Graskeggur is online

Tuesday, 12 January 2010 00:00

A while back now, I was asked if I could build a website for an author who was in the process of looking for a publisher. Well, Quentin Bates is now almost published and has two books written. This is a brief account of how we worked together.

I met Q a few years back when we were both starting out in martial arts. It was during this time when he asked me if I could make him a website.

I said I'd be more than happy to and started looking around at CMS's (content management systems) so that I could build him something that he could update himself. We got together and discussed what he wanted and I decided to use Textpattern as it was easy to use and I felt confident enough to make the templates.

He wanted something dark and mysterious to compliment the books he writes. He spent many years at sea as a fisherman / trawlerman and many years in Iceland too. The header had to have a rotating mast image, randomly picking one of eight images with each new page. He was also keen to have a dark background and light text.

I kept the typography simple, using a sans serif typeface and added some grey and added red as an accent colour. I was worried that I had done too much but he was delighted and so I started to build the site.

I found Textpattern fairly easy to use and had the site up and running in no time. Q was then faced with having to blog and get into social media - something that he wasn't particularly keen on. However, he seems to blog on a regular basis and and he is on his third book.

Frozen Out (Assets) should be on the bookshelves in January 2011 but you can take a sneak preview here: graskeggur.com