Mood:
sillyTopic: Job Search
I finally finished it—the new look of my old Web site! I've owned Witty Writer for just over two years now and have changed its design only once. As a writer, I have a bad habit of keeping everything—as in, everything I write, or have taken part in. I'm also incredibly self-centered, so I think everything I write is the gospel.
Well, it was time to clean everything out and start over with my web design, so welcome to my clean, professional, un-Myspace-page-like, Web site.
This site has been, and will continue to be, the place where I can update friends, family, and future employers on my latest work. It's also a collection of things I've written in years past—although I cleared out alot of work that probably didn't represent me in the best light (ahem, 1000 date ideas for couples).
To create the new look, I deleted everything from the old site and rewrote everything in HTML, by hand. As of now, I'm still working out a few kinks, but am overall very proud of the finished product.
Things you'll notice about this site is the lack of pictures of myself. Don't get me wrong, I look good, I just had way too many on the old site—the pictures were very dated and unprofessional. I had a new headshot taken last week, which will be the only self portrait on the site. I still link to my blog, but it's a tad more discreet. I had to face facts here, that my blog entries are often funny to me and others, but maybe not so funny to someone looking to hire me.
Bottom line is, I really just wanted a simple, clan look that would focus on the work I've done and the work I'm looking to accomplish and let those things speak for themselves.
Along with maintaining the site, I do keep analytics of visitors, which averages to about 6500 visits each month—a number that's grown after Twitter and Facebook interaction. I also updated this sites key words and meta tags to get myself ranked higher in a Google search using "Holly A. Phillips". I was always ranked no. 1 with "Witty Writer," but who types in that? As of today, I'm no. 3 in Google by name search (my twitter name, Orange Julius, is no. 6).
So what's next? New business cards and updating all of my social network sites—Twitter, Facebook, Monster, LinkedIn...
Let me know what you think of the new site! Unless you don't like it, then keep that to yourself.
