Welcome to my new website!
I’ve moved home! Welcome to my new website!
A few weeks ago, I had no idea I would have to design a website from scratch. However, for a few months now I’ve been considering starting a newsletter, where I send a monthly email to subscribers a new way to communicate to readers about what I’m up to and spread the word a bit about my books. It’s a bit less ‘flash in the pan” than advertising on social media and a bit more trying to interact with people on a longer term basis, so I thought I would give it ago.
I started off fairly well, by signing up with a website called Mailerlite and reading a book, ‘The Strategic Author’s Guide to mailerlite’ by Erika Everest, recommended to me by a friend.
However, it wasn’t long before I hit a snag. In order for any emails to have a good chance of reaching people’s inboxes, rather than going straight to spam folders, it was best to have my own custom mailbox and my own email inbox/server I had bought (as opposed to a free mailbox like gmail or hotmail etc).
In theory, this could have been fairly straightforward, except for one tiny detail – I didn’t own my own website. I’ve been merrily plodding on with a free plan hosted by Wix for the last two and a half years. This led to an agonising couple of weeks where I researched custom domains, mailboxes, hosting options (a month ago I didn’t know what half of these words meant!).
After weighing everything up, I decided to go with namecheap, which had a great balance of being one of the cheapest options (the clue is in the name) but also offering great customer service. I can attest that their support is excellent, as I have been in at least three different live chats to give me guidance on themes, menu button glitches and all sorts of other things.
It has definitely been a journey – especially considering I had zero knowledge of website development before a couple of weeks ago, other than the easy ‘drag and drop’ template Wix provided me with. However, I’m happy to say I think the site is ready to launch today! I hope you’ll check it out and have some fun browsing. Why not start with my ‘About Me‘ section, or check out my previous blog posts?
Speaking of which, apologies in advance if you hit any dead links, for example in previous blog posts (I had to import my old blog using an rss feed – again, something I had no clue about until a fortnight ago) and update links and images from scratch. I *think* I’ve checked everything, but odds are there’s an old link lurking about somewhere.
On the menu above you can also find my purchase links for a lit of where you can buy my books (details for Lottie’s Locket TBA) and a little gallery section.
Ironically I haven’t got anything newsletter related displaying on my site yet, as I’m still finishing automation email sequences (I’m still not sure I’ve got my head around that yet!) and I’m waiting on the final cover design for Lottie’s Locket before I send my first newsletter. I’m hoping to have everything sorted soon, though, so watch out for any announcements about being able to subscribe!
In the meantime, I’m carrying on with my edits of my 3rd historical fiction novel. I’m hoping this week to reach a goal of 110 pages edited in the last 7 weeks of office hours, so I’m really excited to reach that target. Prep for this November’s NaNoWriMo is also starting to take shape – trying my hand at science fiction this year – so looking forward to sharing more with you about that too.
Till next time,
Maria 🙂
Congratz! All of that work paid off — it looks great!
Thank you so much! Glad you like it! 🙂