This is the question I asked myself before attending a great workshop at The Writer’s Loft in Sherborn, MA on Saturday. That, and, where the heck is Sherborn, MA?
I admit I got a little worried as I passed 128 and started to see signs for Albany, NY, but I made it to the Loft in once piece and even found a handy eatery nearby to pick up a nice greasy sandwich and chocolate frappe. *thumbs up*
The workshop, “Creating an Author Website,” was led by Ray Brierly, and was a great chance for me to find out what I wanted to know. I’ve been blogging here on WordPress since 2008, and I’ve gradually figured out lots of the bits and pieces that give my blog the look and feel I wanted. But yanno, what I’ve got isn’t a website; it’s a blog. Before the workshop, I was pretty sure I decided I wanted to convert to a website, once there, I realized it didn’t seem to be anything to be afraid of.
As Ray described the steps, one must:
- Get hosting
- Get a domain name
- Install WordPress
- Customize website
Since I’ve been blogging with a wordpress.com address, it turns out I’ve done the last step first–and it seems like this is the most time-consuming, complicated step, so yay, me! However, I still have to do steps 1-3 if I want an actual website. If I only had a few blog posts, it wouldn’t be a big deal to just start up a fresh website and copy the content over, but because I have six years of content (*gasp*), once I got home from the workshop, I decided to look up how it’s done, and luckily it doesn’t seem horribly complicated:
- WordPress has a nice how-to on the process that I plan to take for a spin in the near future: move to self-hosted.
- They also have a list of recommended hosts that are known to work well with WordPress.
- One of the hosts they list is the same one Ray mentioned in the workshop, and I found they’re running a special!
Best of all, now that I realize I’ve been doing the more complicated part all along, I should be able to actually help friends and family members who’ve been asking how to set up a website who’ve been scoffing at my, “Get a free WordPress blog!” responses. Now I know exactly what to tell them and will even be able to walk them through it. Who knew making a website could be so much fun? 
So glad you were able to make it to the faraway land of Sherborn to join us!
Me too! Thank you for sharing your husband’s web skills with us!
Your new site looks great! I self-hosted for about a year and then ended up switching back to wordpress.com, because I realized I was spending too much money to self-host (it didn’t help that my website was hacked…) I figure if (when!) I get a book deal, I’ll consider self-hosting again. I can say that I love how easy wordpress makes the transition!
Ahhh, noes! Not a hacked website! Eek. But yeah, self-hosted with a book deal sounds like a good plan. I definitely agree that WordPress makes things easy either way.