No. 2 in a series: My WordPress Odyssey
Last week, I explained my foolish reluctance to commit to WordPress. Once I had pledged to work through the issues, I realized I needed professional help to get started.
I visited a local, independent bookstore (I hope you’ll do the same). We’re lucky in Portland to have not only Powell’s City of Books — one of the wonders of the world — but also Powell’s Technical Books. It’s several blocks from the flagship store and quieter. I wandered the aisles and pondered titles pointing to realms I might never comprehend: Essential CVS, PHP and MySQL, SUSE Linux. I admired the glossy white covers of the O’Reilly Series where ink-drawn animals peer over titles or coil their tails around them. They make geekdom seem kind of cute.
I’m often distracted in bookstores (especially by animal pictures — what a clever marketing scheme) and tried to focus on my mission. Before leaving home, I had searched the internet for recommendations. All signs pointed neophytes like me to one book: WordPress for Dummies. A PhD and a straight A student in high school (except for PE and Driver’s Ed), I don’t like being called a dummy. Or when I am a dummy, I don’t like to admit to it. So I paged through other books on WordPress and web design to see if there was some way, any way, I could walk out of the store with something other than a dummy book. I even flirted with Drupal and Joomla (for which I didn’t see any dummy books) a few more times, and realized yet again they were beyond by reach.
I should be grateful to parking meters for keeping me on task in bookstores. Running out of time, I grabbed WordPress for Dummies and schlepped it to the counter. I tried to hide the title, but the yellow and black design on those books is a give-away. Without smirking, the kind cashier ran my credit card.
Back home, I cracked the book, logged into my WordPress account, and started with the basics. I fought my usual tendency to skip vital information as if I could absorb it just by turning pages. Step-by step — thanks to Lisa Sabin-Wilson’s clear explanations — I learned how to navigate the dashboard and download themes. Within an hour, I had roughed out a design of my first page at www.elizabethenslin.com
The 2nd edition of WordPress for Dummies came out in February 2009 and covers changes in WordPress 2.7. Building a WordPress Blog by Scott McNulty is also getting good reviews. Since I haven’t used it, I can’t compare it to the Dummies book. But I can say this: if you’re a lost beginner like I was, buy at least one of these books and/or find a friend or professional to guide you through the first steps.
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