I realized recently that I still love my website and making websites, doing web work, and figuring out how systems work. I kinda thought that once I became an author, I would stop being a web developer. But it turns out that I do both all the time!
There is so much to being a self published author. I need a website, blog, newsletter, social media presence… And all of these things call upon my web development skills! There are lots of things I love doing: finding a new plug-in for WordPress that saves me time or is just really cool; coming up with a landing page template for newsletter subscribers; installing and tracking the Facebook ad pixel on my website; backing up and upgrading my website; redirecting traffic from old posts to new ones; etc. etc. With each new skill I learn, my love for web development grows. I keep thinking that my skills are old and invaluable, that I know nothing (much like John Snow), but I always find a way to make my skills work. I would still like to be a better PHP programmer, just like I would like to speak Japanese fluently, and yet finding the time is always hard. Maybe next year?
Recently I got really excited about the changes I made here to my website and blog. I added a plug-in that shows popular posts over on the right sidebar. I like this new feature. It brings forward posts that may be a few days old but are still popular and getting views. If you come to my site through Facebook and miss the front page, these links will help you find interesting and engaging content. I also added a related posts plug-in to the bottom of every blog post. Hopefully this will help people find content that they would be interested in should they come to my website through a Google search. I also took a few weeks, since I wasn't writing due to kitchen construction, to go back and update old blog posts. It's my intention to run ads to get people to those pages! I'm interested in showing visitors content they'll appreciate.
I realize that I am in a very fortunate position to be able to do all of this without help. Many authors struggle with their website, and I try to help those I can, but often enough, things are way out of my control. I can't reprogram someone else's site for them because that's just too much work. I still love being a web developer, but only for myself. :) I'm much happier when I'm the only client. LOL.
Every now and then, I think about going back into web development as a full-time job. Right now, I don't have to do that. I can continue to be a web developer just for myself. But the option remains open, and that makes me really happy.
I actually help an author with her website so she doesn’t have to do as much herself. I like working on websites, it can be frustrating sometimes when I don’t know how to do something, but when you finally figure it out it’s so rewarding! And you learn something new every time you want to add something.
Since I switched my blog to wordpress about two years ago now I learned so many new things and there’s so much I don’t know. But it’s great to look back and see how much I learned so far.
I can imagine for authors it is the same, knowing your way around the web can be a very valuable skill and indie authors already have so much they have to learn, so it must’ve been nice that you already knew how to set up your website. And indeed it’s good to know you always have another path or direction that stays open for you. Although ofcourse I hope you stick with the writing ;)
I listened to a podcast the other day and the guest was saying that so many musicians and authors are also programmers! And I could see that. I like coding because it can be creative and it can be very rewarding when you figure something out. Which is a lot like writing! He also said that writers and programmers never run out of things to do. There’s always another story to write or another app or webpage to program. Instead we just burn-out and become very tired. This describes me to a T. I realized that the same thing happened to me in web development as it does in writing, and I often need a lot of downtime between projects to recoup. It was really quite eye-opening!
I think WordPress is one of those applications that you can almost never know enough! It’s so flexible and fun, and so many plugins or themes that can give you pretty much everything you want. I’ve been using it for over 10 years, and there’s still so much more to learn. It’s a lot of fun!
Comments are closed.