Professional writer looking for classy design

Hello! I’m a professional writer/author of books, magazine and newspaper articles, and corporate communications. I found this great site looking for a new design for my existing site, which looks pretty raggedy right now. I put a site up years ago in FrontPage2000 and even after taking classes in FP, I still don’t understand it. I’m trying…I’m really, really trying! But I have to have someone show me things; it’s difficult to learn from reading, but I’m willing to keep trying!

Anyway, my business card is in black and white, and those are the colors what I want to keep for my redesigned site. My logo is a fountain pen, very simple, in black, with a nib point. No feathers or plume or anything like that. It was professionally designed and I love it, and would like to use the same logo for a new site. It's a vertical design.

The sites that I found that have features I like are Salt and Soap, because I like the long banner across the top with the pictures – obviously would be different pix for a writer’s site. I like it because it has a ton of buttons on the left and I have a lot of categories by the subjects I cover (travel, food, dance, health, profiles, etc.) plus a writing workshop I conduct plus a separate category for my books, magazines, newspapers, etc. I like the “Products” heading at the bottom, because while I don’t have products I do photography for my travel writing, and I could say something like “Gallery” with thumbnails of my pictures underneath.

However, if Salt and Soap is too complicated (and it might be for someone like me to maintain it!), then the other one I liked is the template you did for the aspiring author. But I would need to add more buttons or tabs for the various categories and I would want the color scheme to be black and white. Maybe one of the little boxes could be my existing logo. I like the idea of using an author photo but I have to get one made first. Also one of the boxes would have to be “Gallery” to showcase my photos in addition to my writing. My writing is the main thing but I also want to let people know that some of my photos have been published with my articles.

I also have a travel blog, and would want a box that links to that since it is a separate domain.

It is so exciting looking at all of these beautiful templates and I would love to have one of my own and most of all, learn how to use it and maintain it and keep it fresh and exciting so people keep coming back to see what’s new. There is some beautiful work here.

I don’t have to use FrontPage, it’s just what I’ve been using so far, but if there’s a way to get a template that works with FP, that would be great since that’s the only program I know. I know a little HTML but have books here I can use as reference.

Not sure where to go from here. It looks like there are no new requests for new templates (I tried), so if I can't get an original template, if someone can help me modify the “aspiring author” one or another one, I would be grateful, and would be happy to link back to site or designer or whatever, in order to help out.

Thank you very much,

Jo

 

A True Million Little Pieces

I am more so a web designer than a writer. I found your post interesting because you say your a professional writer? I have been trying to get www.atruemillionlittlepieces.com out there for years now, I am almost done with my MS where would you say I should approach.
www.premiereeconomicsites.com is my web design company.
Thanks Joe