Revamping my Wordpress website

[sonia]

I have been looking for someone who can revamp my Wordpress website traumahealed.com to make it book-focused rather than practice-focused.

Anyone have a skilled Wordpress person they can recommend? Bonus points for experience with book marketing sites.

I had a lovely conversation with one person who gave me a bunch of good marketing ideas, but said he doesn't have design skills, and I think that's the main thing I need. He gave me a ballpark estimate of $1,500 and said he charges $150/hour. He mentioned the Divi theme as one option.

The person who recommended him also recommended a woman who suggested the Divi theme and said she could install it for me on my staging site to let me see what it's like. She charges $80/hour. Sounded great. But she dropped out of communication when I had some feedback on the changes she made and asked how much time she had spent. I thought about how heavyweight and complex Divi seems and decided that's not the direction I want to go.

When she finally re-surfaced, the woman said she had been heads-down in a project (so let me know I'll hear back in a couple of weeks?) and there were "pink flags" (apparently that's the new yellow flags?) about my wanting to modernize my website. I declined to engage with that and simply paid her bill for 3 hours and called it a learning experience.

I talked to a third person, recommended by a bodyworker, who gave me a specific estimate for $1,440 and seems very open to feedback and heard what I said about a lightweight theme.

Now I'm debating with myself. That's a chunk of change to spend on marketing books that I doubt will ever earn it back, but it seems like the going rate. I don't want to just shut the website down, and I don't feel like I have the skills, time, and energy to revamp it myself. At the same time, I have strong opinions and don't want to spend that kind of money and end up with something I don't like.

I'm also struggling with wanting/not wanting to market the books at all. It doesn't feel right to take them out of print, but it still feels vulnerable to push them out into the world. It feels difficult to be making the decision alone, without outside input. If you have thoughts on the matter, let me know!

Comments

[viggorlijah]

Have you had a look at Squarespace? It's basically managed wordpress with built in plug-ins for shops and marketing. You'd lose the complete control you have with Wordpress, but you'd also be able to sharply reduce time spent on the website and spend that time instead on the blog, newsletter etc. It'd be about $300 and up for a basic shopfront site, and you have all the materials already and could set it up on your own, so that's about 3-4 years of Squarespace over a onetime cost.

I've done both previously and now would almost always pick a managed site over a self-made one. There's so much to maintain security-wise and if you structure your site well and keep the content (images, articles etc) on your own hdd or backed up, switching over to a new platform is fairly painless if the first provider gets too expensive or goes weird.

[sonia]

Interesting idea. I did know about Squarespace, but hadn't considered it. Interesting to look at it as a tradeoff between monthly expenses and an up front cost. I'll think about that, thanks!

[rosefox]

If I can help with site design things, I'd be glad to, free of charge. I designed my own site (in Wordpress) and though I haven't done a book promo site, I've certainly seen a great many of them and think I have a solid understanding of what they need to do.

I agree with the commenter above about the value of a managed site where you don't have to worry about installing your own security patches and so on.

[sonia]

Wow, what a generous offer! I would love to schedule a video chat and work out some ideas if that works for you. I am on Pacific Time, and probably weekends are easiest. I’m pretty open September's 20 & 21. Thank you so much! I will follow up via DM later today.