Life in the Slow Lane

Contemplating life, faith, words, and memories

Check Out New Year’s Deals for Writers and Bloggers — January 6, 2016

Check Out New Year’s Deals for Writers and Bloggers

Who doesn’t love a deal, especially a New Year’s deal? Everybody loves deals. Just offer something at a good price and see how fast people come calling.

This week I’ve heard about some great deals for writers and bloggers. In honor of the support and encouragement my followers have given me in 2015, I’m sharing these New Year’s deals with you.

1. FIRST UP IS A GOOD DEAL FROM WEB HOST, BLUEHOST.

I’ve been working with BlueHost going on almost four years. They host this site plus two small business sites my husband and I run. When it comes to support, they are fantastic! When it comes to a great deal for new customers better than fantastic.

Right now BlueHost is offering a great monthly rate. And the reason I know about this discount is because I’m celebrating my first anniversary as a BlueHost affiliate. Yes, that means I get a little something for every new customer I send to BlueHost. If you’re interested in BlueHost as your site host, click on the image below and check things out: 

2. LOOKING FOR WRITING BOOKS AND/OR VIDEOS?

Writer’s Digest has some books offered at discount prices. Here is what I found in the store today:

2016 Writer’s Market Deluxe Edition by Robert Lee Brewer is a list of literary agents and publishers curated by Writer’s Digest and now they are offering it for 40% off the regular price, or $29.99, a savings of $20. In addition to the listings, the book includes many tips on the business of writing and a free webinar is offered (a $79 value) on building your audience, marketing, and publishing. It doesn’t sound like you could go wrong.

Under “Bundles and Kits,” a collection under the title Turn Your Blog Into a Successful BookThis bundle includes four books and three webinars on topics like How to Blog a Bookby Nina Amir, Blogging for Writers by Robin Houghton, and one of the webinars is on starting your platform. Regularly the price for this bundle (and you have to see it to believe it!) is $293.95 and you can buy it for only $49.99.

You will find other great offerings at the Writers Digest Shop, so spend some time and see what you can find to help your writing take off in 2016.

Note: I am NOT an affiliate of Writer’s Digest.

3. LOOKING TO SPIFF UP YOUR WEBSITE? LOOK NO FURTHER.

Elegant Themes is currently offering a 10% discount off themes and plugins for a limited time only when you sign up for their newsletter. Elegant Themes does a stellar job designing themes and creates some of the most effective plugins for WordPress I have used. Don’t miss this opportunity!

I am in no way affiliated with Elegant Themes.

4.WRITING SOFTWARE CAN BE EXPENSIVE, BUT LITERATURE & LATTE IS STILL OFFERING A GOOD PRICE FOR SCRIVENER.

I have used Scrivener since I began writing my memoir back in 2009. It has gone through many changes to make it a user-friendly writing tool. I especially appreciate the way I can organize my project within the software as if I were using an old-fashioned filing cabinet, file folders, and lots of paper. I just took a look at the site and was surprised to see you can still buy the software for Windows 10 for $40 and for Mac OSX Version for $45. Literature & Latte also offers a free trial. Check it out, and feel free to ask me questions. (Note: I am not an affiliate of Literature & Latte.)

There are many items helpful and useful for writers and bloggers. Sometimes you have to dig for them, and other times they come to you out of the blue. Keep your eyes and ears open and read up on the craft to see what’s happening with technology and books written to help us along the writing journey.

What writing tools and books have you seen deals on lately? Anything you can pass along to the rest of us today?

WordPress Free vs. Self-hosted Site | A Comparison and Review — October 2, 2014

WordPress Free vs. Self-hosted Site | A Comparison and Review

As most of you are aware, I recently moved my blog from a free WordPress.com site to a self-hosted WordPress.org site. I have never reconsidered my decision to move from Blogger to WordPress a few years back, and so far I see no need to reconsider this most recent move either.

WordPress decision, free or self-hosted?
WordPress decision, free or self-hosted?

Many of you asked me to share how I reached my decision and about the benefits of one versus the other. I spent several days, maybe two weeks or more, researching and vetting the issues.

Today I’m sharing with you what I learned in the process and why I moved.

The most logical place to begin vetting blog moving issues was with WordPress support. On WordPress.com I found a helpful article setting out a chart listing the differences between the two platforms. This proved helpful to me in understanding not only the differences but how much I wanted to invest in time and money.

Here WordPress sums it all up pretty well:

WordPress is a publishing platform that makes it easy for anyone to publish online, and proudly powers millions of websites. It comes in two flavors: the fully hosted WordPress.com, and the self-hosted version available at WordPress.org.

A second article in my search is a post found at WP Beginner in the form of an infographic. The infographic summed up the WordPress article beautifully and in fewer words plus added a column for available upgrades for WordPress.com and each cost.

Despite the information found in these articles, the question I wanted answered was “Why should I pick one over the other?” I found this answer at Kimberley Grabas’s blog,  Your Writer Platform. Kimberley writes:

One of the biggest disadvantages of free-hosted sites is that you don’t really own your site; the provider does.  You could spend years building up your site, creating a great resource and substantial platform, but never fully own or control it.  With that much investment at the whim of the provider, “free” no longer seems like good value.

And there was my answer. The concept of ownership is important to me. To work hard day in and day out writing and posting on a blog, maintaining a site such as so many do, only to have someone else with the ability to exercise final control over it made no logical sense to me.

So, I decided to make the move to WordPress.org.

Next step was hiring a host. Thinking I knew what I was doing (never fall victim to this!), I contacted the host who maintains our small business site and has for several years. What I didn’t do was question fully the host’s knowledge and ability to work with the WordPress.org platform. Result = mess! Parts didn’t work, “we don’t do that” responses, and more confirmed my poor business sense.

Off to Bluehost, a WordPress.org, and an organization deserving of compliments on their support staff who are very responsive. However, remember the site mentioned earlier, WP Beginner? At the time I made my move, WP Beginner was offering free installation and transfer of files if I linked from its site to Bluehost to make my Bluehost purchase, and then emailed a copy of my receipt as proof of purchase. WP Beginner’s staff was priceless!

Not to lead you astray, there is some work to do on your part once your host has completed its work. Things like deciding which, if any, plugins you’d like to add to your site. For example, some widgets that come with WordPress.com are not standard with WordPress.org. But don’t distress! The number and availability of plugins is unbelievable, including colors, fonts, use of Java script, Disqus comment format, Yoast SEO, Tweet This, Akismet, Jetpack, and more. Installation of any of these is a snap.

There was only one bump in the road that has yet resolve itself. To migrate my list of followers from the WordPress.com site to WordPress.org, I was told to use Jetpack’s services. And it worked beautifully when it came to migrating followers who signed up to receive posts via email. Followers who had signed up on Facebook, Twitter, or other means would not migrate. Those followers must sign up to follow again, here on this site. This was the only thing I found a bit unpleasant in the process but I’m continuing to attempt to get the word out to my followers.

Now you know what I know. Like many decisions in life, this is one no one else can make for you. You have to decide!

Via Google Images
Via Google Images
Move to WordPress.org Painless — September 27, 2014

Move to WordPress.org Painless

Via John Benson @ Flickr
Via John Benson @ Flickr

My move to WordPress.org looked nothing like this, but you have to agree these young college students look pretty organized.

Fortunately, for me at least, I chose one of WordPress’s recommended hosts, Bluehost, who gave me the best of their tech support and direction. I also was lucky enough to come across the site, WP Beginner, which provides easily accessible information for those new to WordPress or those making the move from WordPress.com to WordPress.org.

WP Beginner offers a free transfer of your site from here to there, and again I received amazing tech support and education on what was happening.

Although there was a little reorganization and cleanup afterwards, I don’t think I would have wanted to do it on my own or without these two amazing sites and their tech people.

I strongly recommend anyone thinking of moving their blog to do as much reading and vetting of the issues as possible before hand. It makes the waiting time while the truck is loading up all your blog posts and pages and moving them from here to there easier to bear.

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