I'm not really fussed if people use a similiar layout to mine as I use css layout generators or templates which have been made for people to download and edit for their sites. I'm not a professional web designer or coder so most of what I do is quite simple and stuff which people who make websites for a hobby would do anyway. As for content as long as the subject is different, I don't see how ideas can be stolen.
I don’t use generators or templates. I tend to fumble around until something works well enough. I was more talking about how overcrowded the page I’ve been developing looks. Think I will need to split things across several pages. Your layout made me realise that. But I also realised there was types of information I wasn’t covering. Believe it or not, characters!
'the narrative equivalent of thrashing frantically with a spade in a deep hole'. Well said!
And I worried about that one. The author did a plot set-up which was unnecessary to the plot (I thought) and then had to be clumsily explained away late in the novel to no purpose. But it was pretty good on the whole.
I haven't read the book so cannot confirm or deny, it but it was a fun turn of phrase.