RM Jones’ Adventure

This could also be titled “To Blog or Not to Blog, That is the Question.”. After seeing a little about Blogging on TV, and reading a little about it, I decided to take a look at a Blog. I had never seen a Blog before. Well, “I can do this”, I thought. OK, let’s see what it’s all about. This looks EASY.

First step is a little research which I did with the help of Google. That took me to a number of sites that I found interesting. The site that got my attention the most was the one by John Chow at http://www.johnchow.com/ . In my opinion John has a very interesting Blog and supplies a LOT of information for newbie’s like me. I checked out a few more sites where I picked up more information that I was in need of. There are stacks of Blogs with information to assist you in setting up and running a Blog. That really surprised me. Well, pretty Easy so far. Fun actually.

Next step involved was determining which Blog software to use. There are a number of them out there and they each do things a little different, but seem to be alike in many ways. After a little research and poking around at the book store I decided to use WordPress and wandered on over to http://wordpress.com/ . This is when I found out that there is a hosted version that you run for free on their servers and a non-hosted version that you run on a server that you have space on somewhere else. If you plan to host your own you should go to http://wordpress.org/ for more details. From what I read at various locations I found that the hosted versions of Blogging software often has restrictions on what you can do and you don’t have a dot com of your own. After looking at the issues I decided to host my own. So next I bought a book “WordPress for Dummies” and “Blogging for Dummies; 2^nd Edition”. Read, Read and Read some more. Now, I’m ready. This is getting to be a little work.

Next step is to actually set up the WordPress software on my computer. Easy at last. That went great. I can’t complain about that. But the templates that are included really look basic. Not what I want. Finding a template that looks like you want and works the way you want is another chore. I’ll get into that at a later date. Many can be found at the WordPress site at http://themes.wordpress.net/. I think I will go back and use each one I tried and write a Blog about what I liked in each one and what I didn’t and most of all what didn’t work for me. I finally settled down with “Prosumer 1.4.2″ by Nurudin Jauhari which I found on at http://www.jauhari.net/themes/prosumer . Prosumer 1.4.2 works great for me and is a 3 column version with the smaller columns on each side. Just what I wanted. All this took me a couple of weeks. Well, it was some work but it’s worth it. NOW I can write a Blog .

Next step I found there are a lot of “settings” that you have to tweak to make things run just right and that took me another few days but I’m on the way now. Let’s add some “Ads” like Google AdSense to it and see if I can make a little money while having fun. Never can tell, some of the Blogs tell me I’m going to get rich. Ya, Sure. That wasn’t to bad but it did take a little time to read everything so I could set up with Google to use AdSense. Now that’s done it’s time to write. Yea.

Next I find that everything up to this point is EASY. Now I have to write. What to write? What to write? Please, someone, tell me what to write. Well, I have a web site at www.rm-jones.com so let’s use some of that for ideas. That will get me started and I’ll write some posts on “Indexing of Le Claire cemeteries” in the near future. Not everyone wants to read about Le Claire’s cemeteries so I’ll wait just a little while. Geocaching is fun so I wrote about it. Now I’m getting desperate. Boy, I wish my Beautiful and Usually Charming wife would make one of her great Strudels. Maybe someone would like the recipe. OK, let’s write about her strudel. Now, where do I go? This writing stuff is HARD. OK, a while back the “Annual Bald Eagle Watch” was going on at the Welcome Center down on Interstate 80 and I went to it. I have my notes, photos and tape and will write about it soon. I have some nice photos of eagles. I didn’t realize how many there were in this area until I really started looking for them. I even got a photo of an eagle’s nest that is very close to the road.

Is Blogging EASY? Yes and No. Now isn’t that a heck of an answer. It makes me sound like one of the politicians that are on the TV all the time. Setting it up and getting it working was a piece of cake for me. I have been using computers a LONG time and usually don’t let them intimidate me. I just did my research and read a couple of books and things were a lot easier than I thought they would be. Making a decision of which template to use was a major task for me. My wife says that I can never make up my mind on things like that. For example I have put Linux back in one of my computers for about the 20^th time. Poor old R2-D2 had a terrible death at the hands of the Penguin (Linux). Hay, that sounds like a good idea for a Blog to me. Just a second while I write that down so I don’t forget it. Getting Old don’t Ya know. I’m back. Back to Blogging. If I was a little focused I probably would have taken one of the other templates and done just fine but I made work out of it, as usual. Writing. That is the big task. Will I make it as a Blogger? I hope so. If I can find things to write about and keep up my interest I will be OK. If not, well things come and go in the Blogosphere.

My request to you is, please let me know if you read something by taking the time to leave a comment even if it is just two words. I need the reassurance that people are really finding my Blog. If you have any ideas of what you would like me to write about, please leave a comment and tell me. If I have any experience in it I’ll try to come up with something. But my main request for you to do is, Have Fun. Life is an Adventure and we should have fun while doing it.

Have a Great Day
Bob Jones