I just went through and switched all four of my personal web sites to WordPress’ 2017 theme, getting rid of Atahualpa and Evolve. They were fine for their time, but 2017 supports everything I need and most of what I want.
My sites still need help, though. And I’m reaching out for guidance from people who design web sites.
- michaelwlucas.com, for my tech books
- blather.michaelwlucas.com, my blog
- michaelwarrenlucas.com, for my fiction
- mwl.io, for info that applies to both fiction & non-fiction
(I also have tiltedwindmillpress.com, but that needs to remain separate. It’s a company, not a personal site, even though the company exists only to handle my books. It needs some help and updates, but that’s a separate problem.)
I started with a blog. Once the blog seemed to work okay, I converted my old raw HTML site to a real web page for my books. When I split my fiction off under a slightly different name, it seemed to make sense to set up a separate site for that. When I found I was duplicating information between sites, I set up mwl.io to act as a central information/traffic direction point.
This is all annoyingly complex. People are having a terrible time finding information about me and my books. I really need to bring everything back together. Probably under mwl.io, because that’s nice and short and easy to type on a cellphone.
The question is, how to organize the information?
Today, both my fiction and nonfiction sites have genres across the top. The drop-down menu on the tech site leads to a page for each book. The fiction site has single pages, one per genre, with multiple books. Given how many books I have out, one page per genre seems more sustainable in the long run.
Ah, seems… a lovely word that means “I look so simple, but I’m going to come back and bite you.”
I’ve thought of hiring someone to do a web site reorg, but ultimately, I’m responsible for it. I have to understand what’s going on. Plus, people are fragile; whatever happens, I need to be able to either take it over or explain it to another contractor.
So I’m asking my esteemed readers. If you were responsible for this kind of information, how would you organize it? As a reader looking for information on books, how would you do it? I mean, if I had to handle this for an employer, I’d quit–but that’s not really an option here.
Suggestions? Ideas?
Whereas I would normally recommend switching away from WordPress – you have based your entire website flow on it – so migrating would be nuts.
Personally, I’d pull everything to one domain. Decomplexify the entire thing. Another possible solution would be to use WP multisite. Both require 1 (one) WP instance. Thus easing management and load.
Right now, you have to link your users across several domains if they want to view details on a book and purchase it directly.
With a very well executed and developed WP theme, you have everything at hand:
– WP multisite support
– Blazing fast and SEO optimized
– Full Woocommerce integration
– Space for future-ish expansion
– And depending on the theme, an click n design builder
Whatever path you choose, I could always help you out or mentor you – without charging. What I get out of it is simpele: experience on mentoring/guiding.
Feel free to contact me. Feel also free to completely ignore this comment and do your own thing.