A WRIT TEN
VIE W
Social Media - A Necessary Evil
By Douglas Owen
It is the most confusing part of publishing and call it magic and just move on.
no one person has the best answer. This silly
little word means more than one thing. It is also Okay, first you need a website.
something that everyone who self-publishes
their work needs to master. Social Media.
Domain names are easy enough to secure. In
fact, they are really cheap. Less than one dollar
The catchphrase used in the publishing world per month. Hopefully, you can secure the one
is “Author Platform,” but it goes by many other you want. Don’t skimp on this step! I know a lot
names in the self-publishing world. Website, of writers who have decided to go on the cheap
Twitter account, LinkedIn profile, Facebook and not use a full domain name, but instead use
account, Google Circles, and many others. The what is called a sub-domain. You may have seen
world is so confused about what is out there them, the ones that read“YourName.wordpress.
that a creator can get lost in the shuffle. We need com.”The main domain is “Wordpress.com,” the
to use them, we need to master them, and we sub is where we used to put the “www.”
need to get people to follow us on each one.
Hosting is another thing not to cheap out on,
But, if you are like me, there are many other but hosting is cheap as well. Hosting can be as
things pulling your attention. The gig you have little as three dollars per month, or as high as
to do tomorrow, the book you are writing, the five hundred. You have no need for the most
line-work needed for the next edition, and your expensive, but you should make sure that your
family, friends, pets… as well as, God forbid, a host will allow multiple sub-domains, multiple
day job. So, how are you going to group all hosted domains, and unlimited bandwidth.
these things together and control that thrash- “Why,” you may ask? Well, first you want to be
ing beast? I call it a miracle, while programmers able to expand the site. Say you’re a band and
call it a plug-in.
have two albums out. We’ll call our band “The
Pings.”We register the domain name,“thepings.
“What? A plug-in? Like a lamp?” you ask.
com” and take it to our hosting company. We
have two albums and want a distinct look for
No, a plug-in is coding that sits in your website each album page. Using a sub-domain will
and does a function above and beyond what the allow this to happen very easily. So, instead of
website coding would do. Stuff like keep records having fans go to “www.thepings.com/unauof visitors, average load-speed of the site, and thorized” we can have them go to “unauthormany other things. But for our purposes, we’ll ized.thepings.com”. In the world of websites, the
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SELF PUBLISHER MAGAZINE 2015
initial offering could look a lot different.
It just looks cleaner, really. And you want unlimited bandwidth so you can stream song samples
(or artwork) without having to pay extra. Nothing
will get you down like being presented with a
bill because you used too much bandwidth.
Email accounts are another thing. Make sure
they don’t limit you too much, and that you
can control them via a webpage (also known
as webmail). Make sure all your communication
is through your site’s email account, not a gmail/
hushmail/Hotmail account. Why? Because it
makes you more professional, and people don’t
think you’re scamming them when you have
your own domain email address. Think of it this
way: would you actually click the link in an email
from [email protected] or would you click
the one from [email protected]?
Okay, you have the domain name and you
have the hosting company; now what? Now
you have to create content. This is one of the
hardest decisions you have to make. Do you
create your own webpages or use a CMS? (CMS
stands for Content Management System.)
CMS will use PHP and MySQL to display webpages to visitors. The good thing about using
CMS is that you can control what each page
shows with ease. The problem with a CMS is
that you have to know a little bit about using
them. There is a learning curve.