To Blog or Not to Blog - That is the Question

“Why don’t you start a Blog?”  This is Sheila speaking, an artist friend and fellow member of the Don Gorge Community Group committee.  “It’s much better than a website and you can update it really quickly and easily.”  I’m not convinced.  It had taken me the best part of a week to pay the annual registration fee for the website, which I was told would be cut off if I hadn’t paid it by the due date  and that was the last thing I wanted as it had taken me weeks to set that up.  The problem was, every time I tried it wouldn’t let me access the checkout for some reason.  In the end, the only way through the mire was to agree to set up a continuous credit which I did, though reluctantly, to save the site.  How easy would it be to cancel this if I decided to start a blog and found the website was unnecessary after all?  Who knows?  Certainly not me.

Well, I’ve got one,”  this is Sheila again and she means a Blog, “and it’s brilliant.”  I hesitate and splutter a bit.  I just wish some fairy Blog-spotter would take all this off my hands and do it for me.  I think I’m fairly computer literate, but some things confound me.  I don’t know what some of the jargon means and so I don’t always understand the instructions or warnings.  It produces a sense of utter confusion and futility which makes me want to just back off.  But she won’t give up yet.

“It’s not difficult and you’ll soon get used to it.  Honestly.”  I begin to show signs of weakness, which she jumps on.  “I’ll show you how to start if you like.”  How can I refuse?  She’s so enthusiastic – and she’s older than me!  Anything she can do, I can do at least as well, can’t I?  Well, no, not really.  I can’t paint for toffee, can I?  But maybe I should at least have a go, if only to show her I’m not a total dim-wit.

I turn on my Notebook and we sit side by side in front of it.  “It’s a bit small isn’t it?  Haven’t you got anything with a bigger screen?  The Blog will look much better on a bigger screen.  I don’t know how you can see it on there.”  She has a really up-to-date Apple Mac with a screen like the local cinema.  We do have a laptop and a desktop, but the laptop is very slow and the desktop is upstairs.  Mick usually uses that and is so untidy that it’s not worth the effort for me to go there unless I’m really desperate.  I just use my Notebook downstairs.  The screen is small, but at least nobody else is allowed to interfere with it, so it’s OK.

“Now, go to Google and search for ‘Blogger’.”  I do as I’m told and a message immediately appears telling me I can’t do it and to click ‘learn more’.  This is the same message I was receiving when I tried to pay my bill a few weeks earlier.  I know in my bones this isn’t going to be as easy as Sheila has made out.  “Oh, I know what it is,” she says.  “The website was created through a Google Apps account.  What you need is an ordinary Google account and when you’ve done that, you should be able to get into Blogger and go on from there to create the Blog.  It’s really easy, just follow the instructions.”  She leaves me to it.

So, how do I get myself another Google account?  I guess I have to create a new email and so click all the labels available and somehow – I don’t remember how – find a page that invites me to register by choosing a new email address and password.  Now, I already have a personal email, a Don Gorge email called lizreeve@dongorgecommunitygroup.com and don’t want to confuse these with a new one so I have to find a name format that fits into the same mould but is sufficiently different that I will remember which is which.  Nor do I want anyone else to actually use this new email as the original one has already been publicised.  I rack my brain and settle on lizreeve.dgcg@googlemail.com, choose a different password and, thankfully, find this is acceptable to the invisible computer brain that judges the efficacy of such things.

I search for Google Blogger.  A new page comes up with a variety of websites to choose from and I pick ‘Create your free Blog’ hoping it will take me to the right place and it does.  ‘Dashboard’ appears with a variety of headings, including ‘design’ which I click on and choose ‘simple’.  You can change this later, it tells me, but I’ve now forgotten how!  This then invites me to design how I want the page to look.  There are boxes of various sizes dotted around the screen with little messages inside saying ‘Navbar’, ‘About me’, ‘Followers’, ‘Pages’, ‘Blog Posts’, ‘Attribution’ ‘Stats’ and ‘Add a Gadget’ and the word ‘edit’ in each.  After a quick look round these, I decide to check out Sheila’s Blog to get an idea of how hers looks, and then do some editing of my own, before creating a ‘post’ by cutting and pasting a few things from elsewhere to see what happens.  Inevitably, it doesn’t look totally as it should and editing is necessary.  The ‘edit post’ heading on the dashboard seems to fit the bill, so I click it and don’t know what to do.  I try a few things, but nothing works.  There’s obviously more to this than meets the eye.  I decide I need another consultation with the oracle and make an appointment with Sheila.  At the appointed hour, I take my Notebook with me so that we can compare things as we go along.  I turn it on and only then realise I need a wireless connection.  Amazingly, after looking for available networks, I find one that works and off we go.

“Are you there yet?”  Sheila again.  She is biting at the bit.  She doesn’t realise that my little ‘Mini’ doesn’t go as fast as her ‘Masserati’.  No matter, we get there eventually.

“I don’t know how you can see that,” she says, “It’s so small.”  We’ve been through this before, so I keep quiet and then change the subject.  “What are gadgets?” I ask.  “How do you get them all in a line down the side?”  “Why do some headings come out at the bottom of my blog instead of down the side?”  She demonstrates, but her screen is slightly different to mine – well it’s Apple isn’t it and min is Windows.  What can you expect?  She eventually gets through to me some of the finer points of layout.

“What you really need are ‘static pages’,” she says.  I agree that one of the documents I’ve copied in would be ideal for one of these as I didn’t need it to change on a regular basis, and she shows me how to create such a page which I will try when I get home.  I would also like to know how many people look at the site – ‘stats’.  I have asked it to provide these, and find that 35 hits have been received so far – but they’re all mine!  “You don’t want that.” She says.  “You’ll have to change the setting.  If you go to ‘help’ at the top there, someone will have asked the question before and you’ll find an answer.”  Thanks a lot Sheila.

I return home to tackle my still unanswered questions and hope ‘help’ will come up trumps.  It does to a degree.  I just don’t understand the jargon until one correspondent says “these are my favourite stats sites’.  I pick ‘StatCounter’ at random and hope for the best.  At least it’s free.  “Copy the Code below,’ it says, “and paste it into the relevant box.”  I do and it works, except that it is still counting my own hits.  I return to the StatCounter site, saving it in my Favourites for future use  – I now have so many ‘important’ pages and sites saved in my Favourites list that it’s off the page, but I worry if I don’t save them I won’t remember their names and will never find them again.   It takes some time, but I eventually find the necessary item to tick – it’s called a ‘blocking cookie’.  Having done that, I turn the counter back to zero, ready to start again. 

I also think I’ve created a ‘static page’, but I’m not really sure and it keeps changing the size of the font.  I don’t understand why, but decide to add some gadgets anyway – photos this time – and it works.  I insert our logo and another, bigger picture to make a heading and it’s looking quite good.  I’m steaming ahead now.

I email everyone in my Don Gorge email list in the hope that current friends and supporters will check it out.  Two days later, I have two Followers and 35 hits.  Wow.  I can hardly believe it.  No-one’s left a comment yet, but, hey, it’s early days.  Sheila has emailed a ‘Well done” so that’s something isn’t it?  There’s still a lot to learn, I’m sure, and lots more people to invite along for the ride, but so far I agree it is easier than the website.

The address is http://dongorgecommunitygroup.blogspot.com.  Why don’t you look us up?  Maybe become a Follower?  Maybe leave a comment?  It’d be good to hear from you.

© Liz Reeve
24.10.11

 

This was written for my writing group at Tickhill in South Yorkshire following my first attempt at a Blog.  As you can see, I am now attempting one for myself, so thought this was a good place to start.