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How To Duplicate A Post

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When you’re repeatedly posting the same things – like a new release post or a coming soon or something else that’s very standard – you might want to save yourself some work in formatting and just… duplicate the post.

This is a surprisingly easy thing to do in modern WordPress, and I’m going to show you two ways to do so. One way uses a duplication plugin and the other uses the native block functionality in WordPress.

First, using a plugin.

Duplicating A Post With A Plugin

There are lots of plugins out there in the WordPress repository, but when it comes to duplicating a plugin, there is one that makes it all effortless while the remaining utterly behind the scenes. . No settings, no options – just does what it says it does. This is the Post Duplicator plugin by Metaphor Creations. It’s free, simple, and works very well.

To use it, add it to your website via the Plugins function in your website and activate the plugin. Once that’s done, go to the Posts->All Posts section of your website’s dashboard. At that screen, you’ll see all of your existing blog posts. Go to the one you want to duplicate and hover your cursor over the title. This brings up some options and will look like the screenshot below.

Click on the “Duplicate Post” option, highlighted in the image, and voila! The post will be duplicated.

From there, go to the post and edit it to make changes to reflect what you want the new post to be.

Save and publish when ready. Easy Peasy.

Copy All Blocks

When WordPress went to a block based editor, it opened up the door to manipulate content in ways that it never could have before. One of those ways is to “Copy All Blocks” which is a very useful function and makes it very easy to duplicate a post without a plugin very quickly and very easily.

To do this, go to a Post or Page you want to duplicate and click to “Edit” that post so you can see it in the post editor, much like the screenshot below.

Once in the editor of the content you want to duplicate, you can click the “Three Dot” edit menu in the top right corner of the screen and then select the “Copy All Blocks” option. This will copy everything that exists in the Page or Post.

You can then go to click on “New” at the top of the screen and select the type of content you want to create (eg a New Post) and then, in that editor screen, simply “Paste” the blocks you just copied. Once done, you’ll see it duplicated the content perfectly.

This is actually my preferred method to duplicate content. Works perfectly every time.

Special Bonus: Patterns

Another function of the block editor is the option to create a pattern that can be reused. This comes in very handy when you want to create content that has the same layout, but you don’t want to keep editing and writing over the duplicated content. You just want the layout, giving you the ability to free in all of the rest.

You do that by going to Post->Add New Post and open up a fresh editing screen.

In the post editor, you’ll see the little black box with a plus in it. That is the insert function of blocks and patterns. Clicking on that opens up the block modal that lets you find the block or pattern you’re looking for. Since there are usually dozens of such items in your website, I find it easier and faster to use the search function to find what you’re looking for.

In this example, shown above, I searched for the “author interview” pattern – and it is dynamic search, so you don’t even have to type the whole term in to find what you want.

Once you see the block or pattern you want to use, just click on it.

As you can see, once the pattern is clicked it will be inserted right into the post and you can just edit it as you need to from there. It even gives you a nice little notification to let you know the action it took.

Simple, effective, repeatable.

I use this function a lot when for adding new book pages to websites. I build that pattern when designing the site and then apply it each time a new book is added. Works really, really well.

Wrap Up

And that’s it – this little How To is a short and sweet one that I hope you find useful

Email For Authors

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I have spent a lot of time on author email, lately.

Like, A LOT.

In fact, author email has been the most worked item for ModFarm Support over the last 6 months. In reflecting on this, this stems from a combination of reasons, and, even more so, a combination of misconceptions.

Resulting from all of this, I’ve put together my recommendations for Author Email: what works best, what to do, and how to do it.

Ready? Let’s do this!

The Search For Branded Email

Nearly 100% of the author email problems I’ve encountered center around branded emails.

A branded email is something that looks like name@authorname.com. Everyone wants these as they feel it’s important for branding. However, most services these days charge for this, anywhere from $4/mo to $22/mo depending on what the author wants. And this is where the problem arises, as most authors don’t want to pay for this, they look to all kinds of ways to not – from using host provided webmail to signing up for bargain basement services.

As a service provider, I try and help authors with what they need – they say they want branded email, I do my best to help them. Which, on my end, usually means adding the required DNS records to their domains.

But, I’ve begun to reconsider this. I’ve begun to think that maybe that’s not helping. Maybe that’s making things worse.

I now think that the best way to help authors with their email needs is not to simply enter in the DNS records they send me. Perhaps, instead, the best thing I can do is revisit the assumptions and provide a better path for not only branded email, but for their entire email strategy.

One that’s safer, more effective, more efficient, and, almost always, completely free.

First, A Little About Email

Email is old tech. It is, arguably, the original framework of the internet. When a certain presidential candidate was saying he invented the internet, he was meaning modern email – not the world wide web (and he was incorrect anyway – just sayin’).

The original internet was created as an information messaging backbone for communicating after the world had gone to hell. It was devised as a way for universities and government to communicate and share necessary information for survival of some pretty bad scenarios. This groundbreaking solution was email. The first of which was sent in 1971 over the original ARPANET.

Bottom line: It’s old. As old as the web can get.

The good news is that means email is incredibly reliable – it works and works and works. As far as communication backbones go, it’s practically bulletproof.

The bad news is it’s very old. And, like many old things (and people), it’s crotchety, particular, and not overly flexible. Basically, it is what it is and it ain’t going to change.

It’s governed by a particular DNS record type called MX (Mail Exchange). Domains only get one MX record. I’m going to say that again louder: You only get ONE MX record.

Because email is so old and basic, as the web (and its predators) expanded, more tools were brought into play to ensure an email was real. This is where things like SPF, DKIM, and Domain Verification come into play. Also, as email needs expanded (images along with text, mass delivery, tracking codes, etc), services were created to manage, filter, and protect people from malicious email. And then to report about said malicious email. And then to report on the reporting of said emails (ie DMARC).

All of these are governed by various DNS records at the domain level – TXT and CNAME records are the usual means for those. So, to verify a domain, an email provider may want you to add a TXT record with some code to verify the domain, and then a few CNAME records to provide DKIM authentication, and maybe another TXT record for SPF authentication. And, then yet another TXT record for DMARC authentication.

However, even this wasn’t enough. Google, as part of its groundbreaking Gmail service, put scanning tools in place to automatically understand, categorize, filter, and profit off of email. That’s why you have Primary, Promotion, and Social email inboxes. Those tools, over the years, got a little more refined, adopted a little AI, and got more aggressive against spammers – which not only annoy users, but also compete against Google’s Gmail based advertising systems.

Email is old but, as you can see and experience, over the last 50+ years it has had systems upon systems layered on top of it.

Now, back to how email can be made easier for everyone…

Author Email the ModFarm Way

Authors have several requirements for their email, and they’re similar to any other business.

  1. It needs to work and be hassle free
  2. Easy to use and set up
  3. Branded emails for marketing purposes
  4. Branded emails for Newsletter sending purposes
  5. Not trip any email spam/filtering services
  6. Cheap or free

To these I would also add the following:

  1. Convenient to use
  2. Hosting independent
  3. Built in housekeeping/organization

When I say “convenient to use” what I mean is its easily accessible to any device at any time – usually through an app.

“Hosting independent” means you should be able to migrate your website to new hosting services without complicated export/import procedures or outright loss of your email data.

And “housekeeping/organization” means that the email process you choose should make your life and business more organized and efficient and not less. You shouldn’t have to work very hard to check your email.

Given all this, how to best go about it? How can authors set up their email to accomplish ALL of these goals?

Well, we’ve figured that out. A way to – no joke, no bullshit – leverage email and its various systems to achieve ALL email objectives, including keeping it free.

We start by throwing out your assumptions.

What You Actually Need vs What You Think You Need

The usual request for email support comes in as something very similar to this: “Mail Service X requires I have a branded email address to send my newsletters. Give me branded email.“

To this, I give an answer similar to: “Do you want full email or forwarded email? Full email requires an email client and forwarded email we just connect a fake branded email to your current email.“

Authors, almost without fail, request “full email.” And, I realize this is largely my fault as when phrased as it is above, full email seems like the better option.

It isn’t. At all.

That sounds cryptic, I know. The reason I say this is that full email is more complicated to set up, requires more infrastructure, is less flexible, is less expandable, and, generally costs more.

For most authors, it would have very little benefit over alternatives – and can even be detrimental in most cases.

Remember, you only really need branded email for sending newsletters. That’s what you NEED it for. It’s also really easy to have on a business card or to use at cons and personal meets and stuff like that. Anything beyond that is just gravy.

The key here is to stay focused on what you need, not what you think you need to do to go about getting it. Let the actual requirements drive the solution instead of the perceived solution dictating your actions.

To that end, I recommend adopting a Core Email Address with a major provider (Gmail, Outlook, or Proton) and then use Forwarding Email Addresses to provide the necessary branding.

How would that work? I’ll make up a hypothetical example and walk you through it.

Set Yourself Up For Success

The basic idea is to have a single Core Email Address and then funnel things to it.

To do this, the first thing you’ll do is set up a free Gmail account that looks something like this: authorname@gmail.com

Now, that part’s done. This email address can both send and receive, which is a majority of your functionality. You now have a working email address that has your author name and/or pen name or sobriquet in it. It is recognizable as you. This is your Core Email Address.

Next, we add in the branding part. This is done by creating a Forwarding Email Address. You would do this from your site’s hosting. The primary purpose of this first forwarded email is to have a branded email address that can be used as a sending address for your Newsletter. This will use up your one allotted MX record, but it allows you to make an infinite number of email addresses.

To create this, you would go to your website host and follow the directions for a Forwarded Email Address. That email would look something like this: me@authorname.com and it would be forwarded to authorname@gmail.com which means anything send to me@authorname.com will automatically, through the magic of DNS records and internet protocols, be delivered to authorname@gmail.com

And that is done. You have a functional email (authorname@gmail.com) and a branded email (me@authorname.com). You can now do the things you absolutely need to do. And, you still only have one single email account to manage. Everything is going to the Core Email Address. There are no other inboxes or accounts. It’s all in one place.

To validate this new branded sending email for your Newsletter service, you would follow your newsletter’s validation directions and enter the DNS records they specify into your website’s DNS records. This will most likely be a TXT record for SPF and multiple CNAME records for DKIM. If you don’t already have one, you’ll also need to enter a TXT record for DMARC. Your newsletter service will have directions for all of this.

Easy Expansion

At this point, we can talk about scaling.

For example, you might want to have, for marketing purposes, several other branded emails. contact@authorname.com for example. Maybe you have had some success and want to bring on an assistant. Maybe you have an expediter for your online store and you want them copied in. Maybe a marketing partner. There are dozens of reasons to expand your branded email.

And, it’s very easy to do with forwarding email. Just go create more Forwarding Email Addresses. Have contact@authorname.com go to your assistant’s email at yourassistant@gmail.com. Create sales@authorname.com go to your expediter at yourexpediter@gmail.com.

Once created, anytime an email is sent to those email addresses, it goes straight to your team’s respective emails. No muss, no fuss.

It is infinitely expandable. Most hosts have no limit to forwarding emails – I know we at ModFarm don’t. You can build up and scale as large as you need to. For free.

Resist Complication and Embrace Simplicity

At this point is where authors bring in complications. “How can I send an email as me@authorname.com?” is a common question.

Normally, I provide links on how to create alias emails via whatever service they are using and things break down in a hurry.

So, I’m not going to do that here. Instead, I’m going to ask a very simple question: Why do you want to do that?

Seriously. Why do you feel this is important? Do you think your readers care what the email address is? I’ve known a lot of very successful authors who have communicated for years and years with their clients, publishers, con personnel, publicists, and everyone else in their professional sphere with a simple Gmail address: authorname@gmail.com.

Do you really think your assistant needs branded email? Your expediter? Anyone?

The answer is very simple: no, they do not. Nor do you.

If you want to do that, go ahead. It’s totally fine. Spend $22/mo for maxxed out Google Workspace if you want to – it’s totally up to you. But that is a personal choice and has no bearing, whatsoever, with communicating with your readers or your team or anyone else in your professional life.

I recommend, most strongly, that authors look to their actual needs when making professional decisions.

By using a Core Email Address and leveraging Forwarding Email Addresses, you are setting yourself up for a very long term and extremely easy communications strategy that will scale as you grow and will remain flexible as your team changes.

For example, if contact@authorname.com is forwarded to your assistant at assistant@gmail.com and two years from now your assistant changes careers and you get a new assistant – you don’t need to add a new team member to WorkSpace, pay an extra seat fee, and change everything you have to newcontact@authorname.com. All you have to do is change the destination of the Forwarding Email Address to the new assistant’s email at newassistant@gmail.com. Everything else remains the same. No changes to websites, business cards, online forms, or anything else. It’s smooth and immediate and completely free.

Using An Alias

Even after the above, there will be those who just can’t let it go and their OCD will drive them crazy if they can’t send an email as me@authorname.com.

I get it. I do. And, so do the major email providers.

They do this by creating an Alias. This is just what it sounds like – it substitutes an external email address in the header block of your primary email address. Or to put it in the lingo of this post, it gives you the option of making email sent from authorname@gmail.com look like it was sent by me@authorname.com.

This gives the appearance of full branded email without any of the cost or headaches of having full branded email.

There is a downside, though. It can be complicated to set up.

Here is Gmail’s directions on creating an Alias. And here is Gmail’s directions on using that Alias as the sending address. The other major providers have similar directions for creating and using an Alias email address.

Do you need to do this? No, you do not. You do not need to have an Alias or any kind of sending power to use your Forwarding Email Address to send emails via your Newsletter Service. You do not need an Alias to do anything. However, if you want to create one and use it as a sending address, there are ways to do so.

But, I caution you, setting up an Alias gets surprisingly complicated and the major tech companies are not known for their customer service. I repeat: an Alias is absolutely NOT necessary.

Getting Organized

Most email providers allow for smart folders. These are folders set up with rules on what to do with incoming email.

For example, anything sent from sales@authorname.com could be automatically sent to a “Website Sales” folder in your Core Email Address’ Inbox.

Same for any other kind of incoming email. contact@authorname.com could go to a Smart Folder for that purpose.

The idea here is to use the inherent means of the major email providers to simplify and organize your business. To keep everything neat, tidy, and easy to find.

Forwarding emails also allow you to have more control over your digital destiny. For example, you are hosting your website with Dreamhost and you are unhappy with them and want to switch to another hosting company. But, your branded email is via Dreamhost’s webmail that was so nicely included in the hosting package. If you change hosts, you lose access to this email, and migrating from webmail is an absolute mess. You’re effectively trapped – which is why they provided that sucky free webmail.

But, if you have a Core Email Address with a major provider, you can change hosts at any time. Just change. Once you get there, add the same forwarding addresses you had at the previous host and everything will proceed as if nothing had ever happened at all. No one would know anything had changed and your emails would be perfectly preserved.

Wrapping Up

As you can probably see by now, the purpose of all of this is to use the email systems to empower yourself as an author and a businessperson.

If you set it up properly, you can reduce stress, cost, and give yourself more freedom and capability. You can effortlessly expand your team, organize your correspondence, and generally make life a lot easier for yourself.

Email does not have to be complicated. Stick to what you need and you’ll be better off than you think.

Changes To ModFarm Support

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Just as we’ve had to take a look at Hosting and eCommerce, we need to take a similarly hard look at Support and make come changes to bring our support policy to a sustainable and balanced position.

As always, our purpose is to provide the best, most affordable, and most effective solutions to our authors. Looking at how support has been requested and used over the last two years, we feel this is the best way to meet everyone’s needs.

First, some quick history…

The other original intent for ModFarm was to make it fully supported. Original members signed up for two subscriptions: $25/mo for hosting and $25/mo for support. I really had no idea what support would cost, to be honest, but my thought process was if everyone signed up for it then even larger jobs would even out in the long run. Not everyone needs support all the time. Kind of like insurance, I guess. We wanted every site to be current and active, and ThirdScribe had taught us that authors were, by and large, not that willing to keep their sites updated with their latest release – a universal support subscription fee seemed to address that and all were happy.

Eventually, budgets got a little tighter and more and more clients asked to be DIY or, at the least, a’la carte. We tried it on an experimental basis – and it worked out OK. There were some invoicing issues we struggled with at the beginning, but those were resolved and now it’s working pretty smoothly. Considering we now have significantly more ala Carte Support vs Concierge Support, I’d say it’s become the new standard.

Which brings us to today.

One thing we didn’t account for with ala Carte Support was the degrading balance between DIY users, Support Users, and the cost deficit that created. Whether we want to call it cost distribution, cost sharing, or digital socialism, the reality is the support pricing was based on everyone paying for support – and now only one third of users do. But, that one third, largely, uses 90% of all support. And, in reality, it is one third of that one third.

Once you step back and look at it, it becomes pretty obvious that this can’t continue long term.

As a result, the Modfarm Support Policy is getting updated to account for the actual reality of what our members need in terms of support for their websites.

Book and product entry has gotten much more involved than the early days. Not only are page designs more complex, requiring more image prep work, but linking has become much more dynamic and, with preorders, audiobooks, and online stores, a book page often requires multiple revisions.

To compensate for that, just as we have with hosting, we’ve been working and testing a way to get everyone the support they need at the most effective price. We’ve updated our support pricing and that will be going into effect with the ModFarm 3.0 rollout.

What are these changes we’re talking about?

In essence, our members fall into two main categories. Those who need regular, consistent support on their sites and those who don’t. When I say “regular consistent support” I’m referring to weekly book ads (some multiple per week) and/or multiple times a month scheduled small tasks (newsletter formatting, store updates, landing page builds, etc). Inconsistent members are much more along the lines of adding a book a couple times a year, maybe a small change in addition to that.

These are very different camps, and in each one there are still “power” users. Some clients add 10, even 20, books a month. Some don’t publish often, but when they do it is with a significant, multi-week launch plan. And some quietly add a new book two to three times a year. It’s a very wide support range to accommodate.

To meet this need, Support is now broken out into three options: a Support Subscription, a’la Carte Support, and Custom Support.

We’re keeping the Support Subscription, but the price has increased to meet the most common use case. The standard support subscription is now set at $45/mo and this support level provides a means for what we originally envisioned and is the most common among active Support users: a couple of book or product adds a month and maybe a light change or two – format a blog post, help with a newsletter kind of thing. While we remain flexible and accommodating with any subscriber, this is not unlimited support, so if a member goes beyond the scope (say, you add a bunch of translations at one go), the balance of work will be charged a’la Carte.

We’ve also really opened up, and encourage, a’la Carte Support, where we have dedicated unit pricing and fast invoicing for most standard things. $12.50 to add book, $10 for a product, $20 a task. If you write and send your own newsletters and blog posts and just want a little help now and then, this is the best way to go. Clients can even give ModFarm standing support orders and we’ll monitor your listings online, take the directed action, and invoice when it’s done. We think this is the most cost effective and flexible support option and puts the control in the author or publisher’s hand.

Finally, we have Custom Support levels. We have a few clients that have very active sites that require significantly more effort and upkeep than the average. For these clients we’ll track their usage ala carte, find an average spend, and work with them to develop a cost effective support plan to simplify billing.

Here are some scenarios to help illustrate how this will work

1. Monthly Support Subscription. The author signs up for monthly standard support for $45/mo. Each week they add either a book or a product to their website, with no other actions. Time goes by and one month they ask for some help to promote their Patreon on the home page – no problem, we got you. A few months later, they want to add a full series they had translated to German – 6 books, on top of the usual 4. The four books will be added as usual, and the 6 translated books are invoiced for $12.50 each to enter and build those pages.

2. Ala Carte Support. An author requests ala carte support with a standing order to add a book to their site when it goes on preorder to Amazon, but permission first for any anthologies. Each month ModFarm support checks their Amazon listing, and when a new book is found, it’s added to the site and the client is sent an invoice. Couple of months go by and nothing new is added, nothing is charged, all are happy. Then, the next month two books go up for preorder and also an anthology is published which the author is attached to. We enter the two books, ask the client for direction on the anthology, and invoice for work accomplished.

3. Ala Carte Support, take 2. An author with ala carte support requests a book be added. We do so and invoice. Two months later, the book comes out on audio and the author lets us know – no worries, we got you. We add in the audio component, no charge (audio updates are included in the original $12.50).

4. Ala Carte Support, take 3. An author publishes a couple of times a year and communicates in advance their launch plan. Part of the launch plan is to have preorders through their existing online store, build a custom list from those sales to a newsletter, have a custom newsletter auto-sequence for that preorder, add a book page for the new book, and create a custom landing page. On completion, the client would be invoiced $12.50 for the book page, $10 for the product page, a $20 small task to arrange the newsletter and sequence and a $20 small task for the landing page.

5. Custom Support. A publisher publishes, on average, two books a week. They want book pages added, the home page updated, index pages updated, a blog post formatted and posted, and a newsletter formatted and sent out each Thursday. This happens every week, with the publisher sending text and images. A custom support plan is developed and agreed to. One week, three books are added instead of two – no problem, we got you. Another month the publisher decides to add an online store, with 15 products to start, and adding two products a week to the store after that. The extra work for setting up and populating the store is priced separately and invoiced, and then the support plan is updated for the additional work moving forward.

How Does Doing This Help?

The purpose of this change is to align support costs to the individual author or publisher in the way most appropriate to them. In a majority of cases, this will result in a reduction in monthly/annual costs. For a small number of members, there will be an increase in cost.

The overall effect will be an increased support response time from ModFarm with an overall reduction in cost. In effect, it puts more emphasis on ModFarm to be active in support while author will only pay for the support they actually need and use, at the time that they use it.

When Will This Take Effect?

When your site is upgraded to ModFarm 3.0, we’ll confirm your support needs and what support option you prefer.

ModFarm 3.0 Is Here And Rolling Out!

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In Summer 2021, we started building sites with our own custom ModFarm Author Theme which was a leap forward for author site development, giving us much easier ability to customize site fonts, colors, navigation, and increased our page design options.

Summer of 2022 was the first evolution of the ModFarm Book Management System (BMS), with later theme and BMS development rolling out in Spring 2023. We called this ModFarm 2.5 and it came with a lot of improvements in Book Page layout, cover art, sales links, button control, and a lot more. It was a big update, but didn’t get us quite all the way.

Now here we are, November 2023, and we are finally ready to put out ModFarm 3.0, the most comprehensive change to our author website system to date. It hits a lot of issues that have been sticking points for a while now and brings out some capabilities that many have been requesting and waiting for.

We’re talking translations, audiobooks, ecommerce, page layouts, and more. It’s a lot of stuff.

First, I’ll go through what we’ve done and then how we’re going to roll it out to all members.

The Boring Stuff

Three new book taxonomies were created. Joining book series, book author, and book tag, we’ve now added book genre, book format, and book translations.

We also added more options for book cover art. Previously, book pages only had one option: Featured Image. Now, we can upload and access dedicated options for flat art, audiobook, 3d mockup, and composite.

Two new book page templates – blocks and full-header blocks – are now available, in addition to the original “single book page.” No code or extra plugins needed, everything built right there on the page.

And, finally, we added a LOT of book meta fields. Previously, there was not much linking for books built in, only the 6 buttons. Well, not any more. There are now 29 available external links, including retailers like Amazon, Kindle, Audible, iBooks, iTunes, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Waterstones, etc, etc. There are deciated fields for link to reviews, link to sample, link to series. We’ve added meta fields for illustrators (for comics/graphic novels), translators, and cover artists. Even links to buy direct – ebook, audiobook, paperback, hardcover, and signed copies. And each of those fields can be called from and dropped into places all across the site.

There have also been a plethora of smaller changes to styling/CSS, meta-data, and some other behind the scenes functionality that comes up from time to time.

Which brings us to hosting level infrastructure upgrades (yawn, I know).

Details about the new hosting pricing plans are available over here. I’m gonna talk about what’s actually different technically.

  • Image size reduction has been improved by 400% – faster delivery, no quality reduction.
  • Upgrades to security
  • Improvements to code asset delivery
  • More Store/eCommerce integrations
  • Domain Names – that’s right, we can obtain and manage them for you. You can even transfer them over to us to manage – not just nameservers, I mean the whole thing.
  • Google Analytics – if you don’t have your own GA account, we’ll get it and connect it for you.
  • ReCaptcha 3 – better, faster, lighter

For the ModFarm Newsletter user:

  • Improved custom form design
  • Improved segmenting by Tag/Field
  • Improved subscription automations
  • Improved retargeting, including automated retargeting
  • Infinite Lists (previously limited to 40, which is a lot, but you know…)
  • Improved eCommerce integration

This boring sounding stuff provides the groundwork to a lot of the more exciting stuff.

The Cool Stuff

With the ground work in place, we added functions to pull all that itemized information in some pretty exciting ways.

First and foremost is the ability to completely customize the book page. Book elements can be placed anywhere and in any combination. Want to go wide? Sure thing. Kindle Direct? You got it. Want your onsite store links to be first, then outside links? Not a problem. Some buttons over here, some other there? Yup, easy day. This combines to create a unique looking and uniquely functional site.

Second, is a series of custom blocks that allow for access to all book page information, letting sites pull out and distribute book information in ways that were impossible before.

Format specific listings, especially audiobook listings, are now possible. We created the multi-taxonomy block that allows us to sort books by format and any other taxonomy. For example, for a publisher’s author pages, we want to show both the author’s available books and audiobooks. And those audiobooks should look like audiobooks – square covers, maybe also the audio sample and the narrator. Previously, to do this was a intensely manual effort that required constant reworking and updating. Now, it’s just a couple clicks and that’s it.

Want a second set of index pages just for audio books, ordered by series, also with square covers, samples, and links direct to Audible instead of the book page? Or maybe to your site’s direct-buy store? Well, now you can.

Box sets, special edition hardcovers, books available with signed copies – all easily identified, sorted, and accessed

With the new blocks accessing a book’s expanded foundational information, authors can now embed books anywhere on their site, however they want, in whatever format, dynamic or static. No code, no customization – just select your options.

Translations and dedicated translation patterns. A side benefit of the expansion in book page layouts is the ability to add multiple custom Book Page patterns. For those with translations, we can rapidly apply page layouts customized for language, taking advantage of translated buttons, custom store links, specific mailing lists, and more.

Also, a lot more pre-made page, blog, and application patterns: linktree style pages, book inserts, locked content, also-boughts, recommended books, book reviews, media kits, book releases, press announcements, and more.

The Secretly Cool Stuff

We’ve covered the groundwork stuff, and the flashy stuff, but what about the under-the-hood marketing stuff?

To start with, site analytics gathering has been significantly expanded due to a dramatic revision in our application of Google Analytics. Darn near everything has an analytics tag in it. If someone is clicking on something book related, we want to know about it.

Why is this cool and important?

ModFarm author sites are a lot more effective than the standard website, with conversion rates higher than Amazon (really). This is achieved by ruthlessly watching metrics and arranging page designs that convince visitors to take specific actions.

But, over the last two years – and definitely the last year – we’ve been seeing site visitor trends that I would like to get a lot more insight into. Specifically with larger Index and Series pages – which now includes individual even book pages, as the new 3.0 system allows for much more book embedment in those pages – Complete Series, You Might Like, Also By Author – kind of things. How much are they clicked? How does it affect site conversion? How large an index is too large?

What about alternative page layouts? Are some more effective than others?

Turning your author website into a beautiful and highly effective marketing machine is our primary goal. And advanced metrics help us achieve that.

The Deployment Process

First, I’ll push out the new code to every site. Not much will change right off the bat. But, over time, as your site’s content is updated, we’ll take the opportunity to bring in more information and start flushing things out.

For example, a new book is added to a series. We’ll likely take that time to add in all of the audiobook covers for that series, and maybe another one.

It will be that kind of process – first we upgrade the capability for each site, then we’ll go back and make changes slowly.

Good news is this has already started, with more than half of our sites updated to the new framework.

What’s coming next?

A few more things we’re working on:

Always on, always updated Book Series Indexes – because sometimes that is really hard to keep up with. It allows each Book Series to be broken out by genre/subgenre and then listed and linked using the title and the first book cover in the series. Whenever a series is added, it’s instantly updated. Set to be alphabetical by title and will auto-index itself. Clients with larger bibliographies know how handy something like this can be.

Deluxe Single Book placement. Similar to the Multi-Tax block, but this one will be for single embedment. We use the “Simple Book CTA” a lot, and I think the ability to be able to add in format variations and meta to those embeds will be even more handy.

Both of these should be ready late 2023 early 2024. I’m really close, just need a week or two of uninterrupted development time to polish them off.

The next big development track is to make our themes fully “blocked” with the ability to create custom page templates for anything – including index pages (the only thing we can’t do at this time). That requires a lot of change and will be our transition away from the Genesis platform, which is a really big deal. That will probably take a majority of 2024

Thank you for being a ModFarm member. We love taking care of you, your readers, and your sites.

ModFarm And eCommerce

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It’s time to talk seriously about ecommerce, author websites, and ModFarm. Because it’s starting to get real 😉

For years now, Amazon has been the key marketplace, with 99% of our authors (and probably all authors) selling books on Amazon. For those who are “wide” there is trickle down to other stores, but the primary seller remains Amazon. Enter Kindle Unlimited, and that became even more so. Website stores were mainly for signed copies and POD merch, maybe a few collector or special run items.

Then things started to change. Some genres, and even authors, have seen their books delisted or no longer promoted by the Amazon algorithm. Some authors have been taken off other platforms, such as Patreon. And, KU page reads have started going down in some genres, changing the economics of exclusivity.

This has opened up some experimentation into subscription memberships and direct sales. And some of those experiments have gotten to be quite large.

In the past two months, ModFarm has opened more stores and ecommerce services than in the last two years. And we’ve gone from a couple of items to hundreds of items per store. We have two major subscription services – almost their own KU or Audible Membership – with more considering it.

As a result of this, we’re looking to invest in eCommerce for our sites in a significant way, with the stated intent to make them a rival to third party commerce solutions/services such as Shopify, Patreon, and SubStack. This includes features such as up-selling, cross-selling, advanced variations, bundling, advanced discounts, subscriptions and memberships, reports, taxes, shipping, and more.

This includes not only the plugins we use, but also the way we go about building and structuring stores.

In addition, our ModFarm Newsletter system integrates directly with a site’s ecommerce, allowing us to add customers to targeted lists, automated sequences, and advanced and automated retargeting. And, as always, books and products can be directly inserted into those newsletters, allowing for follow ups, up- and cross-sells, pre-orders, and more.

Also, with our new ModFarm 3 infrastructure (currently rolling out to all sites), we can integrate store items into book pages in multiple ways, from direct “add to cart action” buttons to actually embedding related products.

With this additional capability does come some additional cost, but we’ve taken every step to keep this very affordable, especially when compared to our competition.

Here’s how that brakes down:

Patreon – 5% per transaction
Substack – 10% per transaction
Shopify – $39/mo (Basic Plan)
ModFarm – $50/year

ModFarm does not take any percentage of sale – subscription or otherwise. Never have and never will. We provide the site and the necessary functions to make it work, that’s it. The $50/year is for maintenance and the various plug-in licenses to expand WooCommerce’s basic capabilities.

What about adding new products? Our standard rates apply, which is $10/product listing (up to 3 variations per product). Our members can always add their own (and many do), but if you want ModFarm to do it, standard pricing applies. If you have a support subscription, product adds will be covered to the limit of the subscription (same as with books), which equates to a maximum of 4 product pages a month under the standard support rate. We’ve expanded on our support policy, so might want to give that a review over here.

As author focused ecommerce continues to evolve, we’ll likely make some adjustments, adding capability, refining processes and the like. But, we do see on site ecommerce as a viable income stream for authors and publishers moving forward and we are committed to supporting it.

How will this roll out?

For all existing stores on ModFarm sites, the $50 annual fee will start when your site is transitioned over to the new ModFarm 3.0 infrastructure. As part of that upgrade, we will review with each author how they want their store to work with the new capabilities, make those changes, and billing will follow after that.

Moving forward, for new sites with stores or new stores on existing sites, the annual charge will start once that store is set up and live.

Updating Our Hosting Plans

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I first started hosting websties on what would later be called “ModFarm” in Summer 2018, when a few of the author members of ThirdScribe asked if they could keep a website with me. Things were pretty stripped down – and fairly chaotic – then and I didn’t give much thought to constructing another network or starting a formal website company.

Fast forward to 2023 and not only are there nearly 100 websites, but we are also powering an email newsletter service that pushes nearly 1 million emails a month.

Lot has changed, for sure.

The original plan for ModFarm was to make it a large multisite network, which made sense from a logistical and financial standpoint because the sites we build are all for the book community and all use the same plugins. However, as time has gone by a lot of changes have happened and many of the services we have come to rely on don’t support multisite as well as they used to. In August 2021, ModFarm started spinning new sites onto their own individual hosting. Stability, speed, and security have all improved and it’s been a win-win all around.

But, one thing we’ve noticed, especially as newsletter and ecommerce use has grown, is that resource usage has grown far beyond just serving page views, and that not all sites are the same, despite their common components.

When the ModFarm Newsletter service was first integrated into the system, we had very small usage. A few authors were around 2,000 subscribers, others well under 1,000 (or even 500). When newsletters went out they were infrequent and the distribution was small. The servers barely felt them. Now we send about 100,000 newsletters every day and we can clearly see the impact of that on our server resource structure.

Likewise, our book pages also started out as fairly stripped down pages – cover art, description, and a couple of buttons. As improvements and additions have been made, those pages have gotten more complex with a higher need for resources – video teaser trailers, audio samples, newsletter signups, recommended books, translations, extras – the more capability we have, the more the need expands to fill it. As book page views increase (always a good thing!), the corresponding server load increases. And, despite what many of our clients initially believed, book pages are the defining driver of an author website, accounting for 70% of views or more. Their design and performance are essential.

Author sites are also not as similar as I had first theorized when laying out the initial digital bricks of ModFarm. Not only are authors needs and preferences a little less “standard” than anticipated, but the needs and tastes of readers has evolved as well. When we launched, Kindle Unlimited and audiobooks were fairly low need – now they are both a significant sales driver. Ecommerce was an afterthought, and now it’s a staple for the more commercially successful authors – expanding even into direct ebook and audiobook sales, as well as unique “direct only” works and pre-sales.

Even the sizes of our websites varies wildly, with sites ranging from 3 books to over 700! ModFarm has become a “go-to” platform for larger authors, but we still have a number of smaller authors and those just starting out, and I feel it is very important to foster that and have a place for new authors to build from. And, for those authors who have grown their audience and continue to expand, a path to ensure their needs are being met. Our “flat” build pricing came out of this concept, and I see no reason to change.

Similarly, we need to adopt a variation of “flat” pricing for hosting and support, something that is standard and predictable, but still flexible enough to meet an author or publisher’s needs.

ModFarm is now offering multiple hosting levels to better align with our clients’ specific needs, which you can see HERE. These levels address actual resource needs and ensure that every site we provide will always deliver and never slow.

So, How’s This Gonna Work?

I wish we could continue to “grandfather” all sites and keep our existing hosting prices eternal, but we are not able to do that. However, I am very adamant about keeping this as close to original charges and affordable to all users at all levels.

To do this, we need to look at how each individual site fits into the resource matrix and see how they fall out. I will then send an email out to each person and let them know where their sites fall and what the corresponding charge is.

Starting September 2023, the new prices will take effect. For most users, this will be pretty seamless. For a few who are doing something unusual: combining multiple sites, significant change in tier, etc, I will confirm plans and then their current subscription will be cancelled and a new one issued.