How Did We Get Here?

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I spent seven days failing to get a Wordpress site up and running.

“Set up your website in seconds!” — WordPress
“Fast and simple Installation” — Themeskingdom
“1-Click Installation” — I won't give this company the publicity

My 1-click experience has been akin to playing Russian Roulette with a loaded single-shot Derringer:

  • By click 48 I was somewhat peeved.

  • Click 94 signaled the onset of a tightening chest and halted breathing.

  • Click 147 was me hanging up on tech support.
  • Click 148 was tech support hanging up on me.
  • Click 167 was a bit louder than the others as my wireless mouse shattered against the wall.
  • Clicks 168 through, I'm estimating, 197 came in rapid succession and were of various sound levels as the individual components of my mouse rained down on the floor.
  • Click 198 was the most satisfying. It was the cap coming off a cold bottle of beer.

Before I go further, some background. I started using computers for work when an IBM AT was the Next Big Thing. I did my first website for pay in 1996-ish. For ten years I operated an online retail business for which I designed and executed the website. I am not new to this.

But I grew tired of keeping up with the technology that made my website work and in 2012 I retired the online retail business and from dabbling in web design. The following years were blissful. I never once uttered "MySQL", or ftp'ed a damn thing to a /public_html folder.

But time makes one forget the pain, the suffering, and the late nights wondering why the f$*& the g&%*@#m secure website won't accept an order...again. So when the urge came to blog my strange thoughts, my travel stories, my photographs, my odd take on the world — my Life of Danger — I decided to use the much-touted WordPress. No more would I worry about the technology that put my words and images on the screen, I could concentrate 100% on the content. OK...40% on the content.

My road here was painful. I thought more than once about turning back. My WordPress theme turned my screen into a glass canvass of white pixels. I restored that to find I needed to know coding to customize any theme, even a little bit. But I was determined to stick it out. At Barnes and Noble I found "WordPress for Dummies" — truly the largest "...For Dummies" book I have ever seen. I didn't buy it, as returning it a few days later would have been embarrassing.

I chose another theme. A free one. One that seemed everyone was using. Buoyed by all three—both—of my fans, I kept at it until it was too late to request a refund. And then I peeked at Google Blogger. It was is everything I had expected WordPress to be. It is truly easy. It is powerful enough to deliver my words to your eyes, where-ever you may be, whatever you may be reading this on. But could you at least put some clothes on?

So lucky us, we are together at last. And lucky you, you stumbled in here after 1-click.

Let's have some fun... 

Update: In March 2015, after another failed attempt at implementing Wordpress with the promised ease, this site was upgraded from Google Blogger to Squarespace.