Short Hand Publishing - The Senior Publisher

JUNE 2003

Welcome to our June Memo.

May has been busy. So if you want, grab a cool drink, get comfy and let’s get started.

May was a month of learning about the World Wide Web. It was actually in April when the idea of a Web site occurred to us. You can only do so much promoting through newspapers and local TV, besides they aren’t going to want to be writing stories every week about us. There are others who need their endeavors promoted as well.

I wasn’t sure where to start, as I don’t know much about Web design. Then a friend informed us that fellow we had known for a number of years was now in business for himself, and what does he do? He designs Web sites of course.

I gave him a call and we set up a meeting. We went over what we had in mind and showed him a dummy page with a rough idea of what we wanted our site to look like. I would learn later that I should have done some research before contracting him to do the work. But when you know virtually nothing about the process you tend to believe what a friend tells you.

Where should I have gone?

Good question.

I see now that I should have made some calls to computer people, whether they be at your local computer store, or getting out the phone book and checking the yellow pages. Comparison-shopping is always a good idea.

Nevertheless a few short weeks later ShortHand Publishing had its own Web site. Who’d would have ever thought that would happen.

We were all set once we found someone to host the site for us, and let me just add here that I did do some research first. We found as the days went by we needed to refine the site, there is always something that needs to be added or changed. You can’t know exactly how something will look or work for you, until you try it. This turned out to be another learning experience.

I spoke to many people during following weeks, learning what I should have done in the first place. The part that puzzled me was where do you look when you don’t know where to look? It’s kinda like when a teacher tells you to look up a word in the dictionary to see how it’s spelled. But if you don’t know how to spell it, how can you look it up?

I started off at what I thought to be a logical point, the computer teacher at the local secondary school. Mr. Skultety kindly took time out of his busy schedule to help me with my computer challenges. He also recommended that I purchase a particular program that would help me in editing the site myself. This would, in the long run, save us money. Thank-you Mr. Skultety, your effort is very much appreciated.

Now that I had the program, all that was left, was to learn how to use it. It wasn’t as easy as I thought it would be. After talking to a couple of different people and seeing two different approaches to editing, I made my choice as to which approach I would take.

Unfortunately we had to have the whole site revamped in order to accomplish this. As it turned out, our web designer made an easy site very complicated. However, we now had the right people for the job and we could only see clear sailing from this point on.

To find out how we made out with our self-editing, you’ll have to tune in next month.

Web site designing wasn’t the only thing that happened in May.

With the arrival of Spring, Mom was out in the yard most of the time. This is our first Spring in our new home and we had lots of surprises popping out of the ground with the nicer weather. Some things stayed, but much of it had to go. Being that yard work is what Mom really loves to do, she is very content to be out there.

There were a few more Author Visits in May as well. They are now posted under the "News" tab. Be sure to check them out.

That’s it for this months memo, be sure to check back the first week of July. Until then, be well. J