Charles Shaar Murray’s spankin’ new blog
Sorry I’ve been away for a while but I’ve been constructing Charles Shaar Murray’s site which is now LIVE and it’s a little beauty. (I think so, anyhow. But do let me know what you think.)
I know precious little about webdesign. I use Blogger because it sets it up for you and also has widgets, but you can also access the code and add little chunks of stuff various programmers give you. And there’s a brilliant Blogger site that gives blogger tips and idiot-proof instructions for Search Engine Optimisation.
But WordPress.org does have a comprehensive dashboard and so many functions that are easier use. So I opted for the WP platform for CSM. Note that only WP.com is free — for the dot org platform you have to pay for web-hosting from a third party company.
Another reason I chanced my arm on WP dot org rather than dot com (the freebie) is that there’s a much-vaunted “one-click” installation that gets your site from the hosting company to the WP platform without you having to fiddle with code. Your eyes may be glazing over as you read this, but hark and heed my experience because you may need this one day.
I spent two days on the “one-click” installation. Did you hear that? TWO WHOLE FRAKKIN’ DAYS caught in a nightmare loop. I completed everything at the web-hosting site and then got to the one-click install page. There, staring me in the boat-race, was the WordPress icon already highlighted and ready for me to click. I clicked, it took me to the WordPress page where there was a download button for the software. Funny, I thought I’d just done that. So I downloaded what was to be the first of many, many, MANY files. And then read the directions for WP’s “Famous Five Minute Install”.
Dear reader, as you may have guessed, it was “five minutes” like “one-click” was achieved by one click. It wasn’t five minutes. It wasn’t even five hours.
Two days later with only four hours sleep, my neck hurt, my eyes could barely focus, and all I could do was burble in the place of human speech. Being a stubborn sort of cuss, I wasn’t giving up until victory was mine. It was around this time that in desperation I scrolled to the bottom of the “one-click” page. There I saw it. The blue button of sweet release that read: “Install it for me now!”.
So there. Lesson learnt. Always look thoroughly, think laterally. And scroll down. The story of my life.
Now, please visit the blinkin’ thing that was not so much source code as source of agony. And admire.
Charles Shaar Murray’s website.
Anna’s food blog here:
http://annacheneats.blogspot.com/
And a thing of wonder and delight it is, too … stylish and elegant, yet eminently navigable and explorable.
Is there no end to this woman's myriad gifts and talents?
Thanks for trying to help in my darkest hour of webbage, Gwei Mui. I can't believe that all I had to do was scroll down … !!!
Well done for getting there MM…. in these circumstances madness has a tendency to set in (certainly know that experience)
"So there. Lesson learnt. Always look thoroughly, think laterally. And scroll down. The story of my life."
Indeed!! 🙂 I can relate to that as well
The website looks fab as well. And have linked to it as well.
Glad you succeded. And yes the site is a good'un. Even though I've down a bit of web design the transfer from your PC where everything works to the world wide web can often result in sleepless nigts and wodges of hair beng torn from ones scalp. I too love the freebie sites that do it all for you 🙂