The move from building WordPress sites with Astra theme and 3rd Party page builders to a block based theme and gutenberg continues.
There’s nothing wrong with using Astra, Elementor, Bricks, Oxygen or whatever your favourite web builder tools may be but WordPress choose a block based future and I’m going with it.
It’s also a chance to try out another strategy I’ve been planning.
Websites separated by function.
Having more than one website may sound like an admin nightmare but when I’ve built multi-purpose sites that tried to do everything they’ve done nothing very well.
Instead each domain or subdomain will have its own site and purpose matching the list below.
- This site (stephengordon.org) built on WordPress is my blogging / newsletter site.
- Deadlybooks.com (WordPress) is for book promos.
- shop.deadlybooks.com (WooCommerce) for direct sales
- writersbuildingwebsites.com (WordPress) for tutorials, course promos, and sales (via Thrivecart)
- learn.writersbuildingwebsites.com (Learn+) for hosting online courses
The advantage of this approach is I can have specific structure, layouts and branding for each website based on what it’s meant to do. The first example is this site. This site isn’t just a blog.
Right now I’m building out the automations so that new posts get distributed to specific social channels depending on which categories and tags are used. It’s also going to act as an archive for future newsletters. This is a text heavy site so all improvements on the user experience will be focused on making it as reader friendly as possible with the typography taking the front seat.
This modular website strategy will also keep downtime to a minimum for each part of the business.
For example I may want to start shop.deadlybooks.com on the Payhip platform but then migrate to WooCommerce as direct sales grow. I can build the Woo site offline and when it’s ready change the DNS records to point away from Payhip to the new store. Even if there is a delay to the DNS records cascading around the internet none of my other sites are affected.
That’s the plan and I’ll share what happens as it all meets reality.
Cheers
Stephen
