~A man [woman] is a success if he [she] gets up in
morning and gets to bed at night, and in between he [she] does what he [she] wants to do. Bob Dylan~I’m smart. Wicked smart. Too smart for my own good. At same time (as they said when I was a kid and as it still applies), I’m too big for my own britches.
So I put those prissy pantalones to some good effort and I teach others how to write. I win a few awards, send a few hopefuls off to higher learning institutions where they in turn win their own awards and accolades. I do this till my seat gets burned one too many times by politics of academia, and I go into freelance writing.
I research for 1000s of hours, submit to literary contests and magazines, start working writing gigs, and keep researching. I build a web site. With what it costs to maintain an ISP and web hosting account and little else, I create this ambitious masterpiece, believing I am now a self-taught web host, writer, teacher, and confidant for academic writers, mental disability writers, and elder memoir writers.
But as your confidant, I have to confess: as much as I’d like to think those 300 hours of study and application for usability, keyword-rich, to-the-letter-of-the-law of interstate/inter-country/internet navigation design and creation make me a self-taught smartass, I did little but legwork by myself. Actually, five virtuosos of web world made making a website possible:
Jakob Nielsen After creating a really bad mess of a site overloaded with spinning, flashing, color blobs of coolness, I discovered www.useit.com/alertbox and Dr. Jakob Nielsen. His stellar advice, delivered in a no-nonsense tone, is backed by his many years of theoretical and practical work. After reading and studying articles such as following, I completely reconstructed my site:
Current Issues in Web Usability Misconceptions about Usability Ten Most Violated Homepage design Guidelines Top Ten Web Design Mistakes of 2003 Usability for Senior Citizens Writing for Web
Ed Zivkovic As I was catching on to using experts to build a user-friendly, usable site, I was catching on to language that indicates writer knows what he’s talking about. This is redeeming value of Ed Zivkovic’s site, Tips for Work at Home Webmasters, at www.ezau.com. He uses candor and directness. He provides technical content in understandable terms. And defying popular and trendy, he tells you directly and honestly what is crap, what is not crap, what is effective website technique and what is a waste of dough. Try some of these instrumental articles for starters:
Domain Name and Web Hosting Hell Exit Traffic Exchange-Traffic multiplier Alternative
R.I.G.H.T.S., www.rightsforartists.com As any artist/writer will attest, work that goes into creation is an interminable challenge. But we do it because we like it, because we are good at it, and because we have to do it. We are compelled to create. But we do our own work, not work (or art) of others. This site contains all of legal and ethical guidelines for copyright; R.I.G.H.T.S., a coalition of contributing artists (rather than a corporation or organization, that is) thoroughly, relentlessly provides information, definitions, answers, and directions for copyrighting and protecting creative work.
Firelily Designs Just as much about science of such vital concerns as color design for web users with color vision deficiency as about aesthetics of webdesign, this site practices what it preaches—as it preaches, well, teaches, graphic design. I don’t create my own web graphics. That would take me a year or two to master, when I have enough to do with getting words crafted into readable forms. But I found advice on color at www.firelily.com fascinating and functionally useful.
