Shayne Halliday

“Build a website,” they said. “It’ll be easy,” they implied.

To be fair, nobody actually promised me that. I may have invented it because I already had the books, photographs, blurbs, coffee, and what I considered a perfectly reasonable level of determination. Surely that was enough.

It was not.

What I didn’t have was any desire to become an unpaid expert in cPanel, website builders, analytics codes, cookie consent, responsive layouts, legal notices, or mysterious buttons that move beautifully in edit mode and then snap straight back the moment you preview the page.

Fortunately, I had Billy. Billy is the wonderfully patient friend who helped me build this website and translated technical gobbledygook into instructions I could actually follow:

“Click the three little dots.”
“Choose Element.”
“Change that number to 640.”
And, on particularly delicate occasions: “Don’t touch anything yet.”

I genuinely could not have done it without him.

Apparently I Chose the Wrong Website Builder

The adventure began with Crazy Domains and a website builder called Sitejet, which appeared inside my cPanel account. Naturally, I assumed that if a website builder was sitting inside the hosting package I had purchased, I was supposed to use it.

Apparently, this was a bold and reckless assumption.

I spent hours building the site before support explained that Sitejet supposedly wasn’t included in my plan—even though it was right there in my cPanel. They said I should have used a different builder and warned that Sitejet might eventually be removed. This raised what I considered a fairly reasonable question: What happens to the website I have already built?

Several support conversations followed. There was a great deal of “setting the proper expectation,” along with repeated requests to “allow me a few minutes.” Those few minutes had a tendency to reproduce when left unsupervised. At one point, Billy and I decided I had probably been added to a special company list titled: Customers Who Ask Us Real Questions.

Eventually, support assured me that my website would not be removed and that I would continue to have access while the matter was investigated. That was reassuring. Not quite as reassuring as knowing which website builder actually belonged to my hosting plan, but reassuring enough for us to continue.

One Active Visitor

Next came Google Analytics. We had the Measurement ID and knew it had to be entered somewhere on the website—the problem was finding the somewhere.

The first set of instructions told us to look for a Custom Code section. It wasn’t there. The second set told us to click More and open the SEO settings, but there was no obvious More button. We searched menus, clicked icons, inspected screenshots, and opened settings inside settings, discovering menus that appeared to have been designed by people who considered labels an unnecessary luxury.

At some point, I made a triple espresso. This did not make the correct menu appear, but it did allow me to search for it much faster.

Eventually, we used Sitejet’s own Help section and found the proper route to the global SEO settings. There, quietly waiting as though it had been perfectly obvious all along, was the Google Analytics field. We entered the code and published the website. Then we had to publish it again, because even the Publish button apparently wanted a sequel.

A few minutes later, Google Analytics reported one active visitor from Australia.

That visitor was me. I have never been so delighted to discover that a website was tracking my movements.

Privacy Cookies and Scammers

Installing Google Analytics created the next adventure: privacy and cookie consent. This meant updating the Privacy Policy, correcting the Legal Notice, and making sure visitors could choose whether analytics cookies were loaded.

It also meant removing my phone number from the website. There was absolutely no reason to publish my personal number online unless I wanted to spend my days discussing suspicious parcels, unpaid tolls, and miraculous investment opportunities with scammers. The phone number disappeared, and my post office box went in its place.

We configured the cookie notice, opened the website in a private browser window, and rejected analytics cookies. Google Analytics remained silent. Then we reopened the website, accepted analytics cookies, and checked again.

One active visitor appeared. It worked!

We may have stared at the screen in disbelief for a moment. By then, a feature working exactly as intended felt less like ordinary technology and more like witnessing a small miracle.

The Button That Refused to Move

Once the technical and legal foundations were sorted, we turned our attention to making the homepage look like it belonged to an author rather than someone who had recently lost a fight with a template.

My photograph and biography moved directly below the main banner so readers could meet me before reaching the books, and my original heading became the much friendlier: “Hi! I’m Shayne.” We tidied the Hot Messy Series section, replaced long naked Amazon links with proper buttons, and connected the Get My Free Chapter button to the signup form.

That final button developed a personality of its own. I wanted it slightly lower and farther to the right so it wouldn’t compete with my name and tagline. In edit mode, it moved beautifully. In preview mode, it marched straight back to where it had started.

We adjusted margins. Nothing.
We tried transform settings. Nothing.
We moved the box surrounding the button. Still nothing.
We asked it politely. The button remained unmoved, both literally and emotionally.

Eventually, after enough experimentation with offsets, alignment, positioning, and several settings whose purpose remains known only to Sitejet, we persuaded it to stay where it belonged. We softened its color and rounded its corners. It now sits calmly on the banner as though it has never caused trouble in its life.

That is the secret ambition of every difficult website element: to look completely innocent after consuming several hours of your life.

Every Screen Had an Opinion

A website that looks good on a laptop does not necessarily look good on a tablet. A website that looks good on a tablet may take one look at a phone and collapse like a deck chair.

We tested every section on laptops, tablets, and phones. Each screen size had its own opinion about where my photograph should appear, how wide the text should be, and whether a heading belonged on one line, two lines, or somewhere in the next suburb. At one stage, my photograph appeared beneath my biography on a phone, beside it on a laptop, and in what seemed to be a separate postal district on a tablet.

There was more adjusting. Widths changed, elements were reordered, text grew larger, and spaces opened and closed. We checked previews, changed percentages, and learned that sometimes a setting exists—you simply have to click three other things before Sitejet agrees to show it to you.

Eventually, my photograph appeared before the biography on smaller screens and beside it on larger ones. The books followed the introduction, the signup section followed the books, buttons behaved like buttons, and links went where they were supposed to go.

It was beginning to look intentional.

Supervised by Cookie

Much of this work happened under the supervision of Cookie, my Jack Russell. Cookie is not especially interested in website design, but he holds very strong views about bedtime.

When Cookie decides it is time for bed, Wayne and I are expected to go immediately. He does not recognize website deadlines, publishing errors, or unfinished privacy policies as legitimate exemptions. One night, while Billy and I were still wrestling with the site, Cookie announced that the working day was over.

Luckily, I have a portable laptop desk. Cookie got his way, Wayne went to bed, and I continued working without violating household regulations. Everybody won—although Cookie would argue that he won most.

Then the Blog Disappeared

After all that, I decided the website needed a blog. This seemed reasonable. Authors write things. Blogs contain things authors write. Even I could see the natural connection.

We created the Blog page, added this very post, chose a featured image, assigned the category, and checked the preview. Everything worked. Then we published it.

The live Blog page was blank.

Not slightly wrong. Not untidy. Blank. The post existed in the editor and appeared perfectly in preview, but the live website behaved as though the entire thing had wandered off during publication.

We checked links, page settings, categories, publishing options, and every suspicious little icon we could find. We republished. We updated PHP. We republished again, because by then repeating an unsuccessful action had become part of the official process.

Technical Support Handball

Sitejet investigated and concluded that because the Blog worked in preview but failed only on the live site, the problem was probably in the cPanel or server environment—an area they could not access. Crazy Domains, meanwhile, had already become very familiar with me.

What followed was technical support handball: the problem traveled freely while the customer remained perfectly stationary.

There were ticket numbers, reference numbers, chat transcripts, waiting queues, and enough requests to “please allow me more time” to suggest that time itself had become the company’s primary product. No visit to support was complete without first serving the mandatory sentence in the waiting room.

Eventually, a supervisor confirmed that Sitejet should never have been enabled in my cPanel. It had appeared because of a glitch. Crazy Domains had overlooked the problem, nobody had warned me not to use it, and there was no way to migrate the website into the builder I was supposedly meant to have used.

The proposed solution was simple: rebuild the entire website manually.

Simple for whom remained unclear.

I Built Another Website Eventually

At that point, Billy and I made a decision. If I had to rebuild the website anyway, I was not rebuilding it inside another system that had already introduced itself by causing an administrative identity crisis. We moved to WordPress.com.

So here we are again: choosing templates, arranging blocks, rebuilding pages, setting menus, checking mobile layouts, and being warned about premium styles with the persistence of someone trying to sell extended warranty coverage at a checkout.

The second build has still involved tiny icons, disappearing controls, and moments when WordPress has confidently shown us a page we were not trying to edit. But this time the structure makes sense. The Home page is taking shape. The Books page has covers. The About the Author page contains my actual biography rather than helpful sample text explaining what an About page is. And the Blog page—most importantly—has somewhere for this story to live.

We have not connected the domain or launched the new site yet. That will happen only when everything is ready. I have learned at least one thing from this experience: never press the important button merely because it is large, blue, and appears enthusiastic.

Billy Deserves a Medal

Through every confusing menu, disappearing setting, support conversation, publishing error, and complete website rebuild, Billy remained calm. He kept notes, remembered what we had already tried, and guided me one click at a time.

When the instructions didn’t match what was actually on my screen, he helped me find another way. When I accidentally moved something into the wrong section, he helped me move it back. When the whole project became completely ridiculous, he laughed with me instead of allowing me to throw the laptop through Big Bob’s window. That may be the most valuable technical skill of all.

This website was built—and then built again—with persistence, caffeine, screenshots, sarcasm, and an unreasonable number of tiny icons. But it was also built with friendship.

Billy, thank you. I truly couldn’t have done it without you.

And to everyone reading this: welcome to my new website! Have a look around, meet the Hot Messy books, and come back to the blog occasionally. If nothing else, there will always be another mess worth laughing about.