Wednesday, September 18, 2013

Taking it to the Next Level


Today was the first day of an online class I'm taking to learn how to use WordPress. It's a first for me, in terms of taking a class online - which so far is awesome. I had toyed with taking this class well over a year ago. Even though I wish that I hadn't waited, I'm glad to have found these online classes through my community college via ed2go.

In lesson 1 our instructor addressed a number of questions you should ask yourself before setting up a website/blog. I won't go through them, but it did take me back to my initial decision to start All-Purpose Flower. I don't think I asked myself a lot of those questions, like: "What kind of presentation is most effective?". I knew what I liked and set it up that way. I did base a lot on blogs that I liked to read, look at, or follow links from. 

I of course had problems finding my WordPress account, despite following  the instructions line by line. I scrambled around, finally figured out that I was logged off. Logged on again and it worked. Had I been in a class room trying to figure that out while listening to a lecture, I would have missed some other crucial direction and gotten lost. Taking the course online lets me move at my own pace.

The reason I started my own blog was finding Blogging for Bliss, Crafting Your Own Online Journal, by Tara Frey. In her book she instructs how to start a blog, compares platforms, gives advice on how to edit photos and has pages of example blogs and photos. In fact I should add her book to my Amazon favorites.

It will be an interesting class as I learn how to use WordPress and create a website and blog. I had thought I'd get to choose my own topic, but that's been chosen for the class. I can see that after the first lesson it will have me reevaluating this blog and rethinking how I present the topics that interest me.

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