Just Get In There And Try Stuff

I downloaded a WordPress blog package the other day, for free, followed along with the tutorials, and after a few tries and a few communications with my webhosting tech folks (who are great!), I got it installed. I’m quite pleased with it, and when it’s ready for public consumption, I’ll share it.

All the installation and utilization information is posted on a blog, and as I was reading the posts, I was reminded of just how scary I found working with programs and HTML was when I first started working on the web. The thing is, no matter how great wysiwyg html editors are, you really need to buck up and learn at least the rudimentaries of coding. By that I mean, try to figure out how things work. You don’t have to know coding itself, but at least take a look at html versions of what you’re working on.

I use Nvu as my editor, and it has the capability of showing the code for what I’m doing by way of a button at the bottom of the working page. I would imagine that most editors have this. So, take a look at what’s going on and how things are structured. Highlight a part of what you’re working on and see where it fits in your page in the code view. You probably want to save your document, then “save as” document 2 so you can play around.

If you have a program you’ve downloaded, you most likely had to unzip it to start using it, as I did with the blog program. That means, no matter how badly I mess up the unzipped one, I still have the original to go back to. Simply delete the one you screwed up, unzip the original again, and start all over.

There are lots of free books out there that will tell you about html, but I found them intimidating. Much easier just to get in and muck around to see how stuff works. That may not suit your style, and the books may be very helpful for you. The point is just that you need to get over being afraid and let yourself learn. You might find the same great sense of satisfaction that I did in figuring out something and having it work!