The Struggling Writer

The chronicles of a freelance writer as he tries to make a living.

Friday, February 17, 2006

A new web site

I didn’t write those articles today, but I have been busy.

Although I want to write articles, my main focus will be on technical writing. Since I have done software documentation and field reports, I have good experience that I think can translate into lucrative contracts.

As a first step, I want to establish a professional web presence. Among other things, I want to create a brochure site. A brochure site is a small web site for a business. It’s generally just a few pages that showcase the business’s offerings.

With that in mind, I’ve been lurking over at the Digital Point forums. It is a forum for webmasters. I’ve been to others, but I like the crowd who posts there. There is a lot of information, overkill for this kind of small site, but at some point, I may be interested in creating a content site (a site with articles that is supported by advertising) so I’ve been researching that.

Based on advice on those forums, I went and registered andyhumphrey.net with NameCheap. This will be the site for my technical writing business. I signed up with A Small Orange for web hosting (tiny sites for only $30 per year). I currently have a personal site with Ready Hosting. I’ve been reasonably happy with them, but lately they have been making a number of changes that are irritating mewith so I decided to go with another host for my business site. A Small Orange was, again, recommended at Digital Point. They offer much more than Ready Hosting does. I logged into the control panel (the site was created within minutes) and started to drool at all the features. It’s paradise for a geek like me.

Right now, there is nothing at the site but a placeholder page placed by NameCheap. I’m going to create a brochure highlighting my technical writing experience and posting examples of my past work. I’ve checked with my former employers and they are fine with me using the things I’ve written for them as clips. That's an important step both legally and as a professional courtesy.

Next I need to build the site and then start networking. If I can manage to pull in a few search engine hits, that would be nice as well.

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