My old hosting deal was coming to an end, and rather than just renewing it and carrying on as before, I saw it as a nudge. A reason to finally do something I’d been circling for a while: rebuild my indie author website properly.

Not my first attempt

This wasn’t the first time I’d tried to sort the site out. I’d had a few goes at it over the past while, tinkering here and there, moving things around, never quite landing on something I was happy with. Each attempt fixed one thing and left three more half-finished. So when the hosting renewal came up, it felt like the right moment to stop patching and actually start again from scratch.

What I wanted from my indie author website this time

More than anything, I wanted the site to feel like one coherent place rather than a collection of pages that had grown up separately over the years. I wanted a standard I could stick to — so that every book, every series, every page followed the same simple pattern, and I wasn’t reinventing how things worked every time I added something new.

I also wanted it to be genuinely easy to navigate. Not just for me, but for readers. If someone lands on the site wanting to find a particular book, or work out where to start with a series, they should be able to do that in a couple of clicks, without getting lost or hitting a dead end.

And I wanted it to feel like a journey I was bringing my readers along on, not something happening behind the scenes that they’d only notice once it was finished. This blog post is part of that — letting you see the thinking, not just the result.

What that actually looked like

In practice, this meant slowing down and being honest about what wasn’t working. The old navigation had books buried a few clicks deep, which meant people were probably giving up before they found what they wanted. So I simplified it, so there’s a clear path from the homepage, to a series, to the book itself.

I also spent time making sure every book page looks and works the same way, so that whether you’re looking at Highland Rift Pack or Death and Visions, the experience feels familiar. That consistency was something the site never quite had before, and it’s made a real difference to how much simpler everything feels to manage.

What I’ve learned along the way

The biggest lesson has been that the parts you can’t see matter just as much as the parts you can. Getting the structure and the navigation right took far longer than choosing colours or fonts, but it’s made everything else so much easier. A few times I found things quietly going wrong in the background — content not updating the way it should, or pages showing things they shouldn’t — and each time, sorting it properly rather than papering over it saved me a headache down the line.

I’ve also learned to be patient with myself about it. A rebuild like this doesn’t happen in a weekend, especially alongside actually writing books. It’s been a slow, steady process of chipping away, and that’s alright.

Where things stand

The series pages are live, the core navigation is sorted, and adding new books is far simpler than it used to be. There’s still polish to do — some pages need tidying, some copy needs updating — but the foundation finally feels solid, and that’s the part that matters most.

If you’ve been following along with the changes to the site, thank you for being part of that journey. There’s more still to come.

Thanks for reading along, Featherling. 🪶

May your magic behave and your monsters stay quiet, Jemma