Hey guys, Matt is here in the UK! We took advantage of this time to sit down and do lots of Blog Things together. For a long time we discussed migrating from WordPress.com to WordPress.org so we had more control over what we could do with this space. Since we reached our goal on Patreon for redesigning the blog we’ve really wanted to do this, and it’s finally done!
If you are only subscribed through WordPress.com, you apparently will no longer receive email updates unless you subscribe with your email address on the sidebar tool. I think you’ll still be able to see posts in your Reader, which is cool, but if you’re dying for those email updates, make sure you subscribe that way! Matthew is super confused by all this, and I too do not really understand why they can’t just email you WordPress.com subscribers, but such is life.
Now, if you click on a specific category and read a post, you’ll be able to read the previous or next post in each category rather than just going chronologically. But if you read a post from the homepage, you’ll be able to binge-read the blog in order if you like!
We’re also working on creating some Amazon affiliate links for our ebooks and the books we read on the blog since we all know ad revenue is dying a slow and painful death. If you want to read along with us for any of the books, it’s a great way to support us (and our beloved bad books authors.)
Now for the bad news…we’re taking the week off since we have quite a bit we want to do tweaking the new site & Matt is traveling a lot this week.
Congratulations guys! I’ll admit I was slightly confused/terrified when the site design changed. I think I visited while you guys were tweaking it, because there was a point where the main page was just the posts, in chronological order, in full, with no sidebars or menus or anything. I thought something awful had happened (maybe Jamie McGuire finally hacked the blog for implying her books glorified abuse).
I hope we get to hear all about your wonderful English Adventures together! Enjoy your week off!
Oh noooo I was so worried that would happen and it would alarm people! It was a really confusing migration as well, it kept locking me out of my admin login and trying to get me back onto WordPress.com so I couldn’t do anything and I was panicking like, “Please let me get in so I can fix things!!”
Can you imagine if Jamie McGuire, EL James, Sylvia Day and Stephenie Meyer banded together to hack the blog. I would be upset but also it would be hilarious.
I’m totally on board with the new redesign and features! How exciting! You guys deserve a break from reading terrible books–go have fun this week! Just remember to share your shenanigans with the rest of us. ;D
maybe Jamie McGuire finally hacked the blog for implying her books glorified abuse
@Utsutsu: LOL. I always wonder what would happen if an author realized their works glorified abuse. Would they be upset and mortified? Try to reconcile the Unfortunate Implications in their works with whatever general desire they might have to make the world a better place? Or plug their ears and sing “lalala i can’t hear you over the sound of cha-ching“?
Thank you!!!
Well, people called McGuire out on some of this stuff (EL James too) and they just got really defensive about it 🙁
I really like the new design. Good job guys and have a nice week 🙂
D’awww thank you!!
I guess maybe it’s just me, but you don’t show up in my Reader thing on WordPress anymore! :O I thought you’d deleted the blog or something.
The new design will of course take some getting used to, but it looks cleaner than before – a bit less cluttered, less confusing. Often I’m so violently opposed to a site redesign I stop visiting for a while (and in one case, forever), but I’m pretty okay with this new design. I think it helps that it’s not a HUGE redesign. You didn’t put up a giant, magenta header and have ads that take up 3/4 of the page. Definite plus in my book. But it does look really nice, so yay!
[To be honest it probably helps that I’ve been a lazy reader and haven’t actually visited in a while. >_> Hoping to catch up and get back on track because I’m realizing I’ve been having a lot of time where I’m just sitting on the internet not doing anything, so I’m like, “Wait, why don’t I catch up on that blog I follow?” So that’s when I opened my Reader and saw there were NO updates at all and I got concerned.]
I think/hope this is because we’re still waiting for jetpack to migrate our followers. We tried to do it on our own,but kept getting errors, and Jetpack said if we got in touch they’d do it for us.
I’m so glad you’re enjoying the new layout! We wanted something similar, but we liked little things like on the categories page now, you can see featured image posts wahoo! We’re definitely still playing around with where we want ads…don’t want them to be too obtrusive but also yay passive revenue!
Once we migrate our followers over, I’ll post something here and ask if you guys can see the updates again!
Congrats on the new move! I actually decided to start my blog on a self hosted blog because it gave me control and was a lot cheaper option.for me. I wish you good luck on the migration, and I will definitely make sure to re-subscribe.
the band who generated THE TWILIGHT SPAWN do not have that much courage to take you down ariel don’t worry. this reminds me sylvia day finally released her “last-twilight-spawn-paycheck” in the name of “one with you”, so when will you shred it to pieces? please soon because i cannot bring myself to read any more and i need to write essays on it for my blog without heart-failure. please!!!!!!
soon as we’re done with Sweet Valley Confidential!
I’m really liking the fact that I can read all of the posts I missed for a single novel without having to skip over other posts (which I would need to track down and read after).
The ads in the middle of posts will take some getting used to, but overall I like the design better.