As a writer, creating a free Flash website can be a highly effective way to promote your latest work. Give your readers a place to learn about the work, make a purchase, gain additional information about you and even get in touch. It is easy and takes only a few minutes to get the hang of adding text boxes, graphics and other design elements to make a site of your own.

Planning Your Design One of the first things to decide is the audience you are trying to reach. This will help you target your design elements. If you are targeting young children your website will look vastly different than if you are trying to draw in teenagers or adults. The genre that you write in will also help to determine the look and feel of your free website. A romance novel will have a completely different website than historic non-fiction, or a children's book.

Free Website Templates

A website template is a pre-designed site that you can change as you wish, customizing with your own content. Select a template from a website builder and swap in the content you see for your own. Choose something sleek and organized that includes ample opportunity for text describing you and your writing. For the sake of example, consider the My Personal Portfolio at Wix, which you can access from clicking Create at the top of the Wix homepage and browsing through the Personal template category. This is an excellent template for an author to use. It is clean, simple and easy to read. All templates at Wix have mini pages that you can add or subtract to get the amount of pages you need for your story. One suggestion is to use each mini page as a chapter in your story or book.

The first mini page is your homepage.

Think of the homepage as the cover of your book. This will be the first thing your readers see when they arrive at your website. You can change the text in the navigation bar on the top of the page by clicking it and choosing Manage. You can then change the name of your mini pages, change the order of pages and customize the look of the tabs and toolbar.

All About Text Boxes

Click on the main title and choose Edit from the menu that appears. Type in the title of your work and if you want to change the color of the text you can do this by clicking on the icon of paint samples. Choose your color and then click Close. This is how you change the color of the fonts in all text boxes. To change the font size simply use the tool box that appears after you click Edit. Once you have entered the text you want, click outside the text box to return to the page. You can either add text into a text box and it will grow to fit the contents up to the size of your page, or you can add a scroll bar to your text box. The advantage of a scroll bar is that your readers will only have to scroll within the text box they are reading as opposed to scrolling down the entire page to read. Another advantage of a scrolling text box is that this gives you more room to place other elements on your pages. You can move your text boxes by clicking on them and dragging them around with your mouse until you are satisfied with their position. Another feature of the text boxes in Wix is the ability to link text to a URL, Wix webpage, email address, media or have your readers move back or forward on your site.

Add Graphics and Media for Interest

You want to make a website that is interesting and pleasing to the eyes. You can do this by adding your own photos or media to your pages. My Personal Portfolio lends itself well to mystery stories. It is dark and you can choose photos that reflect what is happening in your story line. Simple click on the existing photos to edit them and choose Replace. You may then upload photos or media from your computer or select from the several hundred royalty free photos on Wix. You can adjust the border, frames and effects on the photos and media. Try not to get too busy with your graphics and media, remember you want your visitors reading your work not focusing on the pictures. Use pictures and media to create a mood or set the tone of the page.

These are some basic design elements you can use for an author’s free Flash website. Wix has all the tools you need to make a website that can highlight your work and draw reader attention. It is fast and easy to update your website as your story progresses.