{"id":6111,"date":"2015-07-05T07:00:15","date_gmt":"2015-07-05T06:00:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/janetgover.com\/?p=6111"},"modified":"2015-07-05T07:00:15","modified_gmt":"2015-07-05T06:00:15","slug":"a-winning-website","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/janetgover.com\/?p=6111","title":{"rendered":"A winning website"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"The<\/a>
The official announcement – how cool, is that!<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

I was totally thrilled this week when my website \u2013 this very website \u2013 won the Viewers\u2019 Choice vote in the West Houston RWA Romancing the URL contest.<\/a><\/p>\n

Because I also run the RNA website<\/a>, and because of my somewhat uber-geek background, a lot of people ask me what makes a good website. Well, now that I officially have one of those, here are some thoughts.<\/p>\n

I have a website to connect with readers. That\u2019s it in a nutshell.<\/p>\n

This blog is an important part of that connection. It\u2019s where I can be me. Talk about the things I do, the places I go, knitting \u2026 and books. All the things that interest me. It\u2019s where readers can leave comments, ask questions and talk to me. I love talking to people generally and my readers in particular.<\/p>\n

The book pages <\/a>are more than just a list of my published works. Each book has some \u2018bonus\u2019 pages in which I talk a little bit about how I came to write the book, or the settings for the books or some of the ideas behind them. Hopefully those pages will add to the experience of reading a book.<\/p>\n

There are free reads <\/a>too, where people can get a feel for the type of things I write about and the way I write. I don\u2019t want to ask people to spend their hard-earned money and their valuable time on my books without giving them a chance to see if my work is their cup of tea.<\/p>\n

You\u2019ll notice that the award this website won was a viewers\u2019 choice \u2013 and that\u2019s exactly what I want. I want visitors to enjoy the site.<\/p>\n

The background is a photograph I took of sun-baked earth on the edge of the desert. I really think it really gives a feel of the type of outback stories I write. The banner is made from my most recent book cover. I get such lovely covers from my publisher Choc Lit that the banner is always awesome. A new book means a new banner (and here\u2019s a hint, there will be another new banner later this year).<\/p>\n

I like playing at photography so I use a lot of photos that I take on the site. The images of\u00a0Benedict Cumberbatch\u00a0and Daniel Craig and Sean Bean aren\u2019t my own. I would love a chance to take photos of them, but I think that\u2019s called stalking\u2026<\/p>\n

I don\u2019t have bells and whistles and whizz-bangs and things flashing on and off the screens. I am not trying to impress the other uber-geeks out there. I am trying to connect with people. I want my site to be easy to navigate. I want the pages to be easy to read. OK, it\u2019s confession time \u2026 I am as blind as a bat without my glasses. I find some websites really hard to read, because they use a fancy font, or the colours on the site are too overwhelming. I didn\u2019t want my site to be like that.<\/p>\n

Most important of all – I want you to feel at home here.<\/p>\n

So, thanks for stopping by. I put a new post up here every week, talking about all sorts of random stuff. I hope I\u2019ll see you again soon.<\/p>\n

Thank you everyone who voted for me and a extra\u00a0thank you to webmaster John who did such a great job of turning my ideas into reality.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I was totally thrilled this week when my website \u2013 this very website \u2013 won the Viewers\u2019 Choice vote in the West Houston RWA Romancing the URL contest. Because I also run…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[7,9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6111","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-reading","category-writing"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p7g6jm-1Az","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/janetgover.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6111","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/janetgover.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/janetgover.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/janetgover.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/janetgover.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=6111"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/janetgover.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6111\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/janetgover.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6111"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/janetgover.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6111"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/janetgover.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6111"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}