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Creating my Website: A. R. James
A couple of people expressed interest, so here I am. I grabbed my domain and hosting from LyricalHost — that’s where my main site (amyhopkinsauthor) is, and their service is just incredible, their sites are secure, and the downtime is basically non-existent. 100% recommend these guys!
They installed wordpress for me, and so far, that is all that has happened. I’m going to update this post with each change I make, so you can follow along!
The website: https://arjameswrites.com/
Start date: 14/03Current progress:
Signed up for a plan increase (I upgraded from 1 site to 3, as I also run one for my hubby as of last week).
Purchased a domain.
Created an @arjameswrites.com email address through my CPanel login **I use gsuite from my other url, but want to keep costs down so I’m going the free option for this one**
Created my WP account.
Signed up for MailerLite to manage my email subscribers
Verified my email with Mailerlite.I haven’t changed or tweaked my site at this point. It’s brand spanking new. That will change in the next fifteen minutes though!
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Today’s progress:
I’ve installed the PENSCRATCH theme from wp-admin. It’s a free theme that is fairly friendly to blogs or sites with more text than images, which is what I’m after for now. I have used this theme before — it’s a little on the feminine side, but clean and easy to navigate.In Theme > Customise
I changed the tagline from ‘Just another WP site’ to “Epic Fantasy Author”
I deleted some widgets, only leaving Search, Recent Posts and ArchivesAt a later date I will:
Change the home page setting to a static page (probably)
Add social buttons
Add a header imageIn >Users, I added my VA as an administrator (I trust him with that – you can set it to only allow certain actions if you’re not comfortable giving someone full access)
Other tasks:
After I hit submit on this post, I’ll go and create some basic pages and a simple first blog post. This will make it easier for me to play around with menu settings. I’ll also try to get my social links set up – I will update with the process once I figure out what I’m doing there 😀ETA: I have created my first blog post and scheduled a second one to go live on Monday. The sample Page has been deleted and I have added a contact page with my email and social links, and an about page. I’ve also created some quick tags and categories for posts.
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Looks like you have got a great start! Good luck!
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Thanks, Spencer 🙂
I am commissioning a header image for my site and social media, to keep my branding consistent. It should be simple but hopefully a little better than my own efforts, and less time consuming.
Today on my site:
I set up a new Google Analytics property and installed Monster Analytics. This will allow me to see where my hits are coming from, which is super handy when running a promo or advertising effort, or to see if you are getting outside mentions.I added the mailerlite popup. This was done by: Creating a popup form in my ML account. Adding the ML plugin to my website. Adding the ML API key to the plugin. Gong back to ML and switching on the popup. I have customised it to have similar colours to my book cover, though I may use a colour matching service to get this closer.
I’ve created a press page which is basically just a placeholder right now. I removed it from my header menu so you can only access it with a link.
After watching David’s websites video I am now more than ever regretting what a boring person I am! I need a new hobby, like swordfighting or archery. Possibly a new face, too 😀
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