Website Building Chronicles 1 - For Morons

Even though I've been blogging for 6 years, there's a lot that I DO NOT KNOW about web publishing. In fact, since I've been using the user-friendly Blogger.com I never had to learn even the BASICS.

First you have to buy a domain name for $10 through GoDaddy or someone else. For lack of a better idea (and available keywords!), I bought HomeschoolDad.com. There's nothing there, probably won't be much on it for a while, and I may indeed find a better domain and switch it....but for the meantime that's my new site.  Trust me, it most certainly will not look like that much longer.

Then you have to pay someone to *host* your content - I'm using DreamHost for something like $5 a month.

These are the easy steps that most of y'all, even the Luddites, know well.

But then I installed Wordpress - a *semantic personal publishing platform* - and the complications started to arise, er....the learning curve started to steepen.

Normal blog publishing can be done in much the same manner as with Blogger.com - by going to the right website and simply *logging in*.

But the major reason for going with Wordpress is that as an *open source* platform, one can add all sorts of gadgets, plugins, and software embellishments to the bones of their website. Many are free but the good, snazzy ones cost $$$$ and, to the frustration of relative n00bs like myself, require manual installation and potentially mid-level HTML coding.

Another thing I learned, after a few hours of angst on Saturday, is that to communicate with my new website, I have to FTP - File Transfer Protocol - whatever files (i.e. software, plugins, video files, PDFs...) I want to utilize on my website. Who knew? For that you have to download one of the many FTP programs available. Upon the advice of Paul Mitchell, who's much further along with his commercial website....I went with Core FTP Lite. And even after figuring all that out, downloading the uploader, and whatnot I still had problems zipping files up to my website. I had the freakin' *port number* wrong!

Apparently there's a whole lot more to it. There's *encryption* for FTP-ing; I can enable others (*clients*?) to upload files to my website; etc. Arrgghh!!

Meanwhile I'm still baffled by *roots*, *subdomains*, *directories*, etc. I never know what files go where OR what 80% of the files I see in these folder freakin' are. Such are the bumps and potholes along the stubborn DIY path, I guess.

I told y'all I was a n00b!!!

Though the wealth of techno-information I have get up to speed on is vast and daunting, not only am I fully capable, it's also invigorating to USE MY BRAIN for a change. And that was one of the major problems with my career as a trader. After 15 years watching the tape, I could trade with my eyes closed. Someone could give me $100 billion today to allocate and I could do it without ANY of that useless analyst research, without a trading desk *team*, without expensive *sales-trader* brokers, without reading the WSJ, etc. All I would really need is a PC and a buxom secretary and I'll bet my positions would just as *good* as what these slick skimmers come up with.