Defibrillating the web world

Putting together a website takes more time and energy than you imagine. Alongside your allocation of t + e, I recommend a multiple-use discount voucher for your local masseur, a darkened room and a heart defibrillator.

Well. Maybe not that. But it’s a stressful experience, and from the outset one of the critical, clearly-stated goals should be the retention of your sanity. I’ve found the process educational, frustrating, challenging, hilarious. And finally my web-builder and I have reached the end (or beginning?) and the website is up - annamackenzieauthor.com. The next step, apparently, is trying to break it. Wait: what? Yep, that’s what she said. I’m hoping no one breaks it, and that lots of people find in it something worth having, and that I can now have my life back and think about something else. (Though it's currently looking doubtful.)

Do writers need websites? Apparently. Can they help you reach an international market waiting breathlessly for your life’s work, your life story, your baby photos, your personal take on the ways of the world? Assuredly so. Do they? Not always. Maybe not even often. Google doubtless has a say in it, as does the fickle nature of the universe, the slow flicker of a butterfly’s wing, the endless array of changing variables that remain to most of us a mystery.

One key factor that will determine whether you achieve what you want from your website is knowing from the outset what it is you want it to achieve. That sounds easy. Er, doesn’t it?

Maybe all this will be simpler for the upcoming generation who use iPads for teething rings and seek their life partners in Cloud corridors. Or maybe they’ll just find some new way to run themselves ragged, escalate their stress levels, stay up way too late and otherwise justify the regular employment of practitioners skilled in the unlocking of knotted muscle.