From Wordpress to Building It Myself

Welcome to the New Gentle Nook

When I launched Gentle Nook in July, I did what I thought was the best way to get a good blog going. I grabbed WordPress, picked a theme, and started writing. It seemed like the obvious choice. Everyone uses WordPress for blogs, right?

Unfortunately, I've never loved Wordpress. I think it's confusing and bloated. But I was writing, publishing, figuring out what Gentle Nook was supposed to be. But pretty quickly, I was discouraged by all the weird Wordpress quirks.

The site was slower than I wanted. There were so many plug ins and every single one was expensive. Every time I wanted to change something simple—adjust a color, move a section—I had to fight with the theme or install another plug-in. Updates would break things randomly. I was spending more time managing WordPress than I wanted.

I felt like a guest in my own space, working around someone else's rules. And the whole time, I was paying close to $50 a month in hosting for the privilege of being frustrated.

A Year of Tinkering

Here's the thing: about a year ago, I started playing around with code. Not with any grand plan—just curiosity. Figuring out how websites actually worked underneath all the WordPress layers. Learning JavaScript. Breaking things and fixing them. Building small projects just to see if I could.

I didn't think much of it at the time. I was just learning, experimenting, seeing what stuck. It became my hyperfocus.

But then I launched Gentle Nook on WordPress, and a few months in I started questioning why. I kept thinking: I know there's a better way to do this. I've been learning how to do it.

So three months after launching, I rebuilt the entire thing from scratch. And last month? I landed my first paid web development client. Turns out a year of curious tinkering adds up to something real.

What Changed

The new Gentle Nook runs on Next.js and lives on Vercel's free tier—which means I went from paying too much a month to paying $0. It loads instantly. It's cleaner. It's flexible. And when I want to change something, I just… change it. No plug-ins. No theme limitations. No mysterious breaking changes.

I built exactly what I needed, not what a template decided I should have. And yes, maybe it isn't as polished as Ashe Pro. But it's mine.

Why This Matters

Gentle Nook has always been about finding what actually works instead of forcing ourselves into systems that weren't designed for us.

Turns out, that applies to websites too. I was using WordPress because everyone said that's what you're supposed to do—not because it was the best fit for what I wanted to create here.

And here's what I learned from a year of messing around with code: you don't have to be an expert to build something better than what you've been told to accept. You just have to be willing to learn as you go.

What This Means for You

For you? Faster load times (I hope). Cleaner reading experience. A site that actually works the way it should. And hopefully, more writing—because I'm spending less time wrestling with WordPress and more time doing what I came here to do.

Almost everything I've written is still here. I still have some migrating to do. But it feels more intentional and better.

Welcome to Version 2.0

So here we are, three months in, and Gentle Nook already looks completely different. That feels right, actually. This whole space is about learning as we go, adjusting when something isn't working, and building things that fit our actual lives instead of someone else's idea of what our lives should look like.

A year ago, I was just curious about code. Now I'm rebuilding websites and getting paid to build them for other people. Funny how that works.

Thanks for being here for the ride. And if you ever find yourself wondering "wait, is there a better way to do this?"—the answer is probably yes. You just might have to build it yourself.

With all my heart,
Katy