Thread: A serial novel written as a blog

This is the way I wish to proceed with my new work.

Is there any advice for me here?

Thank you

I'm just doing that myself. Posted the first chapters this week. Do you have a link?

Check out the NEW MEDIA link by Lin here: http://www.writingforums.com/showthr...ting-published

Thank you darknite. Thanks Moderan, I'll look at your work. I have no link yet because I am not yet to the stage of publishing the episodes. I'm trying to find out as much as I can beforehand. Do things right, avoid errors.

Good luck to you. This is the spot to come to then...I am certain to make many errors, and will report them scrupulously.

It was my plan to use a Ning.com site for this, as they have blogs and other interesting features. However, they are going to start charging for their sites. I am very glad they announced this before I started my novel project.

I have examined various free blog sites but they seem somewhat limited and I am now worried that any "free" site might suddenly become a "$600 site" after I am committed to it.

I would be willing to pay to host a domain but am uncertain about software. I was told to investigate Drupal.

Any advice here?

I use wordpress on the blog wing of my site. It has a gigantic variety of plugins that can be applied to almost any situation. You can have your novel and a discussion forum for the novel, for example, using one of several forum applications or widgets. Investigated drupal, which was then in its infancy, but chose wp instead. Very stable platform with tremendous flexibility. Nothing wrong with drupal-I love open-source software, but I prefer wordpress.
It doesn't cost a fortune to have a site hosted. I use GoDaddy and can personally recommend their service. My site, which has 150 GB of space and 1500 GB bandwidth, runs me just less than 100 bucks annually. You won't need near that much for a personal site with text and images. About 60-70 bucks a year for their budget domain hosting, including domain name registration.
And you don't necessarily need software. Just plain html can work too.
Hmm...just noticed. This week is the 15th anniversary of my first website. Oh for joy

Your site got the flowers I sent, right?

Corvus, I'd suggest you not get into Drupal (or Joomla or Nuke or other "CMS" software). It's very powerful, but difficult to set up and maintain and you don't need the power: all you're trying to do is post a chapter every week or month or day or whatever, right?

I go along with Moderan on using WordPress (and I think most webnovelists would, as well) Running WP off your site allows you a wide choice of themes, and theme choice really IS power. You can just choose a three column theme with variable width header or whatever and you just did with a few clicks what would take you a long time to set up and understand in Drupal or Joomla.

Don't choose themes by their color or cute graphics, by the way, any more than you'd choose a car that way. Look for the functionality of the theme--its layout, is it fixed or variable width (a narrow slot down the page or filling the page), widget-ready (HIGHLY recommended) and if the layout just "looks like what you imagine". You can easily change colors once it's installed. And the graphics. Hacking the graphics is the single easiest thing to do. Go into your theme images and find the header graphic or whatever, make another graphic the same size that suits your needs, give it the same name, and upload it.

Many hosts offer pre-installed WordPress....check in advance if they have it, or Fantastico or other bundle of software that includes WP. Install it with a dozen touches of your keyboard and get ready to rock.

yeah, the site thanks you
*nods* I've actually made a couple of themes myself, but stopped doing that because the developer community for wp is so pro-active that the features I invented were already out there.
Corvus, I recommend also that you stop by various blogsites and see what they've done. I have a ton of links in my sidebar, if you like.

Thank you.
I have taken the advice about WordPress, and indeed it seems extremely easy to use. I also searched for themes on google and located several to try out.
The most difficult step so far turns out to be editing the themes. I realized that most of it involves modifying the "CSS style sheets" so I googled CSS and found several tutorials that made that quite easy.

I am realizing that some themes are very easy to edit, others have very complicated CSS files. This might be a criterion for chooosing themes, but there is no way to evalutate it without installing the themes and opening those files.

I have almost no familiarlity with of knowlege of technical matters. Yet I am finding it quite within my grasp to edit the themes.

Once you've installed wordpress on a domain, there's a widget called themetweaker that enables you to monkey with the themes without having to be hands-on with the css. You can also install an admin dashboard app (lots of choices)that makes things much easier to manage. That will also enable you to search for new themes from within wordpress itself, streamlining that process as well.
It's even easier to use than you've found already

Thank you for that very helpful advice. I have secured a domain at this point and have installed WordPress. I also installed Drupal and Joomla, examined them both, and fled in confusion. I know my limitations.

One of my previous students has prepared some simple artwork and logos, the same gesture as my "avatar" here. I was delighted to realize that changing the graphics is simply a matter of uploading a graphic of the same size with the same file name.

I was able to change the colors of the theme by opening the CSS file, running a search for "color" and replacing the six character # codes with new ones. In my case mostly "000000" since I am working out of "basic black". Probably for the same reason that fashion addicts and young bohemians do: insecurity.