Setting up your author website can be a challenge, especially for authors who are not confident with technology.
If you’ve researched setting up a website before, it’s also likely you felt overwhelmed by the thousands of options available.
If you are not technical or feel overwhelmed—don’t worry because I will make this easy for you.
If you get to the end of the next few chapters, and the technology still feels like dipping your hand into a pocket full of spiders, remember the last chapter in the book shows you where you can find techies to do it all for you.
I only have one recommendation for author websites—a self-hosted WordPress site, hosted on a low-cost (but not bargain basement) webhost.
That’s it. See how easy that was?
OK, that needs more explaining.
A self-hosted site gives you complete control over the web server that runs your site. This means you have full administrator access to your registered domain, the hosting account, and the WordPress installation for your website.
The alternative to self-hosted is offered by the likes of Weebly, Wix, Squarespace, Shopify and many others trying to lock you into their platform.
It’s this last point why I recommend that you should never go with a hosted platform—because once you are on a platform you’re locked in, and it can be impossible to get off without rebuilding your site. I’ve gone through this process with at least a dozen clients over the years, and trust me, it’s not something you want to do.
You are an author, and authors are in for the long haul. Hosted platforms come and go. The extra bit of work you need to do to have total control over your author platform will pay for itself multiple times because you won’t need to change platforms and redo everything every few years.
Self-hosting takes more effort to set up, but modern web hosts make setting up a website more straightforward with automatic installation and configuration of website software.
Which brings me to the next point—choosing a webhost.
I’ve worked in IT on and off for 25 years and have used more hosts than I can count.
If you do any research, you will find the only thing more numerous than web hosting companies is opinions on web hosting companies.
This can be confusing if you are not a technical person, so let me make it as simple as I can.
A web host is a computer; similar to the one sitting on your desk. Your website is a program running on this computer. Web hosting companies buy or lease lots of computers so they can run lots of sites. They rent space on the computers to people like you and me so that we can run our websites.
The cost of computers and website support doesn’t vary much across the world, so the price you pay depends on how many other websites the host runs on one computer.
A cheap host will run lots of websites on a single computer. An expensive host will only run a few, or even just one.
So, if you buy a $50 per year hosting account, there is a high chance that the host will install your author website on the same computer as hundreds of others. And what happens when you open too many apps on your computer? That’s right—everything runs slower and sometimes an app crashes (or even the whole computer!).
The cheaper the host, the slower and less reliable it will be. This might not be a problem while your author site has minimal traffic, but as you grow, it can create huge headaches.
What you need is a hosting company that strikes a balance between performance and not breaking the bank. In early 2026, that sweet spots sits around $10 a month. Doesn’t matter the currency because every marketer loves a number under 10.
The caveat here is you can pay less for a great host and a great deal more for a rubbish host. This is where 3rd-party review sites come in handy. Do your research and pick one with good reviews that suits your budget.
While the sheer volume of choices can overwhelm and paralyse you, remember a bad choice of host at the beginning of your author journey is only an inconvenience, not a catastrophe. Why? Because your WordPress site can run free plugins that make moving to another host as simple as backing up your old site and reinstalling on a new host. It takes about ten minute for a simple site.
The WordPress setup works on any host with an automatic installer for the latest version of WordPress. Adding content to WordPress is the same regardless of who is hosting the site, and if your existing website is not WordPress, only the content editor will be different. The content you add to your site is the same.
As for WordPress? I recommend it because it’s everywhere and it is easy to use if you ignore the parts you don’t need. And because it’s everywhere, it also has excellent support and a large community of resources for you to access.
Building Your Author Website
An author website is not complex to build, but there is quite a lot to do, so I have broken the process into three chapters:
- In this chapter, I show you how to create your hosting account and register your domain.
- In Chapter 10, I show you how to install and set up your WordPress site; and
- In Chapter 11, I show you how to add the content to your site.
Please note that the next three chapters are not a WordPress tutorial. I show you how to add what I believe to be the minimum content necessary for an author website, without going into detail on the content blocks and editing tools available in WordPress.
If you want to learn more about WordPress, there is no shortage of free tutorials available online.
This is the only chapter in the book where you need to spend money (assuming you don’t already have a website). You will need a valid debit or credit Visa or Mastercard to buy your domain and get a hosting account.
Register Your Domain
Unfortunately, domain registrars are as numerous as hosting companies. This is another one of those tasks where 3rd-party reviews are your friend. FWIW – I use Cheaper Domains in Australia and NameCheap in the US. I use them for no other reason than they do what I want for a reasonable price. So, don’t take it as a recommendation, more as an excuse not to have to think again after doing your head in searching for a webhost.
Many hosts also offer domain registration, so if you are looking for an easy, one-step setup of both your domain and your hosting account, this is an option you can pursue. I’ve done that with my Australian sites—both domain registrations and hosting are with Cheaper Domains.
Setup a Hosting Account
Whatever host you choose, there are two things you need to do:
- Setup WordPress
- Point your domain name at the WordPress install
Step 1 will be different for every host, but I suggest you pick one that advertises “one-click” installs of WordPress or similar. Every host worth the money you are paying them will have detailed instructions on how to setup WordPress, and lots of reviews stating how easy it was to set up.
Step 2 requires you to copy the nameserver addresses from your hosting account to you domain registrar (assuming you haven’t set up the domain and your website with the same host). This will be slightly different to set up, depending on your host, but the good ones will always give you clear instructions.
Once the nameservers have been copied and saved, you have to wait. The Internet is a global network—you have linked your domain name to your physical web address, but the rest of the Internet doesn’t know that yet.
This is where the Domain Name Service or DNS takes over. The DNS tells the rest of the world you have created a new website. Think of the DNS as your robot messenger that updates everyone’s address book for you automatically.
As you can appreciate, this takes time. You can’t move on to the next stage of setting up your author website until DNS updates most of the world’s Internet address book to include your new site. It can take up to 48 hours, but this is rare. It will take several hours to make any progress, though.
You need to wait at least two hours, although my recommendation is that you come back and complete the next section tomorrow; which makes this the perfect point for you to stop and do some writing.
In the next chapter, we will setup wordpress on your author website.