A quick hit this morning as I prepare for my day. It occurred to me that recording precisely how I went about starting my Blog, and why, might be of interest to others. And here I am NOT talking about a broad discussion about a Blog and the variety of ways one might go about starting one, but rather, precisely how I went about it. There are countless ways to begin a Blog or a web site, and a textbook-like survey of those approaches is far beyond the scope of my entry. No, I simply wanted to share the exact steps I took and the resources I settled upon.
1. Making the Decision to Start Writing
I had quit Facebook and LinkedIn because I felt they were doing nothing for me, yet I was doing plenty for them by just subscribing. I found that I was reading far more than I was writing, and it is the writing that I wanted to focus upon. Moreover, and simply because Facebook (and to some extent, LinkedIn) had become so petty in so many ways, I wanted to elevate my reading and writing to some other level. Social media sites are not platforms for relatively lengthy posts, but rather the drive-by kind of statements, sentiments, and sound-bytes that have come to dominate so many aspects of our digital lives. I want to be able to write freely without saluting the Like button. Does this make sense?
2. My own Domain
Master of my Domain is not just a punch line from a Seinfeld episode. No, the fact is, I felt lost in Facebook, similar to how I felt lost whilst living in New York and Los Angeles. They are simply ‘too big’ and one’s individuality is lost. Sounds rather selfish, I know, but that is how I felt. Anyway, the idea of owning my own Internet address and becoming responsible for its grooming and presentation was paramount in my thinking. The ownership of an address is rather simple. If you go through WordPress, you end up with something that is by and large, your own, even if it contains the additional pointer of www.xxx.wordpress.com. I decided instead to go through a web hosting service. At first it was Go Daddy, but they let me down. Not sure precisely HOW they let me down, but the experience was far too complex. I turned instead to BlueHost and have been generally satisfied. I secured the address www.jvrusso.com without too much complication, turned on BlueHost’s own instantiation of WordPress, and I was away to the races.
3. The WordPress Learning Curve
It is NOT intuitive, so I recommend buying WordPress for Dummies and Michael Hyatt’s book, Platform. I also watched several YouTube videos about various aspects of WordPress’s dizzying array of features, and that helped me a lot. I won’t even begin to detail the many hours invested in tweaking my WordPress theme, the sidebars, etc. I suspect that I am not alone and that “countless hours” are required no matter how proficient you are.
4. Pages and Posts
Hyatt, among the many others, suggests that you have a landing page, a home page if you will, and then to have a separate page for your Blog posts. This took me a while to understand, but then I got it. Pages are different from Posts. You will have a page where people “land” when arriving at your site (in my case, www.jvrusso.com), and that can be where you welcome them, thank them for coming, and give them some idea of what your Blog will be about. Another page will be the place where Blog entries end up. WordPress will put all your “posts” onto that page in the order in which they are created. You might also want to have a separate page for an “About Me” introduction. Most Bloggers seem to have such a page and it is different from the landing page. I followed the crowd and ended up having a Welcoming landing page, the posts page, and an About Me page.
5. WordPress versus a Stand-Alone Writing Client
You can use the post editor that WordPress provides. It gives you, basically, everything you need. However, it lacked some features that I had come to like inside of Microsoft’s free LiveWriter product. I went with the latter. You don’t have to. On my Macs, I am experimenting with MarsEdit, but I do most of my writing on my Windows Desktop. Linking the blogging capplications to the website was easy. Just remember your user name and password.
6. Is there a Difference between a Blog and a regular Web Site?
No. This took me a while to understand. There is NO difference. What differs is intent and approach. If your intention is to have nothing but a web presence with information about who you are and what you do, then you are setting up a web site with more or less static pages of information. If the intention is to write, then you are setting up a web site with blogging as its primary feature, and in theory the Blog will be incremented daily or several times a week.
By the way, your intention can be BOTH. Your web site can have all manner of static pages full of information, AND a Blog that you increment periodically.
7. How Fancy does it Need to Be?
It shouldn’t be fancy, pure and simple. White paper with black ink, maybe the occasional image, and some indentations to enhance readability. And you’re done. It is the message that counts.
8. How Long should it be?
They say 500 words or less, but I don’t pay any attention to that. Write whatever you want. Period.
9. Nobody is Reading my Blog! Should I be Worried?
Did you start the damn thing to gain viewership and readership? Then, go back to Facebook and pine for the Like effect. If not, then the fact that you are writing what you want to say should be all that matters. Period.
10. The Future
Write ‘til you drop. Say what you want to say until you have nothing more to say. Recall that diary you kept as a kid? Did it matter if anyone read it? Did you stop writing in it after a while? All those kinds of questions are relevant to blogging. It is yours to do with as YOU see fit. Just remember to renew your domain name.