I spend a lot of time these days having a look around to see what can be found within the layers of the internet, and I do waste a lot of time chatting with friends about sites that have caught my interest. As a writer I use the internet for research, and as an average guy on the street, I use it for fun and passing the time. Every now and again I come across a few sites that catch my attention, and so here I will document a few of those sites and hope it provides you with some interest, if not then move on to the rest of this site, which as it happens will be my first endeavour into this new section of the blog…

Heirstothekingdom.com

“Wow what a fantastic and wonderful web site,” he says with no sense of shame what so ever. HTTK.com was built by myself and my wonderful partner in a mad panic, when we suddenly realised that book one was in production. Since it was first went live back in April2009, it has undergone many changes, mainly due to the fact that neither of us have ever actually built a site before, as a self confessed technophobe of Internet related things, I leaned heavily on my partner who seemed to grasp things so much quicker than I did back then. I had been making drawings and sketches of what I wanted for well over a year, and I had formatted several things on my computer using Word, so to be honest, even though we were both up against the clock to get the site up for the books launch, I did have a good idea of what I wanted.

I tend to be a very visual person, I use all sorts of props and pictures when I am writing as it helps me to focus on the descriptive detail, (Yes I do have Harry’s glasses above my PC) but when it came to actually working out how all the pages would fit I struggled a bit. After working night and day to format all of the pages, stringing them together caused all sorts of problems, as I had never actually written URL’s and the like before. I had to rely on my very patient and wonderful partner who calmly tolerated my frustration and endless questions as we worked out how to take all the page files out of the folders and begin to upload them to fit in a fluent working site. I solved the problem of understanding, by introducing a visual prop that made everything fall into place, much I think to my partners relief. I drew out on an A1 size pad a family tree, yes I know it sounds odd, but it really worked, at the top was great great granddad, or as we call it now “The Home Page.” From that single page all the other children and relatives sprouted, and my learning curve of web site building finally began to grow. I am no expert, but I now play an unsupervised role on the site now, I am quite chuffed as I think the whole process has greatly increased my understanding of web sites and how they work.

I always wanted HTTK.com to be a site that would hold a lot of interest, but also be one of those sites that felt like walking through a small town. I love the fact that you can go to the Visual site map, and see a plan almost like the towns square’s you are here map, but behind the scenes not all of the streets are on the map, and this web site has a few back alley’s you can slip into in search of other little gems to aid the experience of the HTTK books. Planning HTTK involved a massive amount of notes, of which at the moment the web site has about 2% as rewritten pages, to help add to the picture I have tried to paint in my writing. It has always been a long term goal to expand the site with each book, so that the site remains fresh and up to date, and most days I work on items that will appear much later. At the moment we are preparing the second book, so there are a lot of extras that will go up onto the site when the book comes out. I also can be a little bit of a perfectionist, and it is quite normal for me to spend Sunday’s making changes to several pages as I tweak it constantly.

I consider HTTK.com a family site, and it is bright and colourful as the characters within my work reflect. Its a shame we have been plagued by spammers since we first set it up, who posted obscene links on the Guest book and the forum, but I have to say that even though such (I wont use the word SCUM) twisted individuals have tried to manipulate a novice web site builder, both my partner and myself have learned a great deal, and happily today we encounter less and less problems, and we endeavour to make it a fun and fact filled site, which we both hope increases the experience of the books and also gives a great deal of fun and enjoyment to those who use it.

Its not that bad for a beginner……