Blogs Are Easy?

by Joe Justin

Blogs Are easy? Yup that’s right, if you believe all the stuff you read out there, blog are easy. I am here to tell you blogs can be a challenge for anyone. When I first start learning about blogs, I didn’t know where to turn. I didn’t know which software to use, what type of hosting I needed, or what type of investment would be required. It took a lot of research and even after the research, I felt like I just had to take the leap and go for a Wordpress blog.

After I decided to use wordpress, my battles had just begun. I didn’t know a lot of the terms that were used in the software. Like what the heck is a Permalink? I didn’t know how to set things up properly. For instance the first thing I want to do was change the way my new blog looked. I wanted to change the theme. I had no idea how to do that. After I had finally figured out where to find different themes, I then spent another half a day finding the one that was perfect for me. Keep in mind I had never run a blog before, so what I did was pick a two column theme. Yup, I spent a half a day looking for that perfect theme, then after my blog grew, I realized that the three column layout that I despised in the beginning.

The next thing that happened was I wanted my blog to have more features, One those features was I wanted to be able to see the statistics of my blog. This type of feature as with most enhancements to wordpress uses these add-ons called plugings or widgets. Well you guessed it, yet another search more time spent to find an easy to install plugin that would allow me to do this. Well I found one, however, what I didn’t know was, the theme that I had selected did not work with the statistic plugin. Of course, at this time I wasn’t happy. What I found out was that when choosing a theme you want to make sure that it is "Widget Ready". What this means is that the theme allows widgets to work seamlessly. It recognizes the fact that you have loaded a new widget and all the features and options. Sooooo again, another search, another half a day searching for that perfect widget ready theme. Of course after I found that perfect theme I was only then able to install the new statistics plugin. After I installed the plugin, I was then able to see my statistics and I was floating on cloud nine!

I thought by now that I was on my way to "Easy" street with my blog, so I sought out other plugins. Well guess what happened? I found this cool plugin that would allow me to translate my blog into other languages. The first one I saw I downloaded and installed into my blog. I click the "View Site" button in my administration panel and my blog disappeared. Yup, that’s right it disappeared! The message I got was Page could not be diplayed. At this time in my blogging life I had no idea how to get back into my admin panel. I tried to delete the plugin using my FTP program. I think that may have made it worse. The end result was I had to uninstall wordpress and re-install it. Re-install my themes and plugins.

At the present time, I have to admit that "Blogs Are Easy", for me. It took me some time to get comfortable with the wordpress blogging system. I am still learning things every day. If you want to do a blog on your own and you’re a nerd like me, I can only suggest that you go for it. If you are not a nerd, hire someone to at least install the software and plugins for you and train how to use the admin panel so that you can make post and moderate your blog. You will be a lot happier your blog will be up and running a lot sooner if you hire a professional.

About the Author

Joe Justin is the founder of Arsenal Where they specialize in providing WEB 2.0 internet marketing services to small and medium size businesses. They can handle the smallest job like web site development or can become your dedicated internet marketing department.Marketing. To find out more you can visit them at http://www.aresnalmarketing.com

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