside from deleting the whole site.

I researched until I was confident that I could change my WordPress theme without losing all of the content I’ve gathered over the last 3 or 4 years.  Then, I did it.

I chose a theme with one sidebar, less clutter, a clean looking menu, a changing header and hit the install button.

It worked.

Now, I had to compost an idea of having a static front page or leaving that as it is.  Instead of a static front page I managed to put the covers of my book over there to your right.

I still haven’t begun work on getting the fonts the same on each page.  I still have to reorganize my press pages.  Submenus, footers… does it ever end?

Step away from the keyboard.

Next to ‘don’t touch anything sharp,’ this is a very good idea.

I have a plan.  It is going to take some time and I suppose I’ll be stepping away at regular intervals.

If you are doing a site rehab, remodel, destruction, construction or a rose by any other name, remember the words – Step Away from the Keyboard.

And don’t touch anything sharp.