Good Morning Everyone!
Picture by Torsten Bolten, on Wikimedia Commons.
As you may recall from last week, I am starting a weekly post on basic football rules – the posts publish on Friday. My ultimate goal is to have this weekly post on its own blog, and in a fit of overconfidence, I decided I would try to build the web page myself through WordPress.org. I have not gotten very far along with the experience, but I have learned two things:
1) My excellent vocabulary does me no good when it comes to the terms necessary to build a blog site.
2) I have no clue what I am doing.
From Print Shop Professional 2.0
The first step seemed easy enough – I had to pick a web host for my blog. I went to WordPress.org, they had several listed and I picked the first one. The registration process went smoothly, my new domain name (www.nflnovice.com) was registered, my account was verified and then I started trying to download the WordPress.org software.
From Print Shop Professional 2.0
That’s when everything came to a screeching halt. There is a very annoying thing called a FTP. After several tries to guess what that meant (Failure to Prepare, Files to Press, Fast Top Press), I finally googled the term to find out that it means “File Transfer Protocol.” I gained a vague understanding that this has something to do with transferring information from one location to another, but that is about all I have learned. To install the WordPress software onto the website I want to use, I have to tell it something about my FTP, and I apparently am not giving it the answer it is looking for. When I go to the place where I am supposed to be able to find the answer it is looking for, it gives me the information I am placing into the WordPress software already! If you think arguing with one computer is hard, trying arguing with three! I have censored several swear words throughout this process.
From Print Shop Professional 2.0
Then two days ago it occurred to me that the National Football League might object to the title “The NFL Novice” under some kind of trademark law. I have spent some more time reading through the trademark papers, and even sending an e-mail to the licensing people at the NFL to try to find an answer, but no luck. Of the many uses the acronym “NFL” is trademarked for, almost none of them fit the category of what I want to do, except for this one phrase about electronic dissemination of information to third persons for some purpose ( I can’t remember the exact phrasing; it is the purpose that is iffy – I may or may not be trying to do that, if I could ever figure out exactly what they mean.) In the course of wading through that issue, I decided to be safe and picked out another name for my new blog “The Football Novice”, with locations at www.footballnovice.com and www.thefootballnovice.com. (Don’t bother to check the links; there’s nothing exciting there yet.)
So then, I went back to WordPress to try to get it installed on one of the three blogs, and went to the “How To” page, which told me that before I did anything, I needed something called a “Text Editor.” At that point, last night, I decided to call it a day. They had several listed on the page,but I hadn’t heard of any of them.
Please Help!
For now, I think I am going to go back to my trusty Kindle, where, gathering electronic dust for a couple of months now, resides “The Idiots Guide to Building A Blog.” I think my efforts have now qualified me to start reading!
So, for at least the next couple of weeks, bear with the Football Friday posts here. I will figure out how to do this, and have the new blog up and running some day!
Have a great day everyone!
Nancy
Tales from the Mom-Side 
From one technologically challenged writer to another, it is SOOOO worth it to pay someone to do this for you!
I believe you! However, I have a shoestring (read zero) budget for most of this project, since this is my hobby, not my job, so I am stuck figuring it out on my own.
Just so I’ll know what I can’t afford, who did you get to do yours?
Nancy
http://www.graphXevolution.com
My business website is not a wordpress site, so I don’t know for sure if they do wordpress sites, but they were wonderful to work with.
Thanks!
Hello Workmomad,
My name is Catherine, I’ve been reading your blog, I’m impressed by its high quality and clean presentation, and also the interesting way you write about lifestyle and raising children and a bit of technology, I enjoyed your interesting views and your articles here a lot.
That is why I would love to add your blog in the blog directory that I admin. It’s a high web traffic, Page Rank 5 blog directory named Blogdire, http://www.blogdire.com, it’s visit count grows exponentially every day and has high quality gained by listing great blogs like yours, because it does not have advertisement nor pop-ups.
Having your blog listed in my directory, will definitely improve it’s page rank in search engines, (like Google), and you will have many visits to leave nice comments and feedback, and of course, more people to enjoy your blog and share your interests.
In exchange of becoming part of the directory, all I ask is a simple link to my site, I can assure you, the operation is extremely simple and there is no money involved.
Let me know if you are interested and what you think.
Kind regards,
Cathy
Thank you for your kind words. I can put a link to your blog site on my WordPress page; that is not a problem. I looked through the site a little bit, but need you to tell me a little more about it. My “clean presentation” here on my site is quite deliberate, and I would like to know that people who read my blog and then link to your site will find equally cleanly presented new blogs to go to, if that makes sense? If that works out, I would be honored to be part of your directory.
Nancy
Please keep us posted as I want to do this too… was it expensive to registar the names??? and how much was the hosting???
Hi Lee!
If you go to the WordPress.org website, there is a page that links several suggested web hosts. I chose BlueHost, which charged about 6.00 a month for basic services. There was one free domain name with the purchase of the service; other domain names are $10.00 per year, plus I paid a little extra for hosting privacy (my registration papers show Blue Host as the company to contact about issues, even though I hold the domain name.) There is a lot more to it, as you can tell from my post, that I am still figuring out. Setting up my blog here was much easier, but then WordPress.com did all the hosting for me.
HA. So what is your motivation for this new project? I laugh because football was so big in Chicago, where I’m from, that I remember one particular game in below zero weather with shirtless Bears fans, who had painted themselves blue and orange, bickering with shirtless Green Bay Packers fans, who had painted themselves yellow and green. The Bears fans were mocking the Packers fans calling them “Cheeseheads” as if it were a terrible insult, but the Packers fans were, in fact, wearing foam cheese on their heads. I LOVE football mentality. We don’t have it here in Brazil. (But they do go crazy, crazy, crazy for futbol – soccer…)
I love “Da Bears” as my family calls them, but also like the Packers. Still, there is no way I would go out in below zero weather unless I had about 12 layers of clothing on. I don’t really know what my motivation is for the new project, besides the fact that I like football and I thought someone might be interested if I wrote about it from a basic level. Are any NFL games televised down there in Brazil?
I’m not sure. You might need a special scrambler for that.