My blogging experience
Over60 community member and regular blogger, Sandra Ludinski, shares her experience of launching a blog and offers some helpful tips for others who'd like to do the same.
Itching to blog but not sure where to start? Take a deep breath, stay calm, clear your head of all other thoughts and lastly, hone that sense of humour. Summons your self-belief and patience and you're all set to go.
Now I'm definitely not the most tech-savvy person ever to venture into cyberspace, yet I have managed to put together my own blog - and you can too. I do have to confess that I had a little help. I enrolled myself in a short "blogging for beginners" course run by the Queensland Writers' Centre. This course ran for 6 weeks with a two hour class each week. The aim of the course was to have each member of the class posting on their own blog by the end of the course. And guess what? That's exactly what happened. Despite being sick for one class and realizing that I had booked tickets for a concert (which is a rare event) another week, I still managed to get a somewhat basic blog up and running.
There are some things that you should give a little thought to before jumping into the blogosphere. Firstly, think about why you want to blog and what you will be blogging about. Is it for fun, is it to share information and perhaps images with family and friends or do you intend to blog for business purposes? Your blog will need a name and that name should reflect the subject matter that readers will find on your blog. It's worth spending a bit of time and thought on this and then you need to keep your fingers crossed and hope that some other blogger hasn't beaten you to it. You have the opportunity to check this in the set up process.
At this point I'd have to tell you that I'd have been far from confident doing this on my own and I'm forever grateful for the good humour, saint-like patience and amazing tolerance of our tutor. I'm sure she must have needed a bex and a little lie down after these classes. Or maybe even a stiff drink. I know I arrived home each week feeling exhausted and would lie in bed with blogging terminology buzzing around in my head. However, having now been through the process of setting up my blog, I'd encourage you to give it a go yourself and if you run into trouble, perhaps then find a course for beginners and get your problems sorted.
Once you log on to Wordpress (or any other blog site you may choose), you'll need to select a theme for your blog. The theme determines the appearance and sets the tone of your blog. Wordpress has a great range of the themes from which to choose and plenty of free ones to get you started without damaging the hip pocket at all. You can choose formal or informal, slick and polished or fun and funky themes - there are themes to suit all styles. Keep in mind that you can change your theme at any time, you're not locked in to one theme forever.
From here things get a little bit more technical. This is the part where it's great to have someone "in the know" leading you but I don't want to put you off. If you're doing this yourself, follow the prompts and use the tutorials. Wordpress has tutorials that are easy to follow and a help forum that can be useful. Again I must 'fess up and say that I was so grateful that our tutor had generously (and perhaps foolishly) given us her contact details. I did Facebook message her about a couple of things that were beyond my very basic capabilities and she quickly set me straight. Something that I wish I'd had explained to me is that there are two parts to your blog: the front end and the back end. The front end is what you and others see when your blog is opened. The back end is where you do all your posts, customizing, editing and all the tricky stuff. Think of your blog as having a split personality.
Don't be fooled into thinking I know what I'm doing even now - I keep clicking on things, exploring, changing things around, making my blog look like a dog's breakfast and having to backtrack to something that looks less like a joke and more "bloggable". Yes, my teeth have been ground down a little and I think I may have used a few words that I wouldn't want my mother to hear but the feeling you experience when you get it right is worth the angst. Don't be afraid to duck in and out of options and remember everyone's best friend, google. Whatever you do, don't give up! If it seems too overwhelming, find a short course and don't be embarrassed to ask questions of your tutor. There's always someone in the class who asks a sillier question than you - and everyone learns when you ask questions.
So why do I blog? Well, I don't take this whole blogging thing too seriously. My intention was to have fun with it. For me it's a place where I can post articles I've written on different websites for friends and family to read, somewhere to voice an opinion, share funny videos and to show my photography to anyone who's interested. Your blog is what you want it to be and can be as flash or as humble as you like. You can always jazz it up later, when you have the basics sorted. There are plenty of opportunities to customize, add widgets and use plug-ins. What does that all mean? I'm not sure - that's blogspeak and I'm off to phone a friend - google, that is!
If you'd like to take a peek at my very humble blog, you'll find it at babybloomin.wordpress.com.