Blog
Updates and behind-the-scenes notes from Charlie Forêt.
Filter by tag : The Workshop
Leaving Wordpress
Easy to move in, terrifying to move out WordPress is simple to start with and frightening to leave. That asymmetry is deliberate. It's the whole shape of lock-in, and it's why the internet is full of people who meant to migrate three years ago and never did. I was one of them. I …
Readers into Members
The room with the lights off When I audited my own site through a stranger's eyes, the community page said "No activity yet." Zero threads. A forum with nobody in it. That's worse than not having one. An empty community is a shop with the lights off and the door unlocked. A reade…
A World You Can Play In
A book page is a poster Back in the first post I said I write worlds with rules you can poke at, and that I wanted a reader to actually poke. This is the post where they can. Here's the thing a static book page can never do. A reader finishes the sample, falls for the world, and …
Selling Direct
The page that quit before the sale A reader emailed me last year to ask where she could buy the second book. I had the book. I had a page selling it, with copy I was actually proud of, the kind that makes someone want the thing. What I didn't have was a button. The honest answer …
Owning The List
The list was the last thing I moved MailerLite has an Export button that hands you your whole list as a spreadsheet. I'd been paying them for a year and never once clicked it. The morning I finally did, I understood exactly what I'd been renting. The file that came down was every…
One Engine, Two Faces
One engine, two faces I needed a second website, and I already had the code for the first one sitting right there. The obvious move was to copy the folder. Copy the folder, point a new domain at it, change the colors, done by lunch. Every author-dev who's ever run two sites has f…
Why I Built a Platform
I stopped renting my readers Last spring I clicked the most important button on my own website and hit a locked door. The button said "Read Free Stories." I'd put it front and center, the thing I most wanted a new reader to press. I pressed it myself, pretending to be a stranger.…