lorimarsha

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Blogography

Promises...promises

Time: Last weekend
Place: Barnes and Noble
Mood: A need to know

Surrounded by thousands of inspiring biographies, novels and cookbooks, I found myself drawn to the section frequented by nerds, geeks, and data-junkies -a safe harbor of how-to’s for those who have abandoned the emotional self-help aisles.

Scanning the titles, I felt an immediate sense of calm. (Even without having read “Feel the Fear and Do It Anyway” or “The Little Book of Calm.”) I felt a small twinge of anxiety at “Twitter Power” and “Photoshop Elements”- two areas of technology I have yet to explore. But when I saw “Building a Wordpress Blog People Want to Read,” I realized I’d found my Holy Grail. Finally, I’d learn to master this blogging thing and people would actually read and comment.

I chose Wordpress, not for its ease of use, but because I discovered it back in 2005 when I first decided to start a blog. I didn’t do a lot of research back then and knew nothing about Blogger, Movable Type, Blogspot or any of the other platforms. So I sort of felt stuck with it when I decided to reformat my website to blog-based.

But as I read the book, I realize that even though I chose Wordpress by accident, I am in the company of The New York Times and Martha Stewart. The author, Scott McNulty provides easy-to-understand pointers on managing the dashboard and extending its capabilities with plug-ins. (A plug-in is just something you can add that creates new features- like linking to my Etsy store.)

I’ve just begun to skim the surface of Wordpress’ full capabilities and that’s probably okay. I don’t want to start talking in php-ese and bringing up templates and tag clouds to the barrista at Stell.

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This entry was posted on Wednesday, March 18th, 2009 at 9:14 am and is filed under Popular Culture. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.

4 Responses to “Blogography”

  1. March 18th, 2009 at 9:10 pm

    Scott McNulty says:

    I’m a bit of a blogging software vagabond. I use TypePad for my personal blog and WordPress for almost all my other blogs (though I have dabbled in more blogging software than I care to admit).

    Anyway, I hope my book inspires you to get more out of WordPress! And remember, the book makes a great gift. ;)

  2. March 18th, 2009 at 9:56 pm

    lori says:

    Thanks Scott! I added a link to Amazon for your book. Yes, it would make a great gift. I appreciate you stopping in.

  3. March 20th, 2009 at 10:54 am

    keli says:

    I have been using WordPress for years and love it… especially the ability to easily change templates when you feel like a redesign. I’ll have to check out the book.
    Thanks for sharing Lori!

  4. March 20th, 2009 at 12:36 pm

    lori says:

    Hi Kelly- Thanks for stopping in. Maybe there’s something you can teach me about wordpress…sounds like you’re pretty experienced! The book is really helpful.