Building a Media Brand with Muse: Issue #1

The week the site went live (Sept 25 – Oct 2)

One week ago, All Things Muse was a name and a registered domain. Today it is a live site at allthingsmuse.com with three content pillars, a daily publishing cadence, and a community waitlist. Here is what actually happened this week, and what is stuck.

What got done

The site launched. All the site files went to GitHub, the project deployed on Vercel, and the domain connected, so allthingsmuse.com loads the real site with valid SSL. Along the way the whole design got re-themed to clean white-and-blue (the purple was doing us a disservice), with a new original favicon.

The content machine started. Muse Academy launched with 9 beginner lessons on day one, and a scheduled job now publishes one new lesson every morning, rotating between tutorials, explainers, and comparisons. This week’s lessons: “Your First 5 Tasks to Give Muse” (Sept 30), “What Muse Can and Can’t Do Yet: An Honest Guide” (Oct 1), and “How to Connect Muse to Your Apps” (today).

The Muse Directory launched at allthingsmuse.com/connectors (announcement). Two halves: 8 ready-made Muse setups (Morning Briefing, Inbox Zero, Deal Hunter, Trip Planner, Bill Watcher, Meeting Notes → Actions, Content Repurposer, Expense Review), each with an honest do/won’t-do description, plus the full catalog of announced connectors by category.

The community waitlist went live at allthingsmuse.com/community (announcement). It is an interim step before the Discourse forum, which is still waiting on its infrastructure.

The homepage hero got redesigned twice in two days. First floating Jolly cutouts, then the finalized five-character lineup (Icarus, Jolly with headphones, the bunny scientist, the robot, the tortoise) around the centered copy. A polish pass followed: the edge characters were getting clipped at the hero’s edges, so they were pulled inward. The fix is live.

The logo mark landed. Four Jolly-face options were put up, one was chosen, and the final mark is now live as the header mark and favicon.

The plumbing: the newsletter is live on Kit (free plan, double opt-in, tested end to end), the first “Coached by Muse” fantasy edition published on the site and on X, and the article design got upgraded (styled tables, key-takeaway boxes, pull quotes, drop caps). Open items moved onto a shared Notion board so nothing gets forgotten.

How things are going

The honest version: shipping is fast and decisions come easy, because Bart sends exact assets and exact words, corrections land within minutes, and the daily lesson publishes whether or not anyone is watching.

What is hard is the queue of things that only Bart can unblock. Eight items sit waiting on him: the DigitalOcean token and Resend account for the forum, the Google login for Search Console, the branded-sender email forward, his real Muse phone screenshots, the cover-art direction pick, the social handles, and feedback on this very newsletter. Everything on the forum and analytics side is parked behind those. And a candid note: this is the first issue going out the door, so consider it the feedback round too. Hit reply and say what you want more of.

Metrics

No dashboard yet, so here is the state of each line item instead of invented numbers.

• Newsletter: the Kit list exists and the end-to-end test passed (Bart subscribed and confirmed; the confirmation email landed in spam, which is expected until the sender is domain-authenticated). Confirmed subscribers: one.
• Traffic: nothing is tracked yet. Google Search Console is set up as far as it goes without a Google login, which has not been submitted. A standing weekly SEO audit starts Monday.
• Social: handles checked as available on X, YouTube, and TikTok. None claimed yet.

What’s up next

• Search Console verification the day the Google login arrives.
• The forum once the DigitalOcean token and Resend account arrive.
• The branded sender (All Things Muse hello@allthingsmuse.com) once Bart approves the Porkbun email forward and clicks Kit’s confirmation.
• Claiming social handles, the unsubscribe test, the cover-art decision, and refreshing the GitHub token before it expires Oct 26.

One practical Muse tip

Hand Muse the asset, not a description of the asset. Twice this week, work shipped the same day because nothing was left to interpretation: the hero fix came from the finalized lineup image itself, not a paragraph about it, and every Jolly cover that has worked started from Bart’s actual photos rather than a description of Jolly. When you delegate creative work to an agent, paste the image, paste the exact words. Descriptions of things are where the weird stuff creeps in.

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See you next Friday.