Midweek Notes from a Practicing Writer
Whew. What a week. Let me attempt to focus on three quick things to share with you.
- Well, if you’re reading this right here on ErikaDreifus.com, you’ve probably noticed: The “new” site has launched! It uses a different content management system (still WordPress, but now the “Gutenberg” editor), which I am still very much in the process of learning. So please bear with me on that—and with the various content updates around here that remain to be made. But I hope you like what you see—and I hope that you find certain upgraded features, such as blog and newsletter subscriptions, to b working more efficiently. Once again, I want to extend my sincere and abundant thanks to Jeremiah Tolbert at Clockpunk Studios, who has made all of this possible.
- Getting the site updated has been one big project on my pre-publication to-do list ahead of the November 5 pub date for Birthright: Poems. And now that that’s (essentially) done, you can begin to learn a lot more about the book. To begin: The blurbs are now all online! (Time for more gratitude: I can’t thank Matthew Lippman, Sivan Butler-Rotholz, and Richard Chess enough for their incredible endorsements.)
- Guess what else you can do now? You can put Birthright on your “want-to-read” shelf on Goodreads! (If you write about books and you’re interested in an advance electronic copy, please drop me a note with information about where your book-related work is featured; I’d be delighted to have you consider covering Birthright.)
So, there we are. It’s a lot, right? But it’s all pretty exciting.
Love the new look!!! Very clean and easy to read and navigate so your content can easily shine.
Thank you so much! It was so important to me to streamline things and make the site more user-friendly. The previous design was nearly a decade old, so things had become a little more cluttered, and with an entire new book to add into the mix, it seemed to be about time to tidy up here.
Clean and snappy! And I want to read your poems!
I want you to read them!
Looks great!
Thanks so much, Cheryl.
Site looks beautiful, very clean and crisp. Goes beautifully with the new cover too!
Question: Are we simply not seeing the share buttons? We see your “connect” buttons up top, but can’t find the others…help?
Thanks for the kind words. It’s so interesting that you ask about the share buttons. On a final virtual “walk-through” before this version went live, I asked the designer about the same thing. He replied that he generally doesn’t include the share buttons on new sites–he said that they require scripts that slow other things and that usability studies demonstrate that not many people use them. But he’s open to adding some if it turns out to be something for which there’s demand, so for now I’ll file your response away and see if others express a preference, too.
Thanks, Erika! That is very interesting information. Guess we’re in the minority.