Luckily, I Didn’t Have To Die Trying.

Last December, I bought my own domain. (That’s such a geeky thing, isn’t it?) I wanted a website that sort of rolled the information about my book, my various blogs, and all of my other “online presences” under one umbrella. I wanted something that looked professional, simple, clean.

I wanted to do it myself.

That’s right: I wanted to create my own website. From scratch.

I’m pretty adept at working with html coding within my Blogger account right here, so why couldn’t I learn more of it?

No reason.

Jim bought me one of those “HTML for Dummies” books, and I bought one with CSS stuff in it (hang on, non-geeks! hang on: don’t leave!), and I proceeded to…

…read the books but only manage to get a background and one line of text (“Future Home of Melisa with one S!”) up. That took me–well–ten months, give or take. And not literally. The actual act of putting the background and text up took a total of about 90 minutes. The rest of the ten months was spent on, er, life.

I just don’t have the time, people. Sure, I DO want to learn it! I want to be an html DIVA. It fascinates me, how with just one misplaced “>”, you can mess up what you’re trying to accomplish. I know, I’m weird.

When I got my MacBook last month, I learned (I think, from Weather Kim) that I could make my own website in a couple of hours with the iWeb program that was already installed on the computer. Last night I opened that sucker up, and in two hours, I had a website.

I HAVE a website. And I love it!

Here’s the front page:

website+snapshot
Would you like to visit and check out the rest? It’s at www.melisawithones.com. Click here.

Yay me!

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12 Comments

  • Sue

    Who knew you were so geeky!? I am very impressed and when you visit me, you can aid and assist the massacring of HTML that I do.

  • Michelle

    Rock on, Melisa! Very nicely done. And umm sadly (but not surprisingly) I'm totally with you in being fascinated by html and coding but not having the time to do any of it. I love that picture of you.

  • Anonymous

    GREAT JOB I'M SO PROUD OF YOU. I will always take the blame for naming you with one S but I see it has worked for you. It is nice to be different.

    Still love that picture each time I see it. I found some other great shots which you will have to see.

    Love
    Grandma W

  • Baby News

    Ah…the wonderful world of CSS. Good stuff. You know, lots of people just take CSS and give credit to the author and then tweak it to make it what they want. A great site for it? http://www.csszengarden.com/

    Nonetheless, unless it's our full-time occupation (I'm fortunate enough to work with one of these people), most of us don't have the time to figure out and build a site from scratch. Good job! Looks fantastic!

  • Tom

    Consider me awed. You read the books, you did the work, you have a web site that's uniquely yours. This is amazing and cool, and you have every right to be proud. I am inspired.

  • PJ Mullen

    It's nice to have a home all your own on the interwebs, isn't it? I did the same thing a while back, but I coped out and just created a static site using wordpress.

  • DaddysFishBowl

    Great job, congrats on the new site. I think it's awesome, I learned some new stuff about you, which makes you even cooler in my book.

    Man, that cookie dough company sounds very tasty!