A Wasted Day?

I spent the best part of yesterday trying to set up a hosted blog on WordPress. For someone with no skills at all in relation to web hosting this was always going to be an uphill challenge.

I started off ok but things kind of slid away… I downloaded the WP files as you’re supposed to do and put them on my desktop. So far, so good. I then went into Wealthy Affiliate where my membership gives me ‘free’ hosting and tried to figure out what to do next.

I then had two bits of luck. On WA is a lady called Deb Williams who has produced a fantastic set of videos for WA members to use in relation to WordPress. As I started to watch she made mention of uploading my WP files to WA. I froze. Upload? How the hell do I do that? Fortunately Debbie explained everything perfectly. I needed a piece of software to FTP my WP files onto WA (who knew?).

I duly downloaded my free software CoreFTP Lite and followed the video making extensive use of the pause and play buttons to assist me (I have a short memory). It only worked! However, when I came to log-in and look at my site, I kept getting an error message telling me that there was a problem with the .php. It wasn’t installed apparantly.

Second bit of luck coming up. My son Richie is a serious whizz-kid with the internet and websites and co-incidentally he had only just emailed me a link to some software which allows him to take control of my desktop remotely. He knows I need a truckload of help. I installed it and let him play.

It was freaky to see him take over my WA dashboard and move around. He quickly found the problem. It seems that when I set up my account I needed to check a button that allows .php files. Now, I never knew that so a slap on the wrist for Kyle & Carson of WA for not mentioning this fact. I know they can’t make mention of everything but for us newbies, setting up servers and stuff is daunting. If it hadn’t of been for Richie, I’d have been in trouble right there and then.

Anyway, it got done and I had my WP blog duly set up. I then spent the rest of the afternoon getting to grips with the new controls and even managed to figure out how to install new templates. Again, thanks to Deb and her stonking video’s. But once I’d done that, I was stuffed. The templates I’d installed wouldn’t let me remove stuff from the sidebars- or anywhere! You had to be some kind of whizzo with HTML. I’m not. So after all that, I thought ‘bugger it’ (for now) and came back to this blog.

I know it’s not ideal and has it’s limitations, but the other one was too complex and time consuming for me at this stage. I need drag ‘n’ drop’ so I duly applied Occam’s razor to the problem.

Occam’s razor is often paraphrased as “All other things being equal, the simplest solution is the best.” That’ll do for me.

So, overall, perhaps a disappointing day? No, I don’t think so. I learned an awful lot of things I never knew about before and I feel a lot more confident in relation to hosting, FTP, nameservers and the like. Nothing’s ever wasted.