Here's some notes I wanted to add to the video I made called 50yo starts a blog, the actual video is embedded below. Also embedded further along in this post are a few other videos that flesh the content out a bit more.
(this is a placeholder video until mine gets done.)
The assumption is you got here by clicking a link provided in the description of the above video on youtube. Maybe you watched the video because you saw the title and got curious about what a blog is, and after giving it some thought decided why not, let me also give it a shot. Now maybe you have some big plans, ideas on where you want this to go but what needs to be said is sure, you can go large, but there’s no diving into the deep end here. The emphasis is something more along the lines of having no great expectations, just messing around, playing, giving the good old braincell a thing or two to think about, and maybe even learn something new along the way.
So now the tone is set what are some of the other basic things that need to be said? A blog being a personal webpage available on the internet means we need someone to give us a place to be on the internet, there’s a free way to get this and there is also a way to get same that involves needing to cough up cash. Either way there are many service providers offering to facilitate. Also either way you will need a name you want to call this place (another word for this place is a website address), let’s say for example we want to call it “avenue orange”. First, the name cannot have a space in it, so decide if you are happy with a name with separate words being on top of each other...
Second is it might just be your luck that someone else is already using that name, in which case you will need another name, or a variation of the first name that you are comfortable with. Third, our name needn't be a cause for much concern at this point, this just being a messing around situation, not a save the human race situation. Which gets us to a most important element, whatever we do can just be deleted, discarded, fixed and or changed at some future point, nothing will break and the world will not fall apart if you didn't do something right, or don't do something right going forward. The name you settle on can be completely random and nonsensical, as is the case with whatever you end up putting on your webpage, indeed, if you ever even get around to doing that.
Let's return to the subject of service providers, in this realm they go by the name of “blogging platforms”, a search on google for that term should yield several options including wordpress and wix. Most will offer a free account option, with the biggest downside being the name of the website you want to create being compromised. If the name you want to call it is orangeavenue, a free account option will include the name of the blogging platform (also called a [blog] host site). Whereas the full address of your site might have been http://www.orangeavenue.com, the compromised address might be http://www.wordpress.orangeavenue.com. The host will try persuade you to opt for a paid plan account, incentives to do so include offers to remove adverts or increase available storage space.
For our purposes a free account is adequate, and the need to fret about whatever bells and whistles unnecessary. Granted we will need space from the host but what they usually offer with a free account should be fine. In case it seems important to know: it is possible to “migrate” from a free to a paid account if that is necessary later, and by migrate I mean: if you have created something special on the free plan and want to preserve that on a paid plan you can do so, and it would be easy enough to do – whether it involves the same host platform or not. Differences between one platform and the next do exist, deciding on which one you want to use depends on how specific you want to be, the best strategy probably involves trying several out to figure out a preference.
The host we are using this (first) time is called Neocities. Now as much as there aren't really that many differences between hosting platforms this one is very much a bit of an outlier, one of a kind, and we single it out for a reason: Neocities is not going to baby you with convenient functionality, premade designs and or customizable templates, it is very bare bones and will not create unnecessary confusion by spoiling you with choice. It's a perfect platform for learning how to do many things with a little help, or by yourself. Neocities needs you to be a bit more of a man behind the curtain so what's needed from us involves learning about something called HyperText Markup Language, or html. Html is what tells a webpage what needs to appear on there, and how it needs to appear. This video, lesson, ends with an introduction to that. The next video explores html a bit more in-depth.