Forum
Grok Bot as Webmaster
From Author Update (https://www.authormedia.com/), I used Thomas' WebMaster Bot to set up this website.
Each post here will describe different changes and experiences I had doing this.
Hosting and DNS (Technical Details)
My (this is Tod, BTW) original plan was to use Hostinger. In preparation for moving our several domains there, I set everything up in their DNS and started a WordPress site there. Their LLM chatbot is pretty decent. However, once I started the transfers, they deleted and overwrote all of my entries with their defaults.
The major problem with this is that, in addition to killing our live Substack domain (which is going away), they also killed our entries for Fastmail to handle our email.
The extra special danger for this is that your DNS can be locked for a week after a transfer - possibly locking us out of banking and other apps. In fact, I was locked out of Hostinger. (I now use an email not linked to our domains for our DNS).
So I went with Bluehost. I’ve not been impressed with them, but they haven’t destroyed anything. (Their solution to Grok Bot occasionally being slowed was to turn off bot protection entirely, which is insane.) But it turned out, while thought they supported DNS for the blog TLD, they don’t.
So our DNS is at Cloudflare. I’ve very, very happy with Cloudflare. They have a great LLM chatbot and it’s easy to figure stuff out. Cloudflare is big so all the LLMs know how it works. (More on Cloudflare in the mailing list post.)
Books and Divi (the first plugin differences)
One of the first changes I made to Thomas’ webmaster text file was to add rules about following best practices for programming. I’m a software developer so that sort if thing is important to me.
Then I started trying to add books.
I really didn’t like the suggested setup. And the recommended plugin was not well maintained. I talked with Grok Bot and settled on Pods.
I also decided that I didn’t want or need Divi. Grok Bot was doing everything - so Divi was just slowing Grok Bot down and taking more usage. PHP is more stable long term. And as a software developer, I feel more comfortable trying to understand PHP than Divi.
And in Grok Bot’s own words, here’s how Pods was used for our books.
How the Books section of akristinacasasent.com is set up
What Pods does. WordPress comes with only two kinds of content, Posts and Pages. Pods is a free plugin that adds new kinds of content with their own fill-in-the-blank fields. On your site it adds three things:
1. A "Books" content type. It has its own Books menu in the dashboard and its own web address for each title, like `/book/peer-review-parenting/`. Each book has a title and a cover image. Instead of one big text box, it has these Pods fields:
- Tag Line: a one-sentence hook.
- Description: the main back-cover copy, with formatting.
- Extra: an optional formatted section shown after the description.
- Anthology: the collection the story appears in.
- Tropes: a comma-separated list, like Found Family or The Heist.
- Shade Scale: a free-text label for the tone, like Delightfully Weird.
- Type: a dropdown with Short Story, Novelette, Novella, Novel, or Anthology. The default is Short Story.
- Reading order: the book's number within its universe.
- Purchase URL and Purchase label: where the button goes (the book's BookFunnel link) and what it says (the default is "Buy").
2. A "Universes" grouping, with two extra fields of its own: a Universe blurb for the universe's page, and a Universe sort number that sets the order of universes on the Books page. Right now there are two: Nano-Sapiens Shorts in Anthologies (5 stories) and One-Off Shorts in Anthologies (9).
3. A "Genres" grouping, with five genres so far, from All-Ages Science-Fiction (8 stories) to All-Ages Fantasy (3).
Pods stores everything in WordPress's own database, and all of it can be read through WordPress's standard data connection. That's how I and BookLinkMaster read the book details without touching the screen.
How the theme uses it. Pods holds the information, and your custom theme, akctheme, decides how it looks. The theme also adds two browsable groupings, Shade Scale and Type, and fills them in automatically from those two fields whenever you save a book. It also copies the tag line into the book's short summary, so you never enter anything twice.
Pages that build themselves:
- Books page: one cover grid per universe, in reading order. A new universe appears on its own.
- Each book's page: cover, title, tag line, description, details, and the Buy button.
- Universe, genre, shade, and type pages: book cards in reading order.
- Home page: four random books, plus the latest blog post.
Buying. The Buy button goes to the book's BookFunnel page at books.akristinacasasent.com, which lists the stores carrying the anthology. BookLinkMaster keeps those pages matched to the book text on your site.
Search engines. Every book has its own page, with a Yoast title in the pattern "Book Title by A. Kristina Casasent" and its own description.
Adding a new book: in the dashboard, go to Books, then Add New. Fill in the fields, set the cover, and pick a universe and genre. Every page updates on its own, and then BookLinkMaster sets up its BookFunnel page.
Tod again! And a huge thanks to Thomas for his book cover generator. My wife (and co-author) was so impressed with the covers. The text for the books was edited from the blurb/trope/etc generators.
Other Resources
First, I’ll list some plugins.
Since our DNS is on Cloudflare, we use the a plugin for Cloudflare Turnstile.
And AIOS made my life a lot simpler - sorry Thomas, while Grok Bot can do everything or tell me how, AIOS was just a lot simpler. Maybe when usage is so cheaper.
I added the WP Mail SMTP for better email delivery.
We’re using Nextend so our friends can login with their social media accounts. (It also acts as a bot-blocker, since they don’t generally have social media logins. Time will tell.)
And, contrary to Thomas’ advice, we’re at least trying a forum using Asgaros.
Now for other services.
We ended up using MailerLite instead of Kit. And we use Book Funnel for their book and purchase links. (We plan to release collections of our stories and eventually sell direct and on Amazon. And Anna wants me to do “read by the author” audiobooks, like Thomas and Jonathan have talked about.)
We tried using Kit. But I was disappointed that Kit cost so much to add automation for taking a blog post from our RSS feed and automatically emailing it. Then Kit was unable to read our RSS feed - and support had no clue about how to help.
MailerLite’s chatbot told us how to make sure Cloudflare would let MailerLite access the feed without a problem. And reads our blog feed just fine. As Thomas says, if you are paying, it’s the better deal. I really like them - they are the service that I had the least issues with.
Another incredible plus is that while Kit had inconsistent documentation and manual steps for DNS setup, MailerLite supports popular DNS registrars with automation. When I needed to setup email and domains, it gave me a big, green, friendly button. That worked. And updated, rather than deleting, existing entries — (that’s a human em-dash BTW) like the ones that make Fastmail work for us.
Book Funnel is Book Funnel. It had clear docs, and BookLinkMaster Bot had no problems asking Webmaster Bot for details about our books to fill out Book Funnel. I actually had Webmaster design BookLinkMaster for me to review. Then Webmaster asked if it should create the new bot. I ran into the room where Anna was and shouted, “The bots! They can procreate!”
Future Plans
My plans for the future involve more automation in taking a new “book”, running it through all the appropriate parts of Patreon Toolbox automatically, letting me curate, and then adding it to the website and Book Funnel automatically. (One thing that needs work is collecting URLs.)
This weekend MailerLite goes live and after that https://dlvrit.com for posting to X.
I still need to have Grok Bot do more cleanup on the old blog posts.
Extra Notes
That reminds me of so many things Grok Bot did so well…
Read three years of blog posts from Substack and fix all the cruft in it, including downloading and setting alt-text on the images.
Build and check the response code of URL for the stores we wanted to search for our books.
Read a Word document of all 14 short stories and populate Pods and Book Funnel from that.
And now we use Grok Bot for the featured images on our blogs.
And explain so much about Word Press to me.
Thanks Thomas and Grok Bot!
Technical: Modifying “Amazing Author Websites — Webmaster Grok Bot Course”
Here are some technical changes. I added the text below between the Shared computer and Folder layout entries in the Grok Bot course text file. Part of the best practices means Grok Bot may make and use a Stage site — so if you do or don’t specifically know and want to deal with that, I’d add a specification for that.
Rule 1 is there because I was always being given the Computer for passwords - and you can’t copy and paste into the Computer. So, I want the in-chat form instead.
Rule 2 is to encourage the more usage efficient API usage.
Rule 3 is because I’m a programmer and care about the site engineering. Sometimes the most popular solution is technically a bad one, and this encourages the bot to find a good solution. Good being defined by stable, robust, and following best practices for coding.
### Top-level rules for the Bot.
**1 Never put passwords/codes in chat; use in-chat form for login, 2FA, and payment. Only use Computer GUI if no other choice.
**2 Use API / REST API if available over browser screen.
**3 Always prioritize proper coding techniques for long-term stability and robustness. Prioritize WordPress best practices for coding and stability.