Saturday, May 30, 2009

Building a Blog from Scratch

Before I started blogging, I never would have believed how much I have learned to do. The high point of my computer programming experience was in eighth grade when I learned how to make my name repeat itself on the computer screen (10 Sherri, 20 goto 10 - or something like that). When Microsoft came out with their Office Suite, I felt quite proud as I learned to navigate all the commands and functions.

When I started my first blog at Today.com, I was quite intimidated at first. Control panel? Widgets? Fortunately, they had tutorials and ESPECIALLY, a great community to answer questions. Next, I set up a blog here with Blogger. Pretty easy, no problems!

So, feeling pretty confident in my ability to set up blogs, I recently started a new project. I decided to set up my own self-hosted blog. Now you may be wondering why in the world am I starting ANOTHER blog when I having trouble keeping up with the ones I have. All I can say is there is a method to my madness. It should all be clear in oh... maybe one more month (wink, wink).

Setting up a self-hosted blog has been quite the experience! I like the idea of having more freedom and control over my blog. But, we all know that all with more freedom comes more responsibility. It's like owning your first house. You can hang pictures where you want and do any renovation projects you choose. But who gets to fix the roof when there's a leak, or deal with the rabid raccoon living under your floorboards? That's right, you.

If I were to have a problem with any of my existing blogs, I can ask for help from an administrator. Who do I ask for help on this new blog? The other day I was working on it, and I broke it. I don't mean just messed up, I mean it was completely broken. It was so upsetting. Why isn't there an undo button or some way to recover my settings? It was so broke I couldn't even access the control panel!

I finally fixed it, but I had to reload Wordpress and start over from scratch. At least I only had one post, but it was still a pain to set up the widgets and plugins again. Oh well, live and learn. My new blog is Alzheimer's Disease Caregiver if you want to check it out.

3 comments:

  1. I remember programming the computer like that (I think we are about the same age)!! At the time, it was very high-tech!! We even saved our programs on cassette tape!

    Best of luck with your new blog. I'll check it out in a minute.

    Best wishes,

    Roz

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  2. I don't remember doing much with computers in elementary school (although we had one at home) but in high-school I took a computer class where I learned a little about the C+ language. (I think that's what it was.) What I remember most about that class was programming it to make these wavy lines come out on the printer. :)

    Good luck on your new blog!

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  3. You are so much more braver than I!! I couldn't even begin to move on my own.

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