Everything I Know About WordPress

As you may, or may not, know, I built this blog using WordPress.  This enterprise has been a very character-building experience and has enlightened me in ways I am only beginning to comprehend.  I would now like to sum up everything I’ve learned about Wordpress in a single blog post.

You may have noticed that this is not an exceptionally long post.

Okay, first of all there are two WordPresses – WordPress.com and WordPress.org.  WordPress.com is a free, hosted site. WordPress.org is free software, but you have to provide your own hosting and domain name.  In other words, WordPress.com uses WordPress software, but you can use the WordPress software yourself at WordPress.org.  Got that?

Good.

WordPress.org is more complicated than WordPress.com. That’s why I, a non-web designer and marginally technical person, chose that platform. Because if it was going to be harder to use and more difficult to understand, I was all over it!

I am, obviously, insane.

Here’s a list of everything I’ve learned over the last few fun-filled weeks about WordPress, specifically WordPress.org:

• You’ll need to get your own hosting company. Preferably one who won’t mind if you open a helpdesk ticket five minutes after you sign up with them. Like I did.
• You’ll need to get your own domain name. 
• Installing the initial program is pretty easy.
• There are a lot of design templates out there to choose from.
• You can customize pretty much anything you want to customize.
• It’s not “plug and play” if you want to customize anything.
• You’ll need to write actual code if you want to customize stuff.
• It would be good to be familiar with HTML code BEFORE you start trying to customize stuff. As opposed to after you start.  Trust me.
• Customizing all of the stuff you can customize takes a LOT of time. It’s like taking on a second full-time job and will make you very sleep-deprived.
• You may need to drink heavily.
• You must remain calm and keep hands and feet inside the car at all times.
• Remember that there might be a need to panic, but you don’t have to give into it because you are stronger than the computer and have opposable thumbs.
• If the page looks stupid, the internet is forever and nothing ever goes away in cyberspace.
• But there’s no pressure.
• And no one will hear you scream.

Finally, when all is said and done, here is the most important thing I’ve learned about WordPress over the past few weeks….

Hire someone else to set your blog up for you!