How to choose the best platform for your author website

Setting up your own author website isn’t as difficult as it used to be. Back in the day, you either hired a web designer, or you threw together something in Geocities and hoped for the best.

Even a few years ago, websites were something relatively inaccessible.

But not anymore.

You don’t actually need a specialist designer to have your own author website. Huzzah! Case in point? I built this website myself using a swanky Studiopress theme (Author Pro) and a bit of know-how.

I have every faith that you can do the same. There’s just one thing you need to decide.

We’ve already talked about why you need to buy your own domain name. So now you need to work out which platform is the right choice for your author website.

Let’s have a look at the options, shall we?

But Icy. Can’t I just choose one of the free options?

You can. I’m certainly not going to stop you. But here are two reasons why you might want to reconsider.

1. If the platform you’re using goes away…then so does your blog.
2. You have less control over how it looks and what it actually does.

So no fancy list-building plugins in your sidebar. No cool share icons that scroll with the page (believe me, they’re more useful than they look). Fewer options to change colours and fonts.

And if you wonder why that matters, sign up to my 5 day email course on author branding below.

Don’t get me wrong, Blogger and WordPress.com have their advantages. They’re shockingly simple to use, and WordPress.com makes it easy to follow blogs and keep up with other writers.

Even Medium is a good place to start if you’re not sure what you want to write about.

And maybe you’re not interested in blogging. So you figure you can throw something together in Wix or Weebly.

But if a job’s worth doing, it’s worth doing well.

So let’s look at the two main contenders for your author website.

Yep, sorry kids. I’m ruling out Wix and Weebly straight away. Sure, they might be easy to use. And they might even give you a decent author website…for now.

But what if you want to add a blog later? (And you should.) And again, it’s not always so easy to use plugins to expand what your site does.

What if you want to add other bells-and-whistles? Content management systems (CMS) like Squarespace and WordPress will be way more helpful. And you’ll have a much more professional looking website at the end of it.

Both Wix and Weebly can leave really ugly-looking code behind.

Squarespace

Squarespace has been making waves of late, and plenty of solopreneurs have been setting up their websites using the platform. Mariah Coz of Femtrepreneur is certainly very vocal about her love for Squarespace. So what are the pros and cons?

The Pros

• Super easy to use, with plenty of funky templates to choose from, all using their drag-n-drop ‘what you see is what you get’ website builder.
• All-in-one solution, dealing with your domain name and web hosting in one.
• Gives excellent results – check out Claire Wingfield as an example.
• Squarespace is not open source, unlike WordPress, so only their own products are available for use…that just means no dodgy plugins or themes that don’t work properly.

The Cons

• Expensive – A ‘personal’ website will set you back $16 a month. That’s $26 a month if you’re making money as an author and it’s your business website.
• System-wide outages – as I was writing this post, every Squarespace site I landed on was giving me a 504 Gateway Timeout error.
• You’re still dependent on a single entity. If Squarespace goes away…

WordPress

WordPress is my platform of choice for my author website. I’ve built all of my websites on it. And that’s the beauty of it. WordPress isn’t just for blogs. You can create whole websites with whatever level of sophistication you want. You don’t even need to use the blog feature if you don’t want to.

I’m not talking about WordPress.com. I’m talking about self-hosted WordPress. To go this route, you’ll need to buy a domain name and hosting. Then install WordPress on your host.

Doing that gives you an admin dashboard, which is where you build your website. Choosing a ‘theme’ gives you a framework, so you don’t need to build it from scratch. Like Squarespace, you’re essentially editing a template.

Installing plugins gives you extra add-ons for other functions. So you can have sign-up forms for your mailing list, social media share icons, or a backup facility, among others.

And if you’re interested in WordPress but scared by the technical stuff, don’t worry. Drop me an email and we can discuss prices for me setting it up for you.

The Pros

• You can easily create super professional websites, like Wanderful World or J. F. Penn.
• Use plugins to build your mailing list, sell books, or protect your site with firewalls.
• It’s highly customisable and way more flexible than Squarespace so your author website can be truly unique.
• Install Genesis Framework from StudioPress (aff link) and get a professional experience with excellent support and great security.

The Cons

• There is a learning curve, so getting it to work can take a little time.
• You need to organise a domain name, hosting, and installation of WordPress yourself (I use Dreamhost for my domain and email hosting [aff link]).
• You need to keep on top of security to prevent hacks, though plugins like iThemes Security Pro [aff link] will help.
• Quality of plugins and themes varies, so you may have to pay to get the best, and customer service varies.

So you might wonder why I recommend WordPress given it has more cons than Squarespace. It’s not just the fact that I pay less per month for WordPress than I would for Squarespace. The flexibility helps – I wouldn’t be able to use CoSchedule with Squarespace. That plugin helps me manage my social media posting.

But ultimately it’s up to you. If being able to create a site using a drag-and-drop function is more important than flexibility and cost, then choose Squarespace. If sheer power and functionality are more important, then choose WordPress.

Over to you! Which platform do you use – or which do you think you’ll check out?