As a reader and a writer, I am about as technically qualified as a door-stopper. For ten or twenty years, I had been playing with some creative ideas that two years ago began tugging at my sleeve to be brought to fruition, and it felt that websites were the best place to start.
But embarking on a venture to create two, three, four or more websites with zero knowledge of web design or social media was slightly daunting. Particularly as the budget was next to nothing, so the option to pay a web developer or graphic designer simply wasn’t on the table. My world-changing ideas would need to be DIY, or die.
Among other marginal skills, I am quite good at inventing words, so I cooked up ‘blogophyte’ to describe a neophyte blogger. Among the thousands of dazzlingly competent web developers and other professionals, might it be helpful to hear the journey of a blogophyte piecing together the jigsaw of social media and web development tools to find creative expression through WordPress?
I believe that some of the tools and guidance I found made the difference, at least to someone of a literary and non-technical disposition, between ‘DIY’ and ‘die’. What did I find most bewildering, and what appeared to me like a life raft on a rough sea of confusion? And how far did it make sense to run on my own steam, and when did I conclude that human help was really needed?
And those projects? The first is launched and beginning to gain momentum, and the next two are taking shape. I anticipate they will take less time to design than the first one, as the learning curve is easing.
Thank you for giving this your consideration, I’d be delighted to share the confessions of a blogophyte, idiocies and all, and hope it might help others learn more easily, or if you already know what you are doing, help you to help the geek-free, tech-lite blogophyte.
Blogophytes of the world, unite!