We have moved

I’m happy to say that I have now progressed to a WordPress.org web site.

To visit the new site, kingsolutions.org.uk, click here.

Information Overload

After extensive searching for information on blogging and information on blogging using WordPress in particular I have come to the conclusion, there is too much information available.

If a newbie (like me) were to read all the information available there would be no time to do anything constructive, so what is required is a, Get Started Quickly Guide, i.e. a step by step, quick, simple, one page guide to setting everything up and getting your blog online in, shall we say as a ball park figure, 15 minutes max.

A good example for how things can be constructed to assist newbies is the “Microsoft Office” product and their excellent use of Wizards. Maybe someone could construct a PHP wizard along similar lines. If necessary I’ll give it a go myself once I’ve learned the art of blogging. A niece future project maybe.

Ok, the above having been said, where am I at this stage? My conclusion is, get a good book on blogging. The one I have selected is:

WordPress for Dummies 2nd Edition
by Lisa Sibin-Wilson
http://designs.wordpress.com
Wiley Publishing Inc.

Lisa’s text is clear, concise and practical. She takes you through the process of setting up your WordPress blog in a nice simple manner that even a fool like me can follow, and that’s saying something.

That’s it till next time… happy blogging…

The Story So Far…

• I’ve downloaded WordPress by going to http://wordpress.org/ and clicking on the, “Download WordPress 2.8″ button
• I’ve also set up the free WordPress site (obviously as you’re reading this, sorry for stating the obvious) by clicking on get a free blog on WordPress.com and following the prompts.
• I suppose I should have read the instructions first, ” New to blogging? Learn more about WordPress, then follow the three easy steps below to start blogging in minutes”, but who does these days. But that having been said, once I did read the contents of the page I was even more confused than when I started. So not a very helpful page for idiots like me.

Read the instructions?

• Having clicked on the documentation tag at the top of the page, (thinking, I had better see what I should be doing), ” http://codex.wordpress.org/New_To_WordPress_-_Where_to_Start “, I was even more confused. This page looks to me like it’s dropping you straight into the web developer programming side of things.
  Me, I don’t even know what a blog is yet, never mind how to write one.
• Having searched extensively, and believe me, it wasn’t easy, I found WordPress TV at http://wordpress.tv/ .

So, once I’ve viewed some of the documentation, I’ll be back…

Purpose of this blog

This blog will be aimed at educating one particular idiot (that would be me) on blogging and in my travels through this process I will try to give a reasonably condensed step by step guide to the trials, tribulations and (most importantly) fun in setting up a WordPress blog, website and CMS.

Aims of this project

• Learn about blogs and blogging
• Construct a blog using the WordPress.com website (free)
• Construct a blog using a standard website (not-free)
• Turn WordPress website into a CMS driven website.
• Produce tutorials, text, audio and video along the way.
• Learn how to embed the text, audio and video into web pages.
• Figure out what all the acronyms such as RSS mean and what you do with them.

Hello World

Welcome

Hi and welcome to the first day of my first attempt at blogging using WordPress 2v8.

As you can probably tell already I am completely new to this world of blogging, so you will have to forgive (and help correct hopefully) the idiotic statements, dead ends and just plain stupidity I come out with.

A little about me

I have been an industrial electrical, mechanical, multi-skilled engineer most of my life having been initially trained in HMF REME as a professional killer (only joking), as an electrician.

I have decided, at this late stage in life to have a career change, so in the last few weeks I have been learning HTML, XHTML, PHP, MySQL, XML, Dreamweaver, Photoshop and lots of other stuff (makes your head spin doesn’t it, well it does mine).

Having looked at the various options available for setting up a web site that may one day turn into a business opportunity I have decided WordPress is the best route to take at this time.

I’ve looked a various ISPs (Internet Service Providers), Web hosing companies, CMS software (Content Management Systems) such as, Drupal ( http://drupal.org/ ), Impress (http://www.impresscms.org/ ), SilverStripe (http://www.silverstripe.com/ ) and XOOPS (http://www.xoops.org/ ) and decided that given the enormous number of possibilities WordPress is by far the simplest (judging by the press) to get off the ground.

So here we go…