3 Things I Wish I Had Known
This week, I’ve been working on building a new website! So far, I’ve got the framework up and now, I just have to pretty it up a lot, so please, as the construction signs say, pardon my progress. During this process though, I discovered three things that I wish I had known before creating my original website VintageGrace.Me. They may be obvious to most people, but I figured that a new writer may find this useful:
1. Buy your name domain. Even if you aren’t agented, signed or published yet, your name will be your brand and you need to snatch it up before anyone else does (or you will be on the waiting list like me…seriously, how many Grace Hitchcock’s are there in the world???) and if you don’t want that to be your main URL, you still need to buy your name domain and re-direct it to your website. When you are published, people aren’t going to know to google * cough * for example, VintageGrace.Me. People are going to google your name and thus, the URL for your name is best.
2. Before you build, think about how you want your future website to look and more importantly, what tools you want to be able to add.
Originally, I made a WordPress.com site and I have to say this is the easiest and one of the best places to learn; however, if you want to use a website template other than a WordPress.com template, 90% of the time you are going to need a hosted website…and you guessed it, for my new template they not only needed a hosted website, they needed it to be WordPress.org.
At first, I was confused because the formatting in .org seemed similar to .com and then I realized that I needed a higher HTML capacity for designing purposes, which I suppose was only available at .org. (I’m not very website creating savvy, so I’m sure I made it a lot harder than it was supposed to be.) Anyway, moving from WordPress.com to .org wasn’t the most fun, but I figured that I better do it now than when I have a lot more content on VintageGrace.Me.
Just to be clear, I loved WordPress.com, but it was just the template that I chose that needed it to be WordPress.org.
3. Don’t over shoot your posting. Be consistent. In the past 2.5 weeks, I have moved from Connecticut to Louisiana, set up house, am putting the finishing touches on my second Victorian novel and am in the process of setting up a new website, so that’s why I sound slightly hypocritical here haha as there is such a thing as scheduling out posts, Grace….
At first, I posted 3x times a week, but with trying to finish up a novel, that grew to be too much, so I bumped it down to 2x and then 1-2x after that, but if I’ve read anything from agents’ blogs is that is a no-no. I need to be consistent, so my advice is to not overshoot. Start with one day and stick with that day. Then, when you get the hang of it, add another day if time permits. For me, I think I will try Thursdays and then, hopefully I can bump it back up to 2x a week again!
Do you have any advice on setting up a new website in WordPress.org?
