Support for Indie Authors discussion

I'd be very glad for your experience, insight and opinions.

When looking at the creation of an book / author website, what is:
- Must Have -- practically these elements are essential to a successful site
- Should have -- maybe not "must" but really "should"
- Cool to have -- would be great, but may not make the cut because they are either expensive, too much work, or both.

Thanks

I, too, would appreciate reading about how to build an effective website. I used Weebly's free website hosting, but I haven't done a good job with it. And I don't like that the URL includes Weebly's name because I'm too cheap to upgrade. Actually, it's more because I'm not sure I'll stay with Weebly.

Are there better options? What do other authors use for web hosting and web building? I need some advice.

This topic already exists here:

https://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/...