I have three websites.
Or rather I am building three websites.
One is my life coaching website – notyouraveragelife.coach
One is my postgraduate portfolio websites – ibuiltmyown.education
And one is my personal website that you are currently looking at – thepetelesstravelled (and at the time writing it is still not finished).
My three sites
It has been my plan to build these websites for quite some time. I conceived of all three as part of my postgraduate studies when I was figuring out what I was going to do once I had concluded my studies.
I knew I was going to house my postgraduate studies on one, because I built my own degree using online courses and self-directed assignments. Not only did I realise that the best way to showcase the nature and breadth of my postgraduate majors was to house them on easily assessable website, but it is also my plan to turn this site into a passive income stream that will provide guides and resources for anyone who wants to build their own education.
My life coaching website was conceived because I started life coaching as part of my postgraduate studies and I knew that if I was serious about becoming a professional life coach then I needed a professional website to promote my life coaching service.
Finally, my personal website came about because… well, I had always wanted a personal website. In my mind a personal website is a form of simplification. It is a handy tool that you can use to promote yourself, host content relevant to yourself and is something you can change at any time.
Now If you’re asking yourself why I just didn’t make one website that hosts my personal profile, my life coaching service and my postgraduate portfolio it is because I already did. A few years ago, using a free WordPress theme, I built a website – peterobrien.me – that was my personal profile and started to host the contents of my postgraduate portfolio.
The problem with peterobrien.me was that it was too complicated. The website was overflowing with information, mainly because of the postgraduate portfolio content I had put on there.
To be clear, my postgraduate portfolio is MASSIVE, it is made up of over 700 courses and various practical assignments and creative projects.
And collected together all on one site, it was making my personal profile disappear into the woodwork.
So with peterobrien.me, it basically got to the point where I was saying to myself, “This would work so much better as two websites.”
And bear in mind, this was before I had even started my life coaching, so adding my life coaching service on peterobrien.me would only have diversified the mess even further.
Plus don’t even get me started on the name, peterobrien.me, yes it is my name, but it is also a problematic name. Most people spell my surname O’Brien with an a and you’ll notice that it also has an apostrophe which quite often causes problems, especially with digital forms that don’t always like it. Basically, it got to the point where I began to think that people would have a hard time getting to my website if I just don’t them to type my name with .me on the end.
And if something raises that many problems, you better of rethinking your approach. Hence why my personal website is now called thepetelesstravelled.com. Even though the world travelled can be slightly problematic because you have the American spelling that only has one L whereas the English spelling as two.
But, meh, if my SEO is strong, google can fin my site for anyone who is interested.
However, this was the reason for my building of three distinct websites.
But why has the building of them proven to be such a long and trying process?
The grinding of the teeth
I was grinding my teeth in my sleep a few months ago, I have already written a blog post about it, but one of the major reasons why I was grinding is because I had allowed other problems and demands in my life to get in the way of building my sites… and so I wasn’t building my sites and it was pissing me off!
But as soon as I got back to building my sites – my real priority – I stopped the grinding.
And then I encountered some more problems that have complicated the whole website building process…
Really, there are four problems I have been struggling with while building my sites.
- I have been building my websites from the ground up. I have not been building them from the code up, but I have been building them via the self hosted route… and this has meant I have had to tackle my way through a few technical problems. For instance, it took me a full day to successfully install the theme package for my life coaching website!
- I have been writing the actual content that goes on each site while I have been building the actual site. Back in the autumn of 2018, I did attempt to get the content of all the websites written in draft form before I started the actual building of each site. But I find it easier to write the content on the websites while I am building them. It allows to produce better material that is more relevant and specifically representative of each sites brand identity, if I produce it as part of the building of the infrastructure, if that makes sense? It’s a longer way of doing it, because something I write on the sites quite often changes the layout or design of the sites and the way I am laying out the sites can also cause me to change the content I have already placed there. But overall, the results I m producing are much more satisfying and effective.
- As a result of my in-depth academic studies I had acquired a very strong, logical and technical style of writing, that you are probably picking up in the prose I have written here. But with this post, screw it! I am in a hurry and I don’t expect many people to read this post anyway. This is just more of an unload for me that is proving to be very therapeutic even as I write. The problem with this style of this writing is that it is not very engaging, because it overloads you with information and if you have a short attention span like most people, it tends to put people to sleep. And I did not need this style of writing on my sites. My sites exist to promote and sell myself and the services I offer. Therefore, my sites need to be written in a copywriting style… which has taken and is still taking me a while to get into the full swing of writing in. Ultimately, I have had to rewrite the contents of each of my sites many times over, as I continue to do even now…
- I have had a lack of time due to the necessity to earn money to pay for the various elements – hosting, themes, addons, security certificates, design elements – that each of my sites need. Plus, I have to earn money to live and survive. Finally, building websites on your own from the self-hosted ground up is incredibly time consuming which means that even when I do have time to work on my websites, I can only get so much done. There moving at a snail’s pace, but slowly and surely they are getting there.
- I have been building the three sites simultaneously. In the same way that I have found producing content for the sites while actually building the sites to be more effective in the quality of results that I produce, the same is true of building each site alongside the other. Why each website is meant to have its own distinct branded identity, they are also interrelated and will have elements on each that will content to the others. For instance, my personal website, this website, will eventually have a main page that showcases my main focuses, two of which will be my life coaching service and postgraduate portfolio and there will also be links to each of these websites. Likewise, as part of my life coaching service, I am going to offer a coaching service specific to helping offers build their own education, which is a service that will be featured on my postgraduate portfolio website. The problem again though is that when I change something on one website, it can affect elements of the other sites, which is a factor that is making the overall process more time-consuming.
But while these are problems and they have been making the overall process of building my websites that much harder to complete, I don’t mind.
I don’t mind how complicated the process has become because
I am still getting my websites built… slower than I had initially expected, but they are gradually coming together.
The overall quality and cohesiveness of each website and of my overall career brand ecosystem, of which each site forms three integral components (my career brand ecosystem is the entirety of my self-directed career, watch this space) has benefitted massively.
Finally, I don’t mind how complicated the process has become because I am learning!
I am learning how to build beautifully design and effectively branded websites from the self-hosted ground up. The ability to do this is a key competency of my career brand ecosystem, because the point of my career brand ecosystem, or CBE portfolio, is to possess a career mindset and confidence that allows me to continually adapt and readapt to the changing circumstances of the global economy and professional landscape.
The point of my CBE portfolio is to be in a position where I can create my own opportunities… and the ability to build beautifully designed and effectively branded self-hosted websites from the ground up is a key and crucial entrepreneurial skill to possess in today’s demanding world.
So I’m happy with the process and how it has panned out. I would rather it had not and would not take this long, but if it leads to the first class results I need and demand, then I am happy to go with its educating flow.
That is not the problem.
The problem is other people.
The real bitch of the problem
“Why’s it taking so long?”
I keep getting asked this question whenever I tell them about how my websites are going and no matter how much I explain to them what I have already written in this post…
They.
Just.
Don’t.
Get.
It.
!
And its really irritating!
I get that not everyone builds websites and I get that some people have built their own websites, either on a free platform like wordpress.com or have hired someone else to build their sites for them – both vastly simpler means of knocking a website together – but unless you have done what I have done and have built three interrelated websites on a self-hosted platform from the ground up, don’t start demanding to know why it is taking so long!
Because you don’t know!
You don’t.
So shut up.
Stop bothering me.
And let me get on with it.
Yeah, there was no real point to this post. It was just more of a blog rant.