Welcome to the new improved Stubborn Pixel Studios
After finishing the latest draft of my novel, The Butterfly Princess, I gave it to several people to critique. While waiting for their notes, I decided it was finally time to turn my attention to the nuclear bomb testing site that was my website. God, it was awful. I had purchased a WordPress theme that looked great, but in my inexperienced hands, looked at it’s best, boring. The problem was I didn’t delve into educating myself on the finer points of WordPress or the theme itself. I just set it and left it. I packed it with social widgets to the point it resembled a hoarder’s apartment- yikes.
The other problem was it didn’t have a Shop to sell my art or children’s book. I used links to direct people to my Etsy Shop or my Space Nicks website, but again populating the site with oversized banners to head to Etsy only added to the ‘hoarder’s feel’ I created- double yikes!
Bigger. Better. And now with more protein!
This time around I’ve taken a bit of time to educate myself on WordPress and what it can offer. I picked a theme that inspired me. It also may be to my benefit that it turned out to include outdated files (shame, shame, Bluxart), which forced me to learn more than I expected necessarily as I worked my way through a theme which wasn’t working as advertised. Dealing with a theme’s author that lives halfway around the world and only responds to your support tickets at 3:30 am is just another slice of heaven that only makes you stronger.
I created the new stubbornpixel.com on a localhost using Server Press’s Desktop Server. It’s great, and they’re support team are very helpful but expect to pay at least $80 for that help. I thought I could get by with their free version but it’s as limited as the name implies. Designers with more experience might be able to easily navigate about the free version’s limitations, but not me. I’m too much of a newbie in this field, and with the issues, I faced with my WordPress theme’s outdated WooCommerce files, it was too much to think about. I happily upgraded from the free Desktop Server Limited license to the Premium license.
The biggest surprise was the amount of work it takes to set up a WooCommerce Shop page. So many details- Privacy Pages, Terms, Paypal, Square, etc. Just cataloging my ‘products’ took weeks, and I only have half the amount I have on Etsy here!
The goal is to keep everything fresh. Create content people will want to see and share. Speaking of which…
Fresh Produce will be a place to view my favorite animations and stories, from myself and other artists I admire.
The biggest difference besides being MUCH easier on the eye is that my new site has a store. Now I can sell my art and children’s book here. I’ll keep my Etsy Store too but I wanted to create a place where I can better promote all my work.
Mitigating Circumstances
And that’s where my blog comes in.
Yes, I know I suck at this, I mean writing about myself and self-promotion, but this time I’m going to really give it my all… really.
Okay, so let’s get started…