Note: The content of this article was originally written for my newsletter subscribers on January 29, 2021. If you want to read these articles while they’re still fresh, please subscribe to my newsletter today. You can find the signup link in the side panel (desktop) or at the bottom of this page (mobile).

Hi Everyone,

Welcome to the close of another month, and with the end of this month comes the beginning of this newsletter, so, just as my sister used to write at the start of her sixth grade essays (all of them), sit back, relax, and…what was the rest of that saying?

I forget.

It was a long time ago. But let me tell you about what I’ve been up to this month.

I think that was how she used to get to her main point—by announcing her intention. That wouldn’t pass a higher level English class today, of course. But for sixth grade? Yeah, our standard for education is pretty low.

Anyway, cracks on the education system aside, I’ve been working on my author website all month, adding this thing, tweaking that thing, and giving myself a headache as I learn how my best efforts are hamstrung by the CSS coding lesson I still have yet to learn. Writing? Not so much. I think I wrote a chapter this month. Building a website is a lot of work. So much work.

I’ve been drinking a lot of coffee this month.

But my efforts are not in vain. For this month’s newsletter, I wanted to let you peek behind the curtain and see how it’s going.

Starting with a basic page:

In this example, you’ll see the design scheme I’ve settled on for most of the information pages. I had brighter yellows and oranges for the headers, but I thought they were too outrageous, so I muted them a little. Hopefully, they don’t make you want to claw your eyes out. But if they do, please let me know.

Skipping all the way to the main event, you’ll see my virtual bookshelf. This will be for desktop viewers only, as the graphic doesn’t scale well to handheld devices, but I’ll have a nice generic gallery view for mobile users. It’ll be nice and plain. You should really check out my site on desktop.

Clicking on the book’s image (regardless of presentation mode) will open up that book’s product page.

The book page will scale down and reorder some buttons for mobile users, so all users should have access to the same basic functions. But what’s really awesome about these book pages are the buttons. You press one, and something happens!

Like a pop-up.

Actually, the cool part is the color-coding. I’ve set it up so that you can identify how the button will react by its hover color (or default, if you’re viewing on mobile). Buttons start off blue (on desktop), but they’ll turn green, yellow, or red depending on whether it’ll send you to a new page on the website (green), open a pop-up (yellow), or send you offsite (red). I hope this will help the decision-making process a bit more when navigating the site. I realize this also means no one will press the red buttons, as those tend to lead to “buy now” locations, and who wants to spend money on a product? But some might, and this will give them the heads up.

Do you think it’s a good option or a lame one?

Finally, I’ve got a template in place for reading my books on my site.

Even though most books will provide samples only, a few will be free to read in their entirety, so it’ll be worth visiting the site if you want a few good short reads. When it’s open, of course.

I’ve spent the last couple of days improving the reader’s quality of life experience by adding hyphenation, an estimated reading time, and a reading progress bar that follows you down the page, letting you know how much of the chapter remains. At some point, I’ll see if I can add these components to the blog. I think they enhance the experience.

Anyway, that’s January. If you’d like to see a full demonstration of the site so far, please check out the devlog video I posted a little while ago. It takes just under 20 minutes to watch.

Hope you all are doing well. Stay out of trouble.

–Jeremy