HOW TO START A BLOG -- NOT!

First, let me tell you a story…

Back in the early ‘90s, we (we meaning me and my then-wife)decided to buy our first home computer. Everybody got their first computer in those days. And like most of those people, probably more than most, we were wholly ignorant on the subject.

The only exposure to computers which either of us had had to that point was a few minutes goggling over the wonders of what could only be called a laptop. A proto-laptop. This magical device belonged to my wife’s cousin. He worked deep in the Pentagon and the computer was part of his work. Probably it actually belonged to the army, not to him, but he had it with him and he showed it off. 

I can’t remember just what he showed us, but it seemed magical and impossible. Probably, compared to current computers, it would now look like PONG compared to GRAND THEFT AUTO XXXIII, but in 1990 or so, it seemed like the furthest possibility of science-fiction.

But that’s all we knew as we entered the world of computer ownership. Wanting to spend our money wisely, I read lots of magazine and newspaper articles and gradually began to accumulate just a weeeeee bit of knowledge. But there was one question which I couldn’t find an answer to.

This is going to seem incredibly ignorant on my part, but it was a long time ago, computers had not yet taken over the world, and vas you dere, Cholly?

In my reading I came upon “floppy disks” and “hard disks”.  It was clear that floppies were interchangeable, that you could buy them by the box. But nothing I read really defined the hard disk. My question was simple, if ignorant:  Are the hard disks also interchangeable?  I wanted to know if a computer owner had a stack of hard disks between which he could alternate.

So I asked people. I asked computer people. We browsed through the computer areas of a few stores and, of course, avid salespeople fell upon us, eager for a commission. And I asked my question about the mysterious hard disk. I’m sure these folks thought they were answering my question. I’m sure they understood that I was an empty-headed non-techie and I’m sure they thought they were making it plain and simple. They weren’t. 

At least three times, maybe more, I asked my question of folks who were supposed to know. Hell, they did know, they just didn’t know how to tell me. They were unable to make their answer simple enough for me. They’d tell me about floppy disks, but I already had a fair handle on that. But ‘is the hard disk removable or interchangeable?’... they couldn’t reduce their vocabulary to simply yes or no. They’d say something like “The hard disk is where the computer…” or “the hard disk tells you how much the computer can…” Or like that. I just wanted ‘yes’ or ‘no’. They couldn’t tell me.

So we just dove in, half-blind, and it worked out okay. We consulted with my brother-in-law beforehand. He was the nearest thing in the family to a computer guy, and he wasn’t that near. We told him that we were thinking of buying a Mac of some sort and that it  had 80 Mb of memory and that we didn’t know what that really meant. He said, “Oh, that’s good. 80 Mb is all you’ll ever need.”  Well, it was the early ‘90s, so…

I don't remember what computer we bought, but it wasn't this one. It did look pretty much like this, however.

I was reminded of all that when I started researching “How to Start a Blog”. In this day and age I figured that YouTube was the place to go. All kinds of instructional videos there, all kinds of “how to” videos. That’s the ticket.

And, indeed, there were buckets full of blog videos. Most of them had titles like “How to Start a Blog and Make $2000 a Month!” Or maybe “How to Start a Blog and Make $6000 a Month.” Or, in a real change-up, “How to Start a Blog and Make $10,000 Every WEEK.”

The second most popular type of title was “How to Write Better Blog Posts”. I wasn’t interested in that either. I’ll write my own, thank you, and better or worse I’ll just let ‘em ride.

Okay.  Except I wasn’t looking to make money. And I didn’t want advice on what to write about on my blog or how to write better. I simply wanted to have a place to post my simple, silly, unimproved essays. I simply wanted to know how to start a blog. After that…GO AWAY! LEAVE ME ALONE!

There were a few videos which came closer to what I wanted and I watched several of them. But they all, to one degree or another, had the same problem those computer salesfolk had 30 years ago.  It might be something like this, “If you want to start a blog, the first thing you have to do is…” whatever. But this would immediately be followed with something like “But before you do that, you have to…”  Oh. So the “first thing” isn’t really the “first thing.”

One which was particularly unhelpful started by promising how simple and helpful it would be. Here we were told what we needed to do but without telling us just how to go about that. But, assuming I could figure that out, it just got worse. The host, before telling us anything useful, wanted to go behind the scenes and show us some of the more advanced stuff. So she’s clicking this box and re-ordering a list of something else without, again, telling us, in simple dumb American, just what the hell she was doing. 

The video which seemed as if it might finally fill the bill went sour a couple of minutes in. It became painfully clear that the woman in the video was pushing--and pushing hard--a particular web host sort of place. She never said “this is the best” or “this is my choice”, she simply plowed into it as if this was the ONLY way to make a blog. So I clicked off that one.

Not helpful. None of them. Frustrating, actually.

So, the hell with YouTube. I read a bunch of posts about Blogger and WordPress and others. Blogger seemed to be the only one simple enough for simple-minded me. And here I am. Still ignorant, but still here.