There are two reasons for a sharp indie author (such as myself) to setup his or her own website with all the effort that entails. One is to keep up with the rapidly changing internet world, making changes when desired instead of waiting on some support person.

The other is being cheap. And as my husband will assure you, I’m nothing if not cheap.

There was a day, long ago, when I actually worked for IBM. But it was back when a laptop referred to the family cat. And if there’s one thing I’ve learned, it’s that technology evolves rapidly, in the manner of bathroom mold.

WordPress is my chosen medium to express myself. It’s a great deal of fun to browse gorgeous themes, finding the perfect match.

Then the fun stops, and the work begins.

These themes often lead you through the ease of customizing, occasionally promising nirvana if you buy their ‘professional’ upgrade. None of those upgrades have yet tempted me to do so.

Pitfalls exist, of course. Pitfalls such as spending thirty hours trying to match a favorite shade of pigeon egg blue, or being stubborn on a rarely used font instead of accepting the theme standard. But those are easily avoided if one is disciplined. Just set hard limits coinciding with bathroom breaks.

After all my work, however, I gradually discovered I’d missed something.

A key to success, I’ve been told, is to grow your email subscribers. Being somewhat dazzled at the prospect of people actually signing up for such a thing, I’d spent a great deal of time incorporating MailChimp into my website. When my husband tested it (I refused to feed him until he did so), everything seemed to be working.

Yet my web host company keeps sending me ‘new subscriber’ messages, showing me new email addresses that somehow haven’t made it to my MailChimp list. There’s a ghost in the machine – or a hole in my code. Either way, it’s scary.

At the moment my workaround is manually adding the names. That’s really not optimum, particularly when I find myself pondering the question, can N8theGr8razor@spam.com really be a legitimate subscriber?

Eventually I hope to find a tech guru on Fiverr. I haven’t found one quite yet, but I’m sure I will. And — just F.Y.I. – having already talked to a few, there’s a good rule of thumb I’ll share.

Anyone who can properly spell ‘Tech Savvy’, isn’t.