Exploring this blog

My first R18 splash page on the hosted website using my own domain

Welcome to my website!  Remember when most new websites had that on them?  I remember attending a course for a company I worked for and the instructor specifically said it was a no-no.  “We don’t write Welcome to our Brochure on our flyers do we?” However, rules were made to be broken, just this once. It is hard to believe that it has been about 10 years since I started thinking about sex work and writing it down.

I’m quite interested in escorts and websites – should we all have them?  In Australia most professional independents have them, as do a few in New Zealand.   I know my little blog, Wanton Acts, which I started in 2013 (the first time I’d worked since decriminalisation), had been fantastic for me and I’m an avid reader of websites belonging to sex workers all over the world.  I find them empowering and inspiring.  My old website, at blogger, will remain and maybe each post will merely be an extract linking here, I haven’t decided yet.

I’ve seen some beautiful ones as well.  There were a couple of sex worker’s websites which particularly caught my eye, which no longer exist.  One of them belonged to Dominatrix Victoria in Auckland.  I loved it’s simplicity but it was still so beautiful – everything was easy to find, only four links at the top and the images were great – also neither did she bother with waffle, just really clear info and easy to find prices, session info etc.  The other one I really loved belonged to a trans sex worker named Yasmine.  It was also jaw-droppingly beautiful yet simple.  Absolutely stunning photos and easy to find information.  Only 3 links as well, and it had an easy to use contact form.  Oh and the gallery was gorgeous not to mention her logo.

Meanwhile, this is my third re-design and I’m using a new domain name, matureladyfriend.com. I know I should pay for a re-design more often than I have done, but here we are.

This site does not have a tag cloud, but posts are loosely collected into the areas of starting out (for new escorts or anyone wondering how I began), punting and guest posts (always interesting to think about the perspectives of clients and read posts by them),  relationships (because many of us sex workers and clients are in relationships), and retiring (because sometimes leaving the industry is not straightforward).  I’m also interested in exploring sex work from a business perspective.

My new website uses the basic 2023 WordPress theme, a CMS theme which I don’t need to worry about breaking due to it being very basic.  Of course there is no such thing as original art, including websites, everything is inspired by something.  The blog part of my website was inspired by Pinterest –  I love the snippets set out like this which means that every post needs a still feature image (which gets automatically cropped).  It means the blog page takes a little longer to load but I think it’s a small price to pay.  I guess I’m more concerned with the aesthetics instead of the practicalities.

My first website had a sliding gallery, and a tag cloud, although apparently they were a bit dated even then, oh well, but I haven’t bothered with those bells and whistles any more.  And of course I needed an R18 landing page.  I love the one I used to illustrate this post!  And remember that Dragon song?  I was barely old enough when that was released – oh the memories – and this is where you were redirected to if you had to exit the splash page due to being under 18.

Other features I hankered after were an online booking form to allow pre-bookings more easily when I tour, but as I don’t plan on touring regularly, there is no need to bother.

As I said, I started with blogger which is a free site and I recommend every escort think of having something like that (does anyone still do Tumblr?  They were also popular) which will force you to keep updating it.  Some forums will let you promote your website if you link back to them and when I first started, my advertiser let me have a banner ad on their site for a small amount.  Nowadays with CMS and free sites like blogger, Tumblr, wordpress and Wix, many escorts are giving it a try.  My suggestion is that you always back up your content on your computer, whether it’s text or images as they could close at any time.  This happened to a friend of mine who had a professional (non-sex work site) a few years ago with a free web server.  He paid extra to forego the ads, then one day he logged on and they had gone out of business and all his work was lost.  However, having said that free websites are great ways to get started, and if people don’t bother, then there is X, formerly known as twitter.

Research, research, research to find a design you like.  Once I found the design that I liked it was then a matter of putting it together to suit my content and voila.  We’re back again.

I would like to thank my web host who is fantastic, friends who have proof-read and started some user-testing and my friend and web designer Hamza who has been amazing and patient and kind.  If anyone comes across anything broken or any bugs, please let me know.  Also feedback is always welcome.  Thanks and Welcome to my Website.

 


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