photo by Mateus Campos Felipe in Unsplash

WordPress for Writers

The top 5 things I learned before launching my website

I stopped dead in my tracks from taking Ayo Awosika’s Medium for Blogging Course when he suggested writers should also put their blogs on a WordPress site. This is not the first time I heard this. Off I went into the wild tech yonder.

A friend had success with hiring technical help online so I researched in Upwork and hired someone highly recommended for creating WordPress sites. It was a Friday. He said he was free on Monday and would finish Friday of the same week, which dragged out to a month and many headaches later.

But it didn’t work properly, nor did it look as up-to-date as I would have liked.

Hand on forehead and major sigh.

Head versus Heart

Learning how to work with Medium as a platform and how to set up and use a WordPress site has had my head spinning. There has been such a learning curve.

I just want to focus on writing and not get bogged down with all of this head-stuff. I keep reminding myself that there is a time for everything and I am laying a solid foundation for the future. But we all know how you can calmly rationalize with your head while your heart remains tied up in knots.

Tech Support After Thought

After putting in a ticket, aka a tech request, with my hosting service, it turned out the website creator had mixed content with mixed URL’s on different pages, and the default theme which is Twenty Twenty-One along with the security created formatting issues. I was told that the theme should be able to be more updatable and that would allow the security installation to work properly. Neve or Astra was suggested. After asking several WordPress techs their advice, I chose the Astra theme and its Mountain template as it is easy to customize. Then we started the process of rebuilding.

I wish I knew beforehand what I know now and so this little blog article is for readers who are writers. Maybe that is you.

The Top 5 Lessons for Working with WordPress

1. Bluehost is naturally geared to host WordPress sites as it is connected to technical support…