JapanSugoi

Setting up a Blog for Newbies.

First some background. I am NOT a techie and I certainly don’t know HTML coding which is necessary for creating webpages, so I’ve never been able to set up my own website. I would consider myself as someone who surfs the web and is moderately knowledgable about technology without being technical.

I decided to set up a weblog or blog because of all the hype surrounding WordPress (a blog publishing system) and how easy it is for anyone (and their grandmother!) to set up and write a blog. This is TRUE only if you use a hosted blogging solution such as Wordpress.com, Blogger.com and Typepad.com At these sites, it’s pretty much, sign up, give your blog a name and start typing. I would highly recommend any of these if your needs are simple like having an online presence or writing an online diary.
I was more interested in setting up a multi-functional website that was hosted separately and having read too many online articles about WordPress being the answer, I just had to give it a try.

The problem about doing research on the web was that there was

1) too much information
2) too much out of date information
3) too much conflicting information

which made everything very confusing.

The documentation on WordPress.org (non hosted download site) sites are not well written and I would recommend beginners NOT to read any of their online documentation.

What I decided to do was buy an authoritative book about Wordpress and read that first. Online, there were many reviews about several books with many reviewers complaining that books were never up to date since WordPress was a fast evolving application - what you read could be outdated by the time you start using the software! (True since WordPress 2.0 is quite different from WordPress 1.5)

Undaunted, I splashed out for WordPress 2 Visual QuickStart Guide (puchased at Amazon.com) which had lots of screenshots (just what I wanted!) and a simple explanation about blogging, how WordPress works and how to install WordPress on a server.