May 2026 · Proposal · Luann Riley
Your site has good bones. Let's rebuild for your book launch!
Hi Luann — thank you for the call yesterday. The site you and Hannah built in 2018 has served you well; the right move now is a clean break: a new site on a faster, cheaper platform you actually own, instead of Squarespace, built around the three avenues we talked about — email signup, speaker, book — and ready for books 2 + 3 as Seedbed sends them out.
01 — Where we landed on the call
What we agreed on.
-
01
Keep what works. Your color palette and Hannah's intro/history writeup both stay — we build on them, not over them.
-
02
Nav restructure. Leader/Speaker becomes Speaker/Writer. Book gets a dedicated page. Blog stays but becomes a quarterly newsletter archive.
-
03
Photo refresh. You're confirming photo rights Tuesday. If yes, we pull from the church's archive plus your October personals.
-
04
Kill the stale stuff. "Brave & Bold" tagline (no longer used), United Methodist quotes (no longer affiliated), broken podcast links from the deleted page.
-
05
Book page — link to Seedbed for hard copies, Amazon for digital. Info pulled from the Seedbed product page.
-
06
Speaker page — real upcoming dates (October 2026 + February 2027) and links to your full sermons from The Loft's YouTube.
-
07
Instagram embed back, done right. The last attempt fought you; this one shouldn't.
-
08
Email signup — new. Independent list, separate from Seedbed. Quarterly newsletter cadence to start.
02 — Two ways forward
The Rebuild, or the Refresh.
The Rebuild is what I'd recommend. Same monthly either way — just a question of how much you want done. Once The Rebuild wraps, your hosting drops to $11/month and you actually own the site. The Refresh stays in place on Squarespace and fixes what's broken if you'd rather not migrate.
Quick explainer: Astro on Cloudflare just means your site is custom-built code (Astro) hosted on Cloudflare, the backbone behind a huge chunk of the internet. Instead of renting Squarespace's templates and editor, the site is yours — faster to load, cheaper to host, and there's no platform between you and the content.
The Rebuild
Recommended
$1,200
$300/month · 4 months · custom Astro build on Cloudflare
- New site you own. Custom Astro build, no platform fees.
- Hosting drops to $11/month after launch (vs $35/month Squarespace).
- Migration of all content + photos to the new site
- Book page, Speaker page, About refresh, quarterly newsletter archive
- Email signup integrated (ConvertKit or your pick)
- Custom Instagram embed that actually works
- Templates ready for books 2 + 3
The Refresh
Stay on Squarespace
$600
$300/month · 2 months · in-place on Squarespace 7.0
- Same Squarespace, fixed up. Hosting stays at $35/month.
- Book page added
- Photos and copy refreshed (UMC + Brave & Bold removed, nav swap)
- Speaker page updated with real dates + Loft sermon links
- Broken podcast links cleaned up
- Basic Instagram embed restored
- Basic email signup embedded
One more wrinkle: if you'd really rather stay inside Squarespace's editor for small tweaks down the road, we can do The Rebuild on Squarespace's newer 7.1 platform instead of Astro — same scope, same price, just a different engine under the hood. Astro is what I'd recommend, but the option's there.
03 — After The Rebuild launches
Making changes, going forward.
Fair question: if your site is custom code instead of Squarespace, how do you edit it later? Two real paths — no pressure to pick now, just so you know what's there.
Light Touch retainer
Recommended · person on call
$50 / month
Cancel anytime · no minimum
- Text or email me when you want a change. Same day or next day, no hourly clock.
- Small content updates (new speaker dates, photo swaps, copy tweaks)
- Quarterly newsletter assist (formatting + send)
- Monitoring for broken links + form issues
- Hosting + domain renewal handled
Clean handover
You self-manage
$0
One walkthrough call · then it's yours
- I hand over the keys — codebase, hosting, email tool, domain.
- Free to manage yourself or hire anyone
- You can always come back later
For context: you're paying ~$35/month to Squarespace today. After The Rebuild, Cloudflare hosting is ~$11/month. Light Touch on top brings the total to ~$61/month — modest jump, and you have a person instead of a platform.
04 — What I'd need from you
Four small things.
- Pick an option — Rebuild or Refresh.
- Photos — drop whatever you have into a Google Drive whenever it's ready.
- Email-list tool preference — or let me pick. I'd default to Kit (formerly ConvertKit): it's the industry standard for authors, free up to 10,000 subscribers, easy to embed, and you can switch to something prettier later if you ever want to.
- Timeline — if Seedbed is pushing toward a date, share it and I'll pace accordingly. Otherwise The Rebuild is about 3 weeks of build, The Refresh closer to 1–2. The extra months baked into each price cover me setting up analytics, watching for issues, and tweaking as things settle in post-launch.
Next step
Reply with an option, or with questions.
If anything's unclear or you'd rather hop on another quick call, just text me. Excited to work on this with you.
[email protected]
·
713-907-1007