The Web Designer Finally Gets a Blog

I'm always a little bit behind the times so it's no surprise that I am just now creating my first blog. What took me so long you ask? Oh I don't know; certainly not lack of interest. I suppose mostly it was lack of need and lack of time. As for time, it's always a matter of giving something priority and just taking the time. Those cleaning jobs just got pushed off again! Now need is another issue. I still don't need a blog. What the heck will I write about? I guess I will write about blogging and what I learn through this latest endeavor. I am a web designer, I really should have a blog, right? For those of you who don't know what blog means or what a blog is, blog is short for Web-log. A diary of sorts, on the web. As with anything on the web, blogs have come a long way in just a few years. They are used in a variety of ways and have greatly expanded capabilities these days. Unfortunately any crazy with a keyboard can post their thoughts to the web. On the other hand, fortunately the sane among us don't have to read what the crazies write. :-)

I've been listening to folks talk about blogging for years now and I could understand the excitement, especially when blogs were first introduced several years ago. Basically anyone could make a web page to post thoughts, comments, photos, whatever their heart's desire. No messing with server issues or these things called HTML and FTP. And it was free!! I had a pretty good idea what blogs were all about but I wanted to learn more. I wanted to know how easy (or hard) it really is to create a blog and I wanted to know what can all be done once one is set up. Is it more than just posting thoughts and pics? I was also curious if I could use any aspects of blogging in my web design business.

So after 8 years of doing web design and contemplating starting a blog for years (however many years they've been around now), I decided to go for it this past week. The catalyst actually was Lynda.com. I registered there and got started with a few tutorials. Lynda.com is an online, movie-based tutorial resource. Their vast library focuses on software for web and graphic designers with tutorials for such programs as Dreamweaver, Flash, Photoshop, and Illustrator. They also include all Microsoft Office applications as well as one tutorial about blogging using Blogger.com. That one caught my eye so here I am. If I'm going to create a blog, I have to write an initial post!

There were some glitches along the way including Blogger not uploading to my host server so as of now, I am hosting with them on blogspot. Also lynda.com really needs to update their blogging tutorial. I was disappointed in the fact that it was created in 2004. That's way too many years gone past in the web/blogging world.

And while Molly, the instructor in the video did a fine job of stepping me through Blogger, she also told me I don't need to know any HTML but yet she pasted code into a place I would find very difficult to find and understand if I didn't know a lick of HTML. Yes, it is true you can create a blog without knowing a single tag or property or style, but you will get exactly what your blogging system gives you. For example, the background of my Blogger template was bright pink. Now I'm a pink/red lover, so naturally I picked the pink template. But even I thought it was a little too much pink so I wanted to tone it down a bit. That is only accomplished through the HTML code.

I hope to use this site for more information on blogging. As I learn, I will share. Now I'm sure there are tons of articles out on the web with a plethora of great advice, but I will be concerned with my little spec of the world. If questions come up as I'm going about my daily web design business, I will try to answer them here to help others as well. I will also look at other blogging systems and report my findings here.

I may also add posts for my MS Office students at Moraine Park Tech. School is changing over to Office 2007 this fall so all instructors are learning the very different, new version of each program - Access, Excel, PowerPoint, and Word. We are also required to go through the new textbooks and be familiar with the new curriculum. It is a lot of work but a very exciting time for all of us!

If you have questions, please feel free to ask. There are no dumb questions and I love to share my knowledge so I will certainly help if I can. My email address is not listed here because I prefer to not be found by every spam-bot on the web. You can however ask a question by posting here.