Now, I'm not one to give advice. Especially about blogging, since, if you're reading this you probably followed the link I tweeted out about a new post. However, I am one to share my opinions.
First off, I'm going to have to set this up for you. Because, you see, I use ScribeFire coupled with Zemanta when writing my posts. For those of you who are unfamiliar with these two programs, let me explain them to you. ScribeFire is a program that enables you to write notes, or post entries to your blog. It's an add-on for Firefox (I don't know if it works with IE, or not because, if you've read any of my posts you'll notice I use a popular Linux distro called Ubuntu, which, not being associated with Microsoft, will not work on my laptop).
Zemanta, like ScribeFire, works as an add-on to Firefox. However, it melds with your blogging platform, and also your email client (namely Yahoo! and GMail), and enables you to add relevant links and graphics to spice up your posts. It does this by scouring the web and finding other posts that it thinks might relate to your subject matter. It also suggests graphics from flickr (your account and others) and other places.
So, before I get of course here and since we've got all that add-on business out of the way, let's get down to brass tacks.
While I'm choosing some related stories to suggest to you folks to read, I check them out to see if they might fit my topic. Anyway, today I clicked on two of them and tabbed over to browse the last one, which is entitled Overcoming The Technology Hurdle to Blogging, by a guy named David Risley. And then I tabbed over to the first link I chose, How to set up a blog: quick guide, posted by Matthew Moore on Telegraph.co.uk. Quick indeed. Four paragraphs: no more, no less. The gist of Moore's post was to "start of with a popular, user-friendly option like Wordpress, Blogger or ... My Telegraph", let them handle the tech part, while you just "select a name for your blog, choose a design and get typing".
But wait! It gets easier. Yes! All you have to do now is gain influence to acquire a sizable readership. Just "link to other bloggers and leave comments on their posts, they will link back to you and your readership will build".
Sorry, Matt, but it doesn't matter what blogging platform you choose -- TypePad, Blogger, Drupal -- the hard part is getting people to read bantering. Just because my blogs title has the word 'fame' doesn't mean I expect it anytime soon. Yes, I sincerely want to gain some "influence" (and, hopefully make some spare change in the process), but for me the easy part is tinkering around with the software.
Now back to David's blog about the "technology hurdle". Dave's whole solution, to me, has to do with using common sense. In other words, use the tools that are freely available to you. For example, he mentions using copy-and-paste, Google, and Wikipedia to help you learn and understand what you need to know. I'm not going to gloss over this. Instead I'm just going to quote the man, so here goes:
First off, I'm going to have to set this up for you. Because, you see, I use ScribeFire coupled with Zemanta when writing my posts. For those of you who are unfamiliar with these two programs, let me explain them to you. ScribeFire is a program that enables you to write notes, or post entries to your blog. It's an add-on for Firefox (I don't know if it works with IE, or not because, if you've read any of my posts you'll notice I use a popular Linux distro called Ubuntu, which, not being associated with Microsoft, will not work on my laptop).
Zemanta, like ScribeFire, works as an add-on to Firefox. However, it melds with your blogging platform, and also your email client (namely Yahoo! and GMail), and enables you to add relevant links and graphics to spice up your posts. It does this by scouring the web and finding other posts that it thinks might relate to your subject matter. It also suggests graphics from flickr (your account and others) and other places.
So, before I get of course here and since we've got all that add-on business out of the way, let's get down to brass tacks.
While I'm choosing some related stories to suggest to you folks to read, I check them out to see if they might fit my topic. Anyway, today I clicked on two of them and tabbed over to browse the last one, which is entitled Overcoming The Technology Hurdle to Blogging, by a guy named David Risley. And then I tabbed over to the first link I chose, How to set up a blog: quick guide, posted by Matthew Moore on Telegraph.co.uk. Quick indeed. Four paragraphs: no more, no less. The gist of Moore's post was to "start of with a popular, user-friendly option like Wordpress, Blogger or ... My Telegraph", let them handle the tech part, while you just "select a name for your blog, choose a design and get typing".
But wait! It gets easier. Yes! All you have to do now is gain influence to acquire a sizable readership. Just "link to other bloggers and leave comments on their posts, they will link back to you and your readership will build".
Sorry, Matt, but it doesn't matter what blogging platform you choose -- TypePad, Blogger, Drupal -- the hard part is getting people to read bantering. Just because my blogs title has the word 'fame' doesn't mean I expect it anytime soon. Yes, I sincerely want to gain some "influence" (and, hopefully make some spare change in the process), but for me the easy part is tinkering around with the software.
Now back to David's blog about the "technology hurdle". Dave's whole solution, to me, has to do with using common sense. In other words, use the tools that are freely available to you. For example, he mentions using copy-and-paste, Google, and Wikipedia to help you learn and understand what you need to know. I'm not going to gloss over this. Instead I'm just going to quote the man, so here goes:
Technical terminology is often misunderstood by beginners. My observation, however, is that most newbies fail to take it upon themselves to learn the terminology.Set small goals for yourself. Learn some HTML -- it's not all that hard to understand and a great place to start is W3Schools (you can learn everything you really need to know from them.) Then play around with your sites design (if you get lost or confused, look in forums and ask questions, or search Wikipedia, or Google). A world of knowledge is at your fingers, so take advantage. But if you take it a little at a time, who knows? You might just end up a pro.
Simply put, if you gloss over words that you do not understand, you’re going to get confused and you’re going to ultimately separate yourself from that confusion. It is human nature. We don’t like confusion. And, in this case, a separation means throwing up your hands in disgust and saying “This whole blogging thing is just too complicated.”
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