Bigger Vision Books

Introduction
The first couple of pages...

This is a "how to" book about creating a blog using the latest edition of Wordpress, currently Wordpress 2.7.1. You have probably heard about blogs (websites with dynamic content), since there are millions of people out there who are already blogging. Traditional websites with static content are "out," blogs have become the technol-ogy of the future and lots of people will tell you how easy it is to get started! There are many free blog services to pick from, and all you have to do is sign up, and in 5 minutes or less, you can have your blog up and running!

Tempting as it may be, signing up for a free blog service isn't always your best option. Why? Mainly because you won't own your URL (blog address). On a free hosting service, the URL belongs to the host. And if you ever decide to move your blog to a different host, not only is it difficult to do, but you may lose your readers as well since you'll have to change your URL in the process. Besides, setting up a blog properly takes a lot more time than just the 5 minutes it took to open the account with a free host, so it is worth having to do it only once.
I didn't realize exactly how much time and effort it takes to set up a blog until I actually created my own. Even though I had bought and read two of the best books I could find about blogging, "Blogging with Moxie" and "Problogger," before I even attempted to create my own blog, there were still so many technical questions to figure out that at some point I almost gave up.

Both of these books contained tons of tips, hints, great advice, and even some tutorial pages, but not nearly enough, at least not for someone as technically challenged as me. I kept wondering how to do all the little details that experienced people already know so well that they assume that you know it, too. They don't understand that if you know nothing about computers, whatsoever, you need everything spelled out in great detail to be able to do it. For example, the books will tell you where to go and find a new theme (template) for your blog, but not how to actually put the new theme into your Wordpress account after you find one that you like. You can probably figure out on your own that it has to be downloaded to your computer in a zip file format first, but then what do you do with it? Does it have to be unzipped before you upload it somewhere? And where does it go? To Wordpress, or to your host? And how do you change the header and the colors in your new template? How do you make Gravatars work for your blog? What exactly are the steps for creating a subscription for an email list and a newsletter? How do you set up your blog for automatic "pinging," automatic backup or send out automatic thank you notes to the people who leave comments on your blog? If you want a professional looking blog, these are things that you need to have, but how do you go about setting it all up, if you don't know anything about computers or blogs??? Questions like this can make you faint just thinking about it! But never fear, this book will unveil all these basic mysteries of blogging with easy step by step instructions.

One of the problems I ran into, when trying to create my first blog, is that most of the tutorials on the web talk about older versions of Wordpress, which was no good to me, since I am using version 2.7.1. This new version of Wordpress is so differ-ent that a lot of the information on the web no longer applies. After reading blog forums and searching Google for "how-to" information, I also discovered that I wasn't the only one who didn't have a clue how to set up a blog. Lots of other people were in the same boat as me! The forums were full of questions similar to mine, and either there were no answers at all, or the answers that were posted were so heady and geeky that no normal computer illiterate person could possibly understand a word of what they were saying. These superior computer geeks are obviously so plugged in to the new technology of today that they can no longer explain anything in simple English. Oh, well, maybe I'm just envious…

What I really needed was a good tutorial that could walk me through all this technical stuff step by step. Unfortunately, I couldn't find any tutorials for the latest version of Wordpress, not even on amazon.com! That is when I decided to make one myself, since it dawned on me that if I had to figure it all out, I might as well write down the answers so the information could be shared with others later. The fact is, technology is here to stay. If you don't want to be left behind in the dust, you have to learn at least some of the most basic information, but with a good tutorial, it really isn't that bad!

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