Alora Fane

I've changed this site's layout a bit! The main page in particular. I also wanted to add a mailing list, though that's apparently more irritating than I expected...

I'm feeling a bit better now, so I've been back at work this week! Well, doing work-related stuff, anyway.

Here's what the changes I've made to the site look like for me:

You might need to do a hard refresh to load in the updated stylesheet.

I'd been meaning to update ∞ this Atonal Dreams info page ∞, and decided to do that before uploading the alpha to Steam since it'd give me a better idea of how to present the game when I put it on there. Not many people have ever viewed that page though - the view counter at the bottom currently shows 2454 hits - so it felt like more effort than it's worth.

I don't know about anyone else, but I frequently check the main alorafane.com page, and I've been thinking for a few weeks now about how I could better arrange all the clutter on it. Some people might visit it to see the blog, while others - especially people unfamiliar with me - might come here to check what game I'm making - especially if I try and promote on Twitter or elsewhere - so they might be most curious to see that right away.

So this layout seemed sensible! Two columns: one for my games, one for blog posts. The Atonal Dreams info in the left column now replaces the old Atonal Dreams info page, and since I'll be seeing it often, I'll have more motivation to keep it updated. I also took this opportunity to provide more detail about MARDEK and Memody: Sindrel Song, for the couple of people who might ever scroll down far enough to see that!

This layout looks terrible on mobiles at the moment, I'm aware. I wonder how many people visit the main page on mobile? I should probably do something about that at some point anyway.

I've put this under the Promotion category because there are a couple of related things I wanted to mention:

One is that I just wanted to wonder aloud about how much websites matter for indie devs, and what a potential player would want to see from their site. Every time I see a dev on Twitter, I check to see if they have a site, and if they do, what it looks like.

Often they seem to be these big, modern-looking sites (which probably look better on mobile than desktop, which seems odd to me if the games are being developed for desktop) that are presumably made in site-builders like Wordpress, Wix, etc, ∞ like this example ∞. I'd say that definitely looks good, but it also feels more impersonally professional than I ever seem to be able to manage myself.

By contrast, I've seen a handful of very archaic-looking sites - ∞ example ∞ - that take me back to the 2000's and make me wonder whether the dev is my age or older. I find them interesting, though I'd rather keep moving forward myself!

I came across ∞ this one ∞ the other day, where the dev's devoted a ton of time to documenting his game's minutiae in a way I don't often see (a direct link wasn't working for some weird reason). The main page seems to be one long run-on combination update post, which is interesting.

I wonder how each of those devs use their websites. Maybe a lot of people set one up because they've read that they should for marketing reasons, then nobody ever looks at it and it doesn't lead to any sales or anything. Or maybe the content they include really helps convert people who might otherwise have been on the fence. I wonder!

Personally, I've had experience running sites like Fig Hunter, where I put everything I was making and tried to run a community. They became hubs for many people, rather than just billboards to advertise a product. Though this site doesn't exactly have the community that Fig Hunter - and the old version of alorafane.com from years ago - had, I still have a similar mentality about site design, I suppose. And the blog is a kind of community, in a way! I keep wondering whether this is the 'best' way to do it, but it's what feels most comfortable and appealing to me, so... eh.

I suppose mostly I just see my site as my little castle or something, and updating it feels like redecorating my house. Whether or not anyone else cares, I do!

Do you ever visit other indie devs' websites? What do you want to find if you do?

And how do you feel about this layout change? Is there anything you think should be different? Do the game descriptions seem interesting to you, or is something important missing?

The second thing I wanted to mention is that I was intending to add a mailing list subscription box to this new layout, since I've seen those on a lot of these indie devs' sites and wonder whether a lack of notification about blog posts is why they get so few views these days. I hit some annoying snags, though.

I used to do my own mass emailing from this site, first with a mailing list, then as a setting on user accounts. I had to disable both, though, due to the heavy load they placed on this shared server I'm using. Plus they tended to get added to spam, so I felt I needed to go with a more professional service that handles a lot of the stuff that I'd rather not in a better way than I can alone.

I looked into it a bit and found services like ∞ MailChimp ∞, which offer this... with very irritating limitations. MailChimp offers a free service, but I think it's limited to a mailing list of 2000 people. The old mailing list I had to disable had something like 1050 emails on it, so maybe that'd be enough... But apparently due to some anti-spam law, you need to provide a real, valid physical address which is attached to the footer of every email you use MailChimp to send out. Not really something I want! ∞ It might be possible to remove this ∞, but it's probably illegal and seems to pop up in other places anyway.

I also found a similar-sounding service called ∞ ConvertKit ∞, which advertises itself as for 'creators', to help them make a living online, including a testimonial which boasts ∞ "In one year, I've gone from $0 to earning $1,000 with my mailing list" ∞ (per month? Total?), which genuinely is believable for an artist trying to get by... But the prices for the 'recommended' plan are US$29 per month for 1000 max 'subscribers', or $49 per month for 3000, and increasingly higher the more people you want to send to... which feels like it'd be outside the budget of most online creators. It's out of mine! They do offer a free plan too, limited to 1000 'subscribers', which is fewer than my mailing list had before... Hmm.

So I'm not sure what to do there. I also wonder whether it'd even help. The posts about Sindrel Song used to get around 1000 hits regularly, or more, but the game's been out around a year now (I thought it was way longer, but apparently not) and it's still got fewer than 200 total sales.

Still, it'd be nice to have a way to notify people about blog posts if I can figure something out! Maybe everything just costs money though and it's not possible to find everything for free?

8 COMMENTS

Slothboy2531~4Y

Have you considered using Substack? That's how I seem to get a lot of my blog notifications/newsletters nowadays.

Tobias 1115~4Y

I'd never heard of that so I looked it up, but it's not clear to me what it is? The website doesn't have much obvious information, and it sounds like you have to post on their site for emails to be sent out? And do subscribers need to make an account with that service? If you use it though then I'd be interested in hearing what you know!

All things considered, it doesn't exactly fit what you're doing at the moment - you'd be posting on their site and emails would be sent out to subscribers. Subscribers just have to give their email afaik, no account needed.

Comment deleted

I used to have an RSS feed years ago, but the impression I've been under is that it's essentially dead technology now? I googled it, and saw articles that said yes, that's the case, though some tech blogs might have a few older techy types still making use of them. One article said it was a 'political statement' to put an RSS button on your site in this day and age.

So I assume that the number of people who'd benefit from that wouldn't be large enough for it to be worth setting up. I was interested in a mailing list because pretty much everyone has an email address, and all you need to do to get updates is enter that in a single box. So the cost of investment is lower than pretty much anything I could think of, since most other things would require having an account somewhere, actively checking some feed, etc.

Maybe I should just start mentioning personal posts on Twitter, for a start. I usually don't because it feels weirdly inappropriate for some odd reason, but it's not like I'm all cool and professional on there or anything, so there's no reason not to really!

So I assume that the number of people who'd benefit from that wouldn't be large enough for it to be worth setting up. I was interested in a mailing list because pretty much everyone has an email address, and all you need to do to get updates is enter that in a single box. So the cost of investment is lower than pretty much anything I could think of, since most other things would require having an account somewhere, actively checking some feed, etc.

Maybe I should just start mentioning personal posts on Twitter, for a start. I usually don't because it feels weirdly inappropriate for some odd reason, but it's not like I'm all cool and professional on there or anything, so there's no reason not to really!

mount201046~4Y

About the "websites that probably look better on mobiles than desktop", I believe that's a design pattern in web development these days called "mobile first", where developers design for mobile before making adjustments for desktop. Given your struggles with making the homepage work for mobile, I don't think it's completely unreasonable to do it that way (but lazy). And I doubt they're made with site-builders; I can see why you think that way but there are "CSS frameworks" that give you "components" to glue together and such. I don't think a lot of people seriously dedicated to what they're doing actually use site builders.

Just clarifying these things because I'm inclined to get into web-development and it might be interesting for you to know what's going on!

It's not that it's a struggle to make this site for mobile exactly; it's just that I haven't bothered even trying yet! Chances are it won't actually take that long, but I've been so busy with other stuff and it's not a high priority for me since I never see it on mobile myself.

As for site builders, I was basing that assumption on the source code; having a bunch of CSS classes starting with 'wix' or 'wordpress' - plus a whole lot of junk that doesn't seem to affect the layout - kind of hints at it!