Ordinary Interesting People gets a website

Of course the sensible thing to do would be to complete the Romiley Road book and get it published, or perhaps make some more #romileyroad content for TikTok. I find sensible is often outweighed by interesting or fun. And doing something new is generally more enjoyable than completing something old. So making a website has been the focus this week.

I had always planned to make a website for the project but had no idea how to do it. I'm very much still learning. I'm flabbergasted that there's an option to get artificial intelligence to write your website for you and even to write your blogs. What would be the point? Surely blogging is all about connecting with people?

What I like about having a website is that I can include all the people and families who didn't make the cut when it came to the book. Those residents who didn't appear in the local newspaper or whose lives were remarkably similar to another family that I did include. A lot of hatters and cotton workers and some miners. But also families like the Merkils who were interesting but disappeared completely from the records.

Over the coming weeks I shall be adding what I managed to find, whilst hopefully also learning how to make the most of the website. There's a section called Groups that is a mystery to me. It seems to have auto-filled everything and I can't work out how to delete that and add what I want.

And of course work on the book continues. At a snail's pace as usual. The 2nd edit is done. I'm going to do another read through to check for any spelling or grammatical errors and maybe do a bit more tweaking. Then it will be sorting out the artwork and the layout. I had designed a front cover but I've gone off it. I have a new idea just waiting to be trialled once my artist (my partner) has time to draw it for me.