WELCOME TO MY NEW WEBSITE!

So here I am, this time welcoming you to my own home, after the mishap I recently had when WordPress suspended my blog for a couple of days without prior notice. By the way, if you’re an author or a blogger (or both), you may want to check out the relevant post where I shared my scary experience as you may want to know what risks you’re running with a free blog.

So, as I promised to my readers back then, I am announcing here today my self-hosted site along with the details of the super-duper tutorial that made it all possible.

If you like the look of this site that is even customized to include a book table just for authors, all you need to do is follow the 11-video tutorial by Simon Whistler of Rocking Self-Publishing Podcast.

Simon is a great guy. Not only has he had the inclination to guide fellow authors, having invested his time in creating this FREE tutorial for everyone, but he’s also very friendly and helpful should you contact him directly. I had a question at some point and he was more than happy to point me in the right direction. If you follow this tutorial at any time, I kindly suggest that in order to buy the web hosting from Hostgator, that you get there from Simon’s site as he prompts you on the tutorial. This way he gets to have a little commission which in my eyes was the least I could have done to say thank you.

You will find the tutorial, as set out by Simon on his site, here.

Once you’ve watched the introductory video on his site and seen how the tutorial is set out, you may want to watch the other videos straight on Youtube where Simon has made them all available in his channel, here.

IMPORTANT NOTES ON THE TUTORIAL. KEEP HANDY!

• SPAMMERS/SECURITY: When you run a self-hosted site, keeping away spammers becomes a bit of a feat. In my free blog, I have the use of the plugin Akismet free of charge which keeps the spammers in check but here, it is a paid option. To protect my new site I chose the free plugin Wordfence. A friend recommended it and it’s great for security. You run an initial check after installation and you’re protected for life. The program notifies you by email whenever someone tries to hack you, if plugins need updating and in other situations that demand your attention. Spam messages still come to your comments for you to trash  manually but, it’s a Free plugin, and I have peace of mind for the most important stuff. Highly recommended. On the subject of hackers, I can’t stress enough the importance of strong passwords. You can learn how to choose one here. Also, make sure your admin user name is not ‘admin’ as this is what the hackers use to get in.
  

• FADE OUT EFFECT ON IMAGES: There’s an extra video link which you won’t find in the above URLs but Simon has added it in a comment under one of his tutorial videos. For your convenience, you’ll find it here. This is optional, and only if you wish to get rid of the fade out effect on your book covers as they appear on the right sidebar. As you can see, I’ve taken this option too so that my covers are fully visible at all times; not only when the mouse pointer hovers over them.

• HOSTGATOR: If you’re planning to follow Simon’s tutorial, take your time first and check Hostgator’s site regularly (or simply their Twitter page) as they periodically do huge discounts. I did that and opted to buy the hosting service on a day when they had a 55% discount! The previous day, they had run a 75% discount that was valid only for an hour! You get the idea. It’s worth choosing the right time if you want to get an extra saving. If you do pick a day that has a big discount, use the coupon code that Hostgator prompts you for and not Simon’s as his would be only for 25% discount.

• RSS FEED: There’s one aspect that’s not covered in the tutorial, and this was actually a big surprise for me because it’s a rather tricky one that many people (including me) know nothing about. I refer to the dreaded ‘RSS feed’. Upon finishing the course, I felt rather lost because I knew I had to prompt people to follow my new blog somehow but I didn’t know how. WP doesn’t provide a ‘follow’ button here like it does on my free blog.

Thankfully, with a bit of surfing, I was lucky to come across some useful advice and so, I tried my hand at it and managed to set up two relevant widgets that you can see on the right sidebar now. One prompts the reader to subscribe to the blog on this site by email, while the other (the black one), prompts visitors to subscribe directly to the feed. Don’t worry if this sounds daunting! You couldn’t possibly know less than I did yesterday when I set this up and it was a lot easier than I’d thought. UPDATE: I have now blogged these instructions too. You can find them here.

SECOND UPDATE: This tutorial will leave you with two more problems, both minor, but they proved very annoying to me and I’ve now found adequate fixes which I’m happy to share: Check out the plugins ‘Postmatic’ and ‘Better Click to Tweet’. The former now allows my visitors to subscribe to follow up comments (before, they were never notified their comments had received replies). The latter plugin now allows me to set up scripts for people to share my posts on Twitter (like the one you see at the bottom of this post). If you follow the tutorial you will wind up with a set up that won’t allow custom scripts when sharing a post. With the ‘Better Click to Tweet’ plugin I can create the tweet of my choice so people can share it.

So, here it is. I’ve treaded the path and found it relatively easy. One can build the site as fast or as slowly as they want. I’m pleased with what I’ve managed to make single-handedly and hopefully you like it too; I hope you will let it be one of your favorite hangouts!

Are you an author needing help with promotion? Check out my FREE, cracking good tips and resources: http://effrosyniwrites.com/for-authors/

Do you love Greece? Check out our guide to Corfu! For delicious Greek recipes, go here. Sign up to the newsletter for Effrosyni’s news and special offers (sparse emails) NEW: To read Effrosyni’s books for FREE (yes, free!), sign up to her team of loyal readers here. It’s free to join!