Well, after a frustrating experiment with Joomla! (nothing personal and I am sure I will figure it out in the next millennia) we are back to WordPress (not that this millennia is happening any faster). It always fascinates me when you are learning something “new” how many circular references there seem to be. By that I mean you have to know where you are going to understand where you are to get where you want to be. To put it more bluntly, if I were a computer/blog expert, I wouldn’t need those YouTube tutorials that assume you have a clue/reference as to what SEO, meta, plugins, widgets, and breadcrumbs (no you don’t eat them), etc are. Then you try to figure out what they do and then where they go so you can get them to work. And depending on what format you are using, all that could be in reverse order of the other one. I think I am of at least “normal” intelligence, (ok, that may be a gimmie) but honestly, if you have no idea of what something is, how are you supposed to actually implement it? And there are so many bloody Plugins, it makes me think there are lots of people with WAY too much time on their hands (plugin writers, no offense intended, they all have a purpose, take tons of time to create and my level of appreciation will grow once I get them to work). The learning curve might as well be Everest. HTML codes (don’t ask) are always given as an optional way to implement an action (like I get the version that isn’t HTML). I have had previous computer incidents where I wanted to throw the monitor to the ground, but not as many as I have had since starting this endeavor and my frustration scream has been perfected.
In our defense a little, it’s not like we just decided to start a blog out of thin air. I did some research, got some information (not enough apparently) and looked stuff up. Armed with these varying degrees of blogdom knowledge, the plunge was taken. Didn’t sound too hard, pretty breezy as it was presented and at first, it wasn’t. Get a Domain Name, find a hosting site, pick a blogging software—-. Ahhhhh, this was the unknown catch to the whole enchilada, this is where the unraveling, on several fronts, began. I assumed, armed with the knowledge I had gleaened and some I had paid for, that it would just fall into place and our brilliant written contributions would be the cream to top it off. Oh, the innocence of it all. Did you notice that word I used, assume? We all know what kind of trouble can follow that act. How I long for the days of customer service where you could TALK to someone, who could possibly just guide you a little to that AH-HAH moment you know is just a keystroke away, over the monitor rainbow. Unfortunately, my AH-HAH moment came with the realization I would need a class or therapy.
Now, older, wiser, with way more gray and missing hair, I have come to an understanding of sorts with this medium. I try not to get completely frustrated while trying to figure things out. I search more sites, use different words, still throw my hands in the air and curse under my breath before getting up to blow off some steam. Our brilliant writing is subjected to being buried with all the other writing due to “blog clog”, my own personal term for the inability to get the site the way we want it. Perhaps someone reading this will take pity on me and send me a friendly note, say as to how to put an email subscription box on the site (hint hint), perhaps having been down the same blogging road, with all its twists and turns and switchbacks. Feel free, it won’t hurt my feelings and might save my remaining blog worn brain cells!
