Tennessee Poetry.com
A New Site for Tennessee Poets
Tennessee Poetry and Writing Groups.
The current Tennessee State Poet Laureate is
Margaret Britton Vaughn.
Margaret was appointed in 1999 and is serving a lifetime term. More information about her can be found on the link above.
The position of Tennessee State Poet Laureate was established in 1971. The first Tennessee State Poet Laureate was Richard M. "Pek" Gunn. (1971-1994)
The Tennessee Arts Commission supports Tennessee artists working in all genres, including poetry and writing. They provide grants and programs for Tennessee writers and artists. Please see the link above for details.
The Poetry Society of Tennessee is a nonprofit organization founded in 1953. The group supports local chapters in Tennessee cities, as well as providing a number of poetry contests. The Tennessee Poetry Society also holds meetings and readings, when possible. Though at this writing all group meetings have been postponed. Please see the link above for contest information and resources. Also on the link above is membership information.
For the past several years, thousands of high school students have participated in the Poetry Out Loud State recitation competitions, sponsored by the Tennessee Arts Commission and the National Endowment for the Arts.
Your high school is invited to participate.
Poetry Out Loud is a wonderful program for students. The program helps the develop Stage and speaking skills, confidence and a love of poetry. Poetry really needs to be spoken to truly be enjoyed. Poetry Out Loud is a great program for students. To learn how to get your school involved in the competition, please see the link above.
Poetry Slams are events in which adults and students read and perform poetry for awards and prizes. There are many local events and even a National competition. Check with your local poetry group for the nearest Slam event and Slam schedules. (The above link is for the Knoxville Poetry Slam, one of many in the State).
The Nashville Writers Circle is a presentation of the Nashville Public Library. The group seeks to bring in published authors and writers to talk about their work and provide encouragement for Nashville writers. For more information and schedules, please see the link above.
The Tennessee Mountain Writers is a group from Oak Ridge that welcomes ALL Tennessee writers, at all levels of writing. The group offers conferences (when possible) and workshops. For more details and membership information, please see the link above.
The Smokey Mountain Romance Writers is a group in Knoxville that supports the writing of romantic fiction. All area romance writers are welcome. They have fiction writing contests, and when possible meetings. Membership dues are $30.00 per year. Monthly meetings are usually held on the 2nd Saturday of each month at the Fountain City Branch library located at 5300 Stanton Road, Knoxville.
The Music City Romance Writers Group is a group in Lebanon that supports all genres of romantic fiction writing. The group holds meetings and conferences, when possible. They were formed to provide support and resources for romance writers in the Knoxville area.
Collierville Christian Writers is a group in Collierville that supports all genres of Christian writing. They provide conferences (when possible) for area Christian writers. Dues are $15.00 per year. More information I available on their site (above).
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Included on this site are a number of Affiliate links. We are not sponsored by those companies, but do get paid a small amount if you use their services.
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I have exciting news for you I have spent many weeks researching web hosts and providers and written an article that I think will save you time and money on creating your own website. I have even included information on where to buy inexpensive domain names. The following are links for web hosts and resources. the full article follows below. I invite you to use the suggested sites to set up your own poetry or writing web site. Please see full article below!
Please note: Many of the following are Affiliate links. I do get paid a small amount if you buy the affiliate products and services. They help keep this site on the internet. These Affiliate links help support this site. Thank you!
Bluehost. Bluehost offers pretty much all services. Design is through Wordpress. Plans: ‘Basic’, $7.99 per month. Allows one website and one included domain. ‘Plus’ $10.99. Allows unlimited number of websites. ‘Choice Plus’, $14.99 per month. Allows unlimited number of domain and some extra services, such as domain privacy. For an ecommerce site, you will want to use ‘Woocommerce’, plans run from $13.99 (for one store) to $17.99 (for unlimited stores.
Bluehost is a full-service provider with all the tools you could ask for and good support. They even sell They even sell domain names. I have used Bluehost for several years.
Strikingly for one-page websites. Allows ecommerce. Plans: ‘Limited’ $8.00 per month, allows two websites. ‘Pro’ $16.00 allows 3 sites. ‘VIP’ $49.00 per month, allows 5 websites. Provides a free domain with yearly accounts. Provides e-commerce on all plans. Cloud hosting.
Siteground. Wordpress hosting. Plans include: Startup, $3.95 per month, allows one website, GrowBig, $5.95 per month, allows unlimited websites, and GoGeek, $11.95 per month, unlimited websites and more features. (no free domain with account).
Dreamhost. Wordpress hosting. Plans include: ‘Shared –
Starter’ plan starts at $2.59 per month. Includes 1 domain name and unlimited bandwidth. ‘VPS Basic plan at $13.75 per month’ allows unlimited domains. Wordpress. No cPanel. E-commerce is through Woocommerce, which is a free plugin for Wordpress.
3dcart Site built especially for online stores. Choose from over 100 payment processors. $19.00 per month for a ‘startup store’. $29.00 per month for a basic store. $79.00 per month for a ‘Plus Store’ Provides standard store features. One domain per account. Includes shopping cart and many ecommerce features.
A2 Hosting. Drag and drop platform for building with A2 software. Plans include ‘Startup’ $2.99 per month (one website), ‘Drive’ $4.99 (unlimited websites), and ‘Turbo-boost’ for $9.99 per month, (unlimited sites).
Webflow: I’ve included Webflow in this list because it uses a unique interface. It is not a Webflow in this list because it uses a unique interface. It is not a Wordpress site. It may take some time to learn and get used to the Webflow user design tool. Keep in mind that ALL website designers are an interface to move the html code.
i Page. Wordpress hosting. ‘WP Starter’ $9.49 per month (billed yearly). ‘WP Essential’ $12.49 per month. Good for selling online. iPage provides a number of choices of shopping carts.
Hostinger is one of the biggest webhosting companies on the internet. They provide ‘drag and drop’ as well as cloud hosting and Wordpress. Plans include: ‘Single Shared’ $2.15 per month (allows one website, ‘Premium’ $3.49 per month (allows unlimited websites), and ‘Business Shared’ $7.95 per month (allows unlimited websites and many other features. Premium and Premium and Business plans also come with a fee domain name. It is easy to see why Hostinger is so popular. And yes, I really like this hosting service.
WIX Provides 'drag and drop', for ease of design. Plans include: ‘Combo’ $13.00 per month, ‘Unlimited’ for $17.00 per month, and ‘Pro’ for $22.00 per month. (There are other (There are other plans for ecommerce).
NameCheap. Dot.coms start at $8.88 per year. Hosting plans are $2.88 per month to $8.88 per month. NameCheap has their own ‘drag and drop’ builder. NameCheap is a good site to save money on domain names.
Porkbun. Dot.coms start at $8.56 per year. Renew at $8.56 per year. Porkbun also offers hosting at prices ranging from $3.00 per month to $38.00 per month through Weebly.
Domain.com has domains starting at $9.99 per month and also provides hosting plans starting at $3.75 per month.
Grammerly is a good resource for 'all things to do with grammer". It provides free applications as well as more advanced paid applications. Even their site is interesting.
Malwarebytes provides reasonably priced virus protection. Please see the link above for details.
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Web Hosting Article.
Web Hosting Article
Magnificent 7seven Reviews.
Web hosting
I think you will find the following article very helpful as you begin to set up your own website or a website for your writing group.
Please pay close attention to what you are paying for domain names. I have listed three inexpensive domain registrars. Most hosting companies will sell them to you and many provide a domain free with your paid account.
You may be looking at creating a website and don’t know where to start. OR you may have a product or book and don’t know how to create a website to sell it. Then this blog is a great place to start! I have reviewed many webhosts from CARRD to Zyro. I think you will find the following suggestions useful.
As recently as a few years ago, most sites provided access to the programming language of the website, or html. This allowed you to make changes to the programming and see how that reflected on your website. Fortunately, knowledge of html is no longer necessary. (You may still find it helpful to learn what the basic elements of html are, in case you need to insert a link in your site or see the code for your site).
Please note: I was not paid by any of the companies listed below to promote their sites. I did find it interesting to research what they have to offer and list some of the main points to consider. And yes, these are affiliate links but they have all been researched.
1. What is the cost of a website?
Many hosts can get you started for free! OR with a very monthly rate for the 1st year. Cost is usually listed as a ‘monthly cost’ provided you pay for a whole year at a time. IE: if the cost is $20.00 per month, you may be required to pay $240.00. Make sure you get a plan that fits your needs. Usually you can upgrade to a more expensive plan as your needs grow.
2. What is the platform the ecommerce site uses? Generally, sites use either Wordpress or what I call, a ‘House’ software. Wordpress is in my experience a platform that requires an intermediate level of computer savvy. You will do better when you put some time into working with it and develop a ‘feel for it’. ‘House’ software is unique to the webhost site you are using. Most are ‘plug and play’. Like any application, you just have to get comfortable moving around in them. Each has some unique features. When you go to the webhost, you will see samples of web pages. When you like the look... go for it!
3. If you are going to be selling products through your site, you will need to know what bank does the ecommerce site use? This is extremely important. It is great you made a sale on your website, but how do you get the customer’s payment into your bank account? You want banking tools that your customer will feel comfortable ordering with, AND you want banking tools that will give you access to your money. While many sites use PAYPAL, some use other financial tools.
4. How many domains can I use on one account? If you have several domains, you will want to host them all in the same place. If you have different stores selling different products, you may want to use more than one site. Ecommerce sites vary from one domain per account to ‘unlimited’ domains.
5. What kind of stats will this ecommerce site provide? You may want to look around to see how much traffic you are getting and where people are seeing your site. (You may be surprised to note how many people in other countries are viewing your site).
6. How good is the technical support from this ecommerce site? You don’t want to wait days for a question to be answered. A good test or response time is to ask the Web host a question as ‘a potential client’ to measure response time.
7. Does this vendor sell domain names and for how much? And will they provide me with a free domain name with my order?
8. What is the difference between shared web hosting and a dedicated server?’ The answer is, that a dedicated server is a server used by no other sites and thus those sites can’t impact the server or slow it down. Dedicated servers are quite a bit more expensive per month. Most websites should be fine running on shared hosting.
We will try to answer those questions. You can click on the link provided to get Common Website Terms you should know:
Html: hypertext markup language. This is the actual programming code. No matter which programming tool you are using, whether it be Wordpress a sitebuilder, that interface is adjusting the html as you move and change features.
CSS: cascading style sheets. This refers to how you website is presented in the programming.
When you have purchased hosting and are ready to build a website on the hosting server, you must put your domain on that hosts server. You do this by putting in the code numbers for that server into your domain names. Both the hosting provider and your domain seller will explain to you how to do this.
VPS Hosting: ‘virtual private server hosting’. VPS hosting acts similar to a private server with more flexibility than shared hosting. Most new users will only need shared hosting.
Domain names: this is VERY important, when purchasing a domain name, pay little attention to the initial price of the domain name. What is important is the renewal cost. I have seen domain registers that charge very little for the initial price but upwards of $30.00 per year to renew. Most paid hosting plans give you one free domain name with the purchase of a plan. Beyond that, you will need to go to the market to buy additional names.
Steven Robert Heine is a West Coast poet & author. He has traveled extensively through the United States, including trips to Tennessee. He has spent his life promoting poetry; serving as founder for many poetry contests. He is the author of fifteen books, including poetry, history and his own short auto-biographies. His books can be found on Ebay, Amazon and Amazon Kindle.
Heine was crippled in a fall in 2011 and now makes very few public appearances.