Website woes
There's been talk of people setting up their own archive websites, and I wanted to get in on the act. My experience with the Archives of Excellence and the Golden Quill Awards ought to have made it relatively easy, right?
Wrong.
The developers are often impatient with noobs and don't make it as easy for us as we need it to be in order to get things done. I had a go at various programs, and came to grief on all of them because I'm not wired the way a developer is, and simply can't make sense of the codes. I get lost. I love those WYSIWYG builders that let you upload stuff and plonk it where you will. After some considerable wrestling with Freeservers, I was able to beat my sites into submission and force them to obey me. On sites with more complex programming, forget it. Getting one thing wrong while installing them can mess up a load of things, and ATM I'm waiting to hear back from support to see if I can salvage any of the work I've put into this stuff. Everything else is on hold while I work to get this show on the road. I won't let the monthly challenge or the Golden Quill Awards suffer, but it really is taking up every bit of my spare time.
I'm really tempted to give up on the fanficton programs and just keep going with the Archives of Excellence as it is. By posting links to the authors' personal websites and story archives, I'm spared the hassle of configuration, but these colours don't run. No one ever achieved anything by giving up, so I'm going to keep on at it until I've got the blasted thing to work. I'll kick, scream, yell and swear at the computer until I've forced the bloody thing to do as it's told and make me a site with the functionality of Many Paths to Tread and the appearance of the extant Archives of Excellence for a seamless link.
Why is that too much to flippin' ask?