Lisa, something tells me you’ve already seen the documentary Helvetica. *g*

I’ve been designing web sites for 10 years now, and I can tell you that people don’t want to hear that less is more, but it’s true.

Between work and play, I’m reading websites about four hours per day, so you’re preaching to the choir. But the “less is more” dictum is even truer for the internet than it is for architecture.

sometimes when I make a change to the site, it defaults back to the blue theme and I am just not aware of it. It should have the red stamp, a cursive Dear Author, a page green border, and red lines around the sidebar header items.

The numbers are on the left side, right by the names, but out of the grey box.

Green border? huh… no. And I see “new post” instead of home…

Is it my browser?

As far as authors websites, I like… nacht, I adore the content in Suzanne Brockmann’s site–countdowns to each book release, short stories, all sorts of extras. But then I’m familiar with it, so I can find the stuff. It’s not what you’d call “new user” friendly.

I had the same problem when I went to Julie Garwood’s site. Broken links, taking forever to load, etc. Just make it functional so your readers can get the information that they’ve come to get. It shouldn’t be harder than that, right?

My favorite author site is Nalini Singh. She has so much information, it’s easy to navigate, and it loads pretty quick.

My website is guilty of many of your complaints. There were so many things I didn’t realize as a new author when I had my website set up, like how book titles in graphics don’t get picked up by search engines, and computers that have Flash disabled might not even be able to read half my website content (just to name a few). My graphics-heavy site *looked* cool on the mock-up, however, and that was enticing when I was site shopping.

Ah, well. Live and learn – and spend more money on redesign :).

Thanks for the kudos on my site. I passed it on to my designer — Austin Design Works, along with the wish for a work in progress link to be made more accessible! I love my new site, so I’m tickled that others like it as well.

Oh, and it wasn’t done by the same person who did E Hoyt’s. I think Dream Forge Media did hers.

The numbers are on the left side, right by the names, but out of the grey box.

Simple fonts — I like Tahoma more than Helvetica, and Helvetica more than Times New Roman.

Tahoma is a bit softer than Helvetica, which is why I like it too. Times New Roman is a serif font, which often doesn’t work as well as sans serif fonts (like Tahoma, Helvetic, Arial, Verdana) for screen reading. However, the opposite is true for print.

White text on black backgrounds is too contrasty; try a brown background instead, or pale-yellow text. Black text on a white background works well for me, though I understand other readers might have problems.

A high contrast ratio makes for better legibility, and black text on a white background has the highest contrast. If you’re going the opposite with white text reversed on black, font choice is vital.