Into the unknown .. with a blog/website

[Richard]

'WordPress For Dummies' (books) may be a good place to begin.
Nothing wrong with that, or a course locally perhaps?
If you meet like-minded beginners you can swap ideas.

[Richard]

seahermit you should sort out the host and do the simplest writing in one of the Wordpress editors and learn other stuff on the way before getting massively frustrated that you can't format perfectly and import text seamlessly.
Keep it simple and come back to awkward stuff later.

https://websitesetup.org/how-to-start-a-blog-guide/

https://designsbytierney.com/2010/01/ho ... t-or-page/

[seahermit]

Please tell me how I can do a course locally and meet like-minded beginners, when most places remain closed down and I have hardly seen anyone since the middle of March! Like many of us of course.

Thanks for all the advice, it is appreciated, but Wordpress remains much more complicated than the "marketing" would suggest and the software doesn't seem to work smoothly. I will root around for info of course, but a lot of Wordpress's own basic instructions are incomprehensible to me.

It certainly isn't going to be a quick project - half a year, I expect, when I have slots of time!

[Richard]

HTML is notorious for its inability to render content in an aesthetically pleasing way.
To circumvent that limitation, a separate language had to be invented to handle the presentation of Web pages -- Cascading Style Sheets.
Then there is the unpredictable behaviour of HTML across different browsers, anyone who wishes to create a website using HTML code must spend weeks first just learning HTML. With each major release HTML becomes more complex and new tags are added and not all browsers have the latest interpretation capabilities implemented.

People spend their lives arranging this sort of stuff professionally seahermit, so don't beat yourself up about the complexity.
Before Wordpress et al. you would need resources such as 'Dreamweaver' to create web pages.

Google has a free website builder:

https://sites.google.com/new

Weebly is said to be easy to use (beginner-friendly).

https://www.weebly.com/uk?lang=en

Wix is another beast:

https://blog.publishdrive.com/create-au ... using-wix/

...perhaps try whatever seems more accessible/intuitive to work with.

[seahermit]

Thanks for the helpful links etc., Richard.

I researched in Google - confirmed all my misgivings, it ain't just me! There are numerous quirks with Wordpress - e.g. you cannot use your computer return key in the ordinary way to type text. If you do, WP creates endless new paragraphs and throws your text all over the place. The ways round it are simple enough (from Dummies online etc.).. but not a mention in the WP basic instructions (maybe in the tutorials). But what could be more basic and important than typing some ordinary text?!

Likewise, in some formats (WP "blocks"), say the "poem" block (it's ok for a paragraph and some other formats), you cannot colour the text or the background, so everything comes out black text on a white background - looks amateurish and awful. The tricks are quite simple and easy but nothing about this is in the WP instructions.

WP is useful for me at the moment and, after a lot of messing about, I am discovering ways to be a bit creative, but the LAST people WP is for are beginners/technophobes! They wouldn't comprehend any of the technical jargon. The online tutorials look to be the most promising way.

I think I will stick with WP for now, the other sites like Weebly seem more basic and they are also difficult or impossible to link to a custom domain name.

[seahermit]

I would be very glad of opinions on the domain name. Years ago, people started calling me the "quirky poet"! It became my handle, spelt online as "kwirkypoet" but I didn't include it in my domain name for this website because of the length.

However, a number of different "Tony Frost" listings come up in Google. Thinking of Google's search engines and to make it easier for people to find me, I am thinking of switching to another domain name - "tonyfrostkwirkypoet.co.uk". After all, if you Google "kwirkypoet", my real name still comes up (not at all in the first pages!).

What is more important, a short snappy domain name or a longer one that everyone will recognise?

[seahermit]

And the .com version of that is available!

[Richard]

A Google on 'kwirkypoet' certainly does not show anything about you on my computer, seahermit.
Neither does it do so when I suffix that epithet.

I do get things like "Mad, Bad and Dangerous to know", however!

[seahermit]

I Googled kwirkypoet, also my name, the other night. You have to search around, be a bit clever, but some of my old posts came up eventually (including one or two I would prefer to have "died"!).

Richard, what do you think about my comments on the domain name? I desperately need a second opinion.

[Richard]

Domain names have an impact on search engine optimisation (SEO) but it is only one factor, if you want to further boost the SEO of your website you shouldn't ignore the power of social media.
Defunitely go for a .com version
It's a good idea not to exceed 2-3 words, so keep it short.
You want people to remember your domain name and type it accurately. Complicated or uncommon words or names may be hard to remember and spell correctly
A short snappy domain name, therefore, is better than a longer one