Hi everyone,

A thousand times I've been on the verge of forgetting the whole notion of WP and using Blogger instead. Please convince me not to do that. I'm running out of patience for anything technical.

I understand very little of what I read in the official help guides and forum at WordPress.org . I have no doubt it's good information, but to me it's like trying to read Sanskrit. WAY over my head. The third-party tutorials I've found are just as confusing to me.

Please give me your recommendations for the most elementary WP help guides you've found. I mean really, really, even ridiculously basic. Online or print, doesn't matter.

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AnnaLisa Michalski, Sunny Words Writing Services

I found this tutorial that gives you a good start on customizing a Wordpress template without getting too technical. I know there is another post on here with other Wordpress tutorial resources that had some links in it, and will try to find it.

There is also the wp support group. Try there as well.

Andrea~

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Action Jackson Virtual Assistant|

AnnaLisa - What exactly is confusing to you? I just downloaded from Wordpress.org and followed instructions. To customize, you really need to know basic html, but you can pick a theme and set it up pretty easily, in my experience.

Ask about specifics?

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Mary H. Ruth/Virtual Writing & Communications
http://www.writingVA.com

Hi everyone,

Thanks for all your tips and help. A special thanks to MaryH for the template and tutorial links she shared.

Finding my way around the unfamiliar terminology is what I find frustrating. For example, I don't get the what categories are, and the explanations given in the help guides make no sense to me, either. I made the mistake of creating one category when I really meant it to be a tag, and now there seems to be no way of deleting it. Little things like that, they add up. I just don't have the control I expected through the dashboard.

I have not attempted customizing a theme yet, but I'm not too worried about that part since I can generally make sense of .css.

That said, I am happy to report things are actually moving in the right direction now. It turns out I'm not HALF the idiot I was beginning to feel like. There was a line of code in my .htaccess file that was causing my browser not to read the .css file. That's why no matter what format changes I told WP to apply, they didn't show up on my screen when I viewed the blog. My new coder hero (a techie very familiar to all of us here at VAF, by the way) straightened that out.

Once I get this blog going the way I want (which I am hopeful will be VERY soon now), I'm afraid my next order of business will be finding the right diplomatic words to let my former coder know about this and several other problems. I hate this kind of situation, by my count, three of the five things I had to have fixed were in .htaccess files he wrote.

But that's a problem for later. I'm off to work on the blog!

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AnnaLisa Michalski, Sunny Words Writing Services

'Course I knew you'd figure it out. Wordpress is really pretty marvelous. You'll be glad you stuck with it.

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Mary H. Ruth/Virtual Writing & Communications
http://www.writingVA.com

Originally Posted by AnnaLisa Michalski

Hi everyone, Thanks for all your tips and help. A special thanks to MaryH for the template and tutorial links she shared. Finding my way around the unfamiliar terminology is what I find frustrating. For example, I don't get the what categories are, and the explanations given in the help guides make no sense to me, either. I made the mistake of creating one category when I really meant it to be a tag, and now there seems to be no way of deleting it. Little things like that, they add up. I just don't have the control I expected through the dashboard. I have not attempted customizing a theme yet, but I'm not too worried about that part since I can generally make sense of .css. That said, I am happy to report things are actually moving in the right direction now. It turns out I'm not HALF the idiot I was beginning to feel like. There was a line of code in my .htaccess file that was causing my browser not to read the .css file. That's why no matter what format changes I told WP to apply, they didn't show up on my screen when I viewed the blog. My new coder hero (a techie very familiar to all of us here at VAF, by the way) straightened that out. Once I get this blog going the way I want (which I am hopeful will be VERY soon now), I'm afraid my next order of business will be finding the right diplomatic words to let my former coder know about this and several other problems. I hate this kind of situation, by my count, three of the five things I had to have fixed were in .htaccess files he wrote. But that's a problem for later. I'm off to work on the blog!

SO happy things are moving along!! I love wordpress.org. I use them for both my VA site and blog. I love the plugins and the ability to customize my code. Blogger is what I started with and it's easy and fast, however, I feel Wordpress.org can be customized better and it was fun teaching myself it.

I find when having troubles with WP I simply Google whatever question I have and usually some great tutorials pop up.

Have fun,
Brandy

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Brandy Ellen's Business Solutions

Well, to be honest, the jury is still out on whether I'll ultimately keep WP or not. I'm not having one iota of fun with this project. But I'm at least going to give it one more good shot before I throw in the towel.

Thought I'd throw this in to share a laugh since you all've been so helpful. A friend just emailed it to me--supposedly actual tech support incidents. Now I don't feel quite so slow!!

Quote:

Tech Support: "I need you to right-click on the Open Desktop". Customer: "OK". Tech Support: "Did you get a pop-up menu?". Customer: "No". Tech Support: "OK. Right-Click again. Do you see a pop-up menu?" Customer: "No". Tech Support: "OK, sir. Can you tell me what you have done up until this point?". Customer: "Sure. You told me to write 'click' and I wrote 'click'". ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Tech Support: "OK. In the bottom left hand side of the screen, can you see the 'OK' button displayed?" Customer: "Wow. How can you see my screen from there?" ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Caller: "I deleted a file from my PC last week and I have just realised that I need it. If I turn my system clock back two weeks will I have my file back again?"

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AnnaLisa Michalski, Sunny Words Writing Services

Originally Posted by AnnaLisa Michalski

Well, to be honest, the jury is still out on whether I'll ultimately keep WP or not. I'm not having one iota of fun with this project. But I'm at least going to give it one more good shot before I throw in the towel. Thought I'd throw this in to share a laugh since you all've been so helpful. A friend just emailed it to me--supposedly actual tech support incidents. Now I don't feel quite so slow!!

Now that is funny!!!! Sounds like something I would ask my hubs (who is my IT person)

Brandy

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Brandy Ellen's Business Solutions

Hi AnnaLisa - here is a link to a free webinar tomorrow on the basics of WordPress. http://www.thewebsitecreationworkshop.com/free-webinar/