Book Host has launched!
As some of you may know already, earlier this week I officially launched Book Host, my managed WordPress hosting for book bloggers! I’m also offering 30 FREE migrations from anywhere (Blogger, WordPress.com, or another WordPress.org host) to Book Host! As of right now, there are 16 free migrations left, so hurry up and snag one before they all go. 😉
So far things are going really well! I just need to double my current amount of clients so I can start breaking even on those pesky server costs! But since I’ve gained half the clients I need in less than a week, I’m hopeful that I can double that amount within a month. Fingers crossed!
I’m now selling unique pre-made themes
For over a year now I’ve been selling pre-made WordPress themes on Creative Whim. These themes are cheap because I can sell them multiple times. But now I’m offering a new kind of service: unique pre-made themes. These themes are already made, but they’re only sold ONCE! They are also customized to incorporate your blog name, tag line, and you can request a few other tweaks as well. Right now I only have 4 up for sale, but I’m planning on making a lot more!
You may recognize two of the designs from my last post. 😉
The Winning Nose Graze Theme
It’s not official yet, but following my plea to help pick the new Nose Graze design, I think I have a winner. I have started coding the “GIRL WITH BUTTERFLIES” design!
Of course, after coding like 90% of the theme, I realized that my “Ask Me a Question” feature didn’t work with it, due to conflicting Bootstrap versions. So, I then spent an entire day coding the plugin from scratch. I bought the plugin I have on my site now, but I decided to re-code it myself instead of trying to edit the existing plugin to make it work with my new theme. I’m definitely glad I did that, because I was able to iron out a few kinks that always bugged me. So it’s going to be a lot better and more reliable! I may even sell it as a plugin of my own some day… MAYBE! 😛
I’m still not 100% decided if I’m actually going to use this new theme, but it helps for me to code it up and picture it being my site. I also have a complete copy of Nose Graze in my development environment where I’m coding the theme, so it actually looks totally real. It’s cool, and sometimes I get confused in the admin panel because I think I’m on my real blog. AWKWARD.
Some changes may be coming
As I’ve been coding a new Nose Graze theme, I’ve had a few ideas about my blog. I think I’m going to be changing up Stacking the Shelves. I’ve noticed that I’ve been doing fewer and fewer of them. Instead of Stacking the Shelves, I might do a more general kind of “wrap up” post instead. It won’t be anything formal, like wrapping up all the posts/books from that week. Instead I’m thinking of more of a general, “Here’s what’s on my mind” kind of post, which will include new books when I get them, but doesn’t have to include them.
It’s still kind of a weird idea in my head, but I HAVE BIG PLANS FOR IT! Actually, this post right now is a perfect example of what I have in mind. I didn’t get any new books this week, but this post is just kind of a big Here’s what’s been going on sort of wrap-up. Sometimes they may be big announcements, and other times they may be stupid little things. We’ll see.
Oh, and FYI…
Coding God and I are getting legally married ON MONDAY. Yes, on St. Patrick’s Day! We’re having our big wedding celebration in July (in Italy), but we’re doing the legal bits beforehand in a registry office. (For many reasons, one of which is convenience, because if we were to do it in Italy, we’d HAVE to do in the town hall, and we’d have to get translators for the documents…. yuck.)
Anyway, it’s very exciting! But we’re also trying not to make a big deal out of it, because we want to save all the super duper excitement for the July celebration. 🙂
Congrats on launching Book Host 🙂
Have fun Monday – it’s exciting that you’ll legally be “Coding Goddess” on St. Patrick’s Day!! *throwing confetti*
Hi
I think my whole comment was just “eaten up” except for the Hi part ROFL… I’ll re-comment from my laptop later
Thank you!!! 😀
And haha, I know right??
As someone who is hosted on Book Host (not Hose, nor Nose), I can HIGHLY recommend it. 😀 Ashley, you know what I’d LOVE to see? A list of blogs hosted on Book Host….I’ve been dying to see who else is hosted there and go and read their blogs. I mean, it’s set up and aimed specifically at book bloggers and what better way to find new and interesting blogs to read than to see who is hosted at the same place as yourself? 😀 And btw, CONGRATULATIONS on Monday!!! omg that is so exciting! Brilliant idea to have your anniversary on a “known” date too…there will be no excuse for either of you *cough..hubby…cough* forgetting it. Heh. I’ve been calling you Coding Goddess for ages tho. LOL! And remember, the very first time you say “This is my husband Coding God”…you’ll feel weird. LOL. I STILL giggle to myself whenever I say “hubby/husband” and we’ve been married for just over 3 years *laughs* So congratulations and I hope you have an absolutely WONDERFUL day. I’d ask for photos, but I’m pretty sure you said once Coding God is a bit camera shy LOL.
I actually have something like that planned! 🙂 Well right now one thing I’m working on is adding a widget to your dashboard that shows like “hot posts on Book Host this week”. And every week it will show some of the most popular posts from all blogs on Book Host. I may also do like a “random featured blogger” once a week where it will show a random blogger every week and 3 of their latest posts or something.
So it’s definitely something in the works! 😀
And yes, Coding God is pretty camera shy. 😀
that’d be awesome. 😀 Does BookHost have a FB page also that I can follow? I “like” creative whim over there so just wondering about BH. And you can always paste out Coding God’s face *laughs* cos you KNOW we are all dying to see you looking insanely happy. 😀
I’m not sure if I will create a Book Host FB page. At first I was going to go all out, with a new Twitter account, FB page, etc. But then I started blanketing it under Creative Whim (which is why the client area is there). So although Book Host has its own name/URL, I’m calling it part of the “Creative Whim Network”, so I may just use the Creative Whim Twitter/FB for it!
I think I was starting to confuse myself with having soooo many different Twitter/FB accounts. 😛
Aww. Congrats for Monday. 😀 Those pre-mades are tempting me because I really need a new layout, and I’m glad you haven’t done all that work for nothing. 😀 THe butterflies theme is going to totally rock on your blog. 😀
Thank you Chantelle! 😀
Congrats on the wedding stuff! 🙂 I wish I could afford one of those designs, I’d buy it immediately.
Thanks Bieke! 😀
All this is such awesome news, Ashley!! 😀 Congratulations on the wedding; be sure to take a lot of pictures 🙂 And congratulations on Book Host as well!! I’m sure it’ll kick off really well and all the best for it! 😀 And I’m so excited to see your new theme up and running ^^ It’ll look absolutely gorgeous, I’m sure! 😀
Thank you Emily! 😀 And happy blogoversary!!
Congrats on your Book Host launch. I am so excited for you. You are going to get tons of clients in no time. I like the butterfly theme second so I am happy it will be that one.
OMG, Married. I can’t even imagine. So scary but so exciting.
Oooh, congrats in advance! My sister got married before she got married. lol It sounds SO weird saying it like that, but hopefully you know what I mean. She married someone from another country, so it was for legal things which they had to process early or something. So yeah. I’m sooo glad that butterfly theme one! Woot! I love it. 🙂 I mean, no pressure if you decide not to use it or anything, lol…. XD
I do hope you manage to get enough clients 🙂 But I think you will anyways!
Yay I’m glad you’re going with the Girls with Butterflies design! It’s definitely a very different direction from your previous designs but it’s a good change 🙂
CONGRATS!! Very very excited for you 😀 Will be even more excited in July haha.
Super excited about all the changes and will definitely be one of your hosting clients 🙂 Congratulations too – have Fun Monday!! (and I totally think your plan makes perfect sense – Italy will be beautiful and you don’t want to complicate it with translators and court houses)
Ashley, you are teasing me with those lovely themes and the new hosting service. Sadly, I’ll have to make do with wordpress.com and the Oxygen Theme because I don’t think I can convince my parents that spending money on a blog is worth it.
On a side note, congrats on the rapidly approaching wedding.
Ooh, I love the theme you chose! 🙂 I can’t wait to see it active. And congrats! That’s so exciting! 😀
I think a wrap up post is a great idea! I love reading through those for other bloggers and look forward to how you will format yours =) Good luck with putting your new theme together. I’m excited to see the final design come to life!
Congrats on your marriage! Be happy!
Congratulations! Marriage is a big step, but so worth it 🙂
Love your final choice! I do really like the girl with the butterflies design. It’s so adorable. And oh my god, congratulations! I know it isn’t the celebration but still, how exciting! 😀
Omg Ashley I totally want to use your host but I literally just had a breakthrough half an hour ago, and now instead of preparing to take a step further to move to WP I’m actually shutting down the blog 🙁 But you’re going to get enough people in no time!! I can see Book Host being a huge thing, and I also LOVE your designs! They’re so pretty and I would totally buy one 🙂 Congrats again on getting engaged and eep for getting married soon! <33
OMG WHAAAAAT???? 🙁 🙁 🙁 You’re shutting it down?!?!
I know it makes me really sad but I was thinking about it and now that I do two sports (field hockey in the fall and lacrosse in the spring) and I’m planning to try out for the musical next winter, and also with how I’m taking an AP class sophomore year and all honors, I just feel like it’s going to be SO much and recently I’ve just been kind of dispassionate and unmotivated to do much of anything 🙁
Aw 🙁 I understand but it’s so sad!!
Ooh, I think I may switch to Book Host next year, since I’m already paid through February with GoDaddy. 😀
I’d be happy to have you! 😀
I’m happy that you are possibly going for the girl design 😀 Congratulations for Monday, I hope you have a wonderful day! Switching to WordPress is even more tempting now and I bet you’ll get many more customers 🙂
*tempts*! 😀
Thanks Mel!
It’s like we are running in parallel. Same birthdays, getting engaged around the same time….L and I were legally married two days before Christmas but have kept it somewhat hush-hush, since the big shindig is in August in Mexico 🙂
Congratulations!
Also, I love these themes and if they were as robust as TweakMe, I’d consider theme-jumping LOL.
Wow that’s crazy! 😀 Congrats on your marriage!
Yeah I know you like all the customizations options that Tweak Me has. 😀 Unfortunately it’s just not at all feasible for me to incorporate that into multiple themes. Coding for Tweak Me is INSANE and like… multiplies the workload by 10x because I have to test, design, and code for every single combination of settings! Insane!
Thanks!
And I figured. You know me, I am a die-hard TweakMe fan, but those designs are gorgeous!
I just have to say Ashley, my experience with Book Host has been amazing so far! I’m absolutely in love with it and everything that comes with it! Thanks for creating a host dedicated to book blogging convenience!
I’m thrilled to hear that!! 😀
Yes! I love Girl with Butterflies! Although, if that had been one up for grabs as a unique pre-made? I’d have been all over it! Haha
Wishing you all the best for tomorrow! <3
So excited to be moving to Book Host, it’s a fantastic idea: a web hosting site specifically for book bloggers. I can see lots of bloggers signing up, especially if they’re currently with BlueHost. -_-
CONGRATULATIONS! That’s s exciting! Best of luck tomorrow and I hope you have a great day. 🙂
The Girl With Butterflies design is gorgeous, really happy you decided to choose that.
Congrats, again, and happy St. Patrick’s Day. 🙂
Congrats on all of the happenings!!!! I’m hoping to jump on the Book Host bandwagon real soon. 🙂
CONGRATS, ASHLEY! On the launch of Book Host + your marriage! 😀 It must be an exciting time in your life. Wishing you all the best!