New Website!
NEWS
It has been a long time coming, but it is finally here: my new website! So I thought I would take a few moments and talk about the why, the how, the blog changes, and the upcoming moves around this whole project!
The Why
I hate GoDaddy.
Ok, that's slightly hyperbolic. It's not that I hate them as much as they overcharge and aren't a good fit for me, far from it. Largely it boils down to one main element: I can't build websites from scratch.
While I was on my high school website design team, my days of building sites are literally decades behind me now. I remember a little html, but fuck me if I have the time or inclination to relearn what it would take. So I have, for years now, used GoDaddy's built in website builder.
Which, being fair, is a pretty damn good builder. It frankly has a few more features than the builder I used to make this one (nothing major), and it was very easy to use. Overall I liked it, quite a lot actually.
But GoDaddy being GoDaddy makes you pay an annual fee to use the builder...per website. If I only had one website, that would be fine. But ya boi has multiple, which meant those bastards were charging me hundreds a year for each builder instance.
I am now with Hostinger. Who I pay less money to, in order to have essentially as many websites as I want, only having to pay one amount to use the builder across all my sites. I am saving, no lie, hundreds of dollars by moving my three sites to Hostinger.
Hundreds saved? That's a lot of editing I could pay for.
The How
The how is a bit more straightforward. But also, just technical enough that I am going to just say the barebones. Tech folks will get it, and non-tech folks shouldn't be overwhelmed.
To essentially there were two parts to this move. First, was getting my new webhost, which as stated earlier is Hostinger. The webhost is the company that actually hosts your website. Whether you build the website (using Wordpress or the like) or using the native website builder (what I am doing), this company actually hosts your website.
I did a lot of research, mostly on reddit, and this was the company I settled on. Mostly because it's one of the few that haven't been bought up by one of the majors, and thus experienced inshitification. They are an Estonian company, I think? Frankly, for the price and value, I don't care if it's a North Korean company.
The second part is my domain host. The domain is, basically, your web address. So talesbybob.com for this website. Formerly I used GoDaddy for both. A tip I got when I was doing this was to use a different company for webhost and domain host.
And I could have actually left my domains with GoDaddy... except being GoDaddy they charge extra for every bell and whistle. Reddit recommended Porkbun, who basically give me all the bells and whistles for each domain I have, and total, for all five domains I now have it comes out to around the cost of two domains at GoDaddy.
So yeah, each time I went to Hostinger and built my new replacement website on Hostinger (Bearded Bard Inkworks first, then Hilltop Howlers, then Tales by Bob). Once I was happy with how it looked I moved my domain from GoDaddy to Porkbun. Once that had completed, I went to Hostinger and told it to take that website and assign it the domain from Porkbun.
Once that was done, it takes a few hours, but basically it overwrite the path to the old GoDaddy site, and all you can find is the new one. I was then able to just let my subscription for the website on GoDaddy lapse.
The only hiccup was the Tales by Bob website (this one). See, it had a tooooon of content, including hundreds of blog posts. And because they were all built with the GoDaddy builder, I could not export those blog posts. They would all have to be copy and pasted over, one at a time.
The further complicating factor was the fact that if I didn't get it done by June 2nd, I would have to renew for another year with GoDaddy.
Fuck. That.
So I have spent the last month going wide open getting this site built, and the blog (mostly) rebuilt as well.
Changes to the Blog
So while I love my website content as a whole, I feel like the blog is the main draw for folks. Which feels weird to say. And I think what folks have come for over the years has shifted. So to that end, here is what is different now:
I was able to normalize a lot of names. For example, my monthly recaps have gone under a couple different names under the years, like 365to1k. By moving every post over I was able to change the names to be more uniform.
Very, very few images got moved over from the old blog. Which a lot were kinda dogshit anyway, so no great loss. But occasionally you may, when looking at an old blog post, see some reference to a picture that no longer exists. I tried to catch these as I went, but frankly... I moved hundreds of posts over the course of a week. Stuff will be missed.
Old blog posts that have links, many of those links may be broken. If it was a link to an outside source I usually left it (like mentions of other authors websites for example). But any links that reference specific pages on the website would be for the old website...and will be broken. I tried to catch them, but I am sure some got missed. If you see a link that is THIS color instead of WHITE or THIS color, it's an old link from the old site. Might work, might not.
The most easily recognizable change is the cover images for all the blogs are normalized and fit the branding. That is going to make things a lot easier for me moving forward. I really hope you guys don't hate it. Let me know if you do.
My dream is a much more uniform layout and such across my blog posts. Ignore all the old ones, they are all copy and paste. But thanks to the wonders of post duplication, I can do a lot more standardization. I also plan to make more of an effort to do things like keep headings the same size, links the same color, that sort of shit.
I tried to make the dates all match. There are probably a few posts that are off by like a day or two of the original post date, but that should be rare. So the date is has for post date was the original post date, even though technically it was created on this site, like, last week.
There are some content types that I removed. Here are the categories that blanket got removed, and probably accounted for about 1/3rd of the blog posts:
I removed all the 'Urban Fantasy Book Lists' content. At one point that was what I was using to draw folks to my site, and how I added value to the community. But frankly, it was boring and I hated having to try and keep it up to date. Also, I hated missing books, and I felt like some authors may have felt left out or slighted.
I removed all book reviews. There are some issues around me doing reviews as a published author I feel. So I just decided to cut them out. If I ever bring that back, it will be much more intentional.
I removed all RPG and Tabletop content. I am bad about starting to write up campaign notes for the first few sessions, then stopping. It annoys me, so it probably annoys others. Also, it's not really what people are here for. I may start back doing that sort of content, but it won't be here, it will be over at Bearded Bard Inkworks.
Any posts that were very photo heavy, or required photos to make sense, that weren't transparency related or otherwise 'important.'
Some things that are just no longer applicable. For example I had a guide to doing NaNoWriMo, my tips and tricks. Well...NaNoWriMo is no more, so I save myself some copy and pasting.
Last thing I will say is my plan is for each blog post I do it will get posted on my Patreon and in my subreddit (did you know I had a subreddit? Yeah, I forgot about it too). This is so that folks can have places to leave comments. Since this blog host does not allow comments, and I don't feel like paying for a widget that will allow them.
Going Forward
So what do I have planned for the site in the future? In short:
Whatever you want. Within reason.
The point of this site is to draw eyes on my books. So if there is content you want to see more of on here, let me know. Want more Jubal County pictures? Just say so. Want a page of my best puns? Don't tempt me!
I do have a few pages planned, like an FAQ, a page about my vests/patches, and a page about rural fantasy. But if you can think of other stuff you want me to add, now would be a great time.
Also, if you see mistakes, or find dead links, this is also a great time to tell me. I am in full 'work on the site' mode at the moment, so it's the perfect season to get this bad boy to as close to perfect as I can manage. Which won't be all that close, but hey, keep expectations low enough and I will soar over them!
So yeah, reach out and let me know what you think! Or what you want! Or just say hi! Here is my contact page: HERE.
