Okay. I had my domain name registered, and a webhost. Now I needed to find a blogging software program. Based on what I had been reading, WordPress got good reviews. I decided to go with them, but before downloading the software, tried to get an understanding on exactly what I needed to do. This is where my noviceness (is that a word?) really kicked in. I looked at all of this new terminology and asked myself, “Do you really want to get into this?”
I thought of just signing up for what I call an “instant blog”, but decided, if I’m going to do this, I’m going to do what the professional bloggers do. Boy, am I glutton for punishment.
After reading pages and pages of information which contained language I did not comprehend, I decided to “download WordPress”. Well, I don’t know what I did, because after downloading it, I didn’t know where to find it. I just wanted to blog. But how could I, if I couldn’t find the software to blog on? Then I went to my BlueHost account (I tell you, I have done alot of things backwards.) and realized they would download it into my “FTP” (whatever that is?) by using their “Addon/Plugins” program named “Fantastico (Auto-Installs). Okay, I’ll try that. So I hit some buttons, and did what I was instructed to do, and like magic, I had a WordPress file in my “FTP”. I felt like I was on the road to blogging. You guessed it, I was wrong.
I went back to WordPress and read more. They talked about “Filezilla” and a “text editor”. I did know, from previous research, that since I had Wordpad, that was fine for a text editor, but I proceeded to download Filezilla. I don’t think I needed to do that as that is also an FTP, but at this point I was so confused. I figured I would try anything.
I went to my BlueHost “ftp” and was playing around and punching buttons. Well, I don’t know what I did, but all of a sudden my printer started printing blank pages. I mean, lots of them. I ran out of paper and ended up refeeding the blank sheets into the printer. I tried to cancel the printing job, but for some reason that didn’t work. I just shook my head and again asked myself, “Do I really want to blog that bad?’. I guess so, because here I am.
Anyway, I ended up with two WordPress files on my hard drive. I figured out that I had to transfer one to my FTP WordPress folder, and again I was lost. I’m not quite sure how I finally accomplished it, but I did. That process for me took a week to figure out. I really don’t think that’s the norm, but keep in mind, I was also doing my full time job.
I’m thinking back to when I finally saw the WordPress Dashboard, and remember how exciting that was, but now I wonder how I even got to this point.
The funny part of it is, I now have two blogs, so you know I was really glutton for punishment. Maybe, I’ll go for three….maybe not!
