This was originally a reply to liverbones’ comment of my last post, but it became long so I gave it a home of its own.
Just about every day I run across some design or technical problem that I can only solve through blogs or message boards. Its an amazing resource, and I couldn’t get by without it. However, I find that the solutions are often lacking.
The problem is that the tech guru who is answering the question usually figured out the thing in question long ago, and can’t remember quite what their personal “Ah HAH!” moment was. So they leave the little stuff out. For instance, if you’re not used to linux command line stuff, and you install something that you have to initialize through the command line, you cannot just type in shell$ foo and expect it to work. Most likely, the command foo is not in your path. So you actually have to go to the file where the program is, then type in shell$ ./foo. The “.” tells your computer that the command can be found in this directory. But ask a linux guru how to initialize a program, and she will tell you “Just type in foo” at the command line. Its not that they don’t know how to do it right, its that they know it so well that they forgot to tell you. This why the best answers come from bloggers who are right in the heat of the moment, still trying to figure it out when they post.
For instance, I posted my GoDaddy entry just yesterday. But I had been working on getting wordpress set up on GoDaddy for hours. Actually, to be honest, days. This blog helped, as did the comments on this post, but it made everything seem so easy. Fact is, when I first uploaded the site, nothing worked at all.
I struggled with the wp-config file forever. Then I enabled pretty urls, which broke everything, and spent several hours downloading and uploading the .htaccess file trying to modify just the right thing. It was only after I gave up (because of a blog post that mentioned if you just wait, everything will work), waited two days, and tried again that it worked. Instantly. For no reason at all.
So my point is, because I treasure the thoughtful, generous people who document their sometimes painful journey through the trials of learning how to do stuff with computers, I am going to start blogging while I’m still trying to figure shit out.
March 27, 2008 at 9:50 pm |
Admirable goal. It can be tougher than it sounds, trust me. Even though we may be going through the learning process at the time, that doesn’t mean that we don’t leave things out. My wife needs my help with our doorst- laptop, I mean, which is a reminder sometimes of how much more I know about computers than the average person. There are plenty of people that don’t realize that a command prompt or terminal even exist.
This is actually the reason that I’m trying to write tutorials for HTML and CSS for people. I want anyone to be able to write or modify basic HTML all on their own, and as such I’m trying my best to cater to people who don’t know much about their computer or OS. I’m simultaneously writing ones for people who do know about their OS. From trying to write these, I can tell you that it truly is harder than it sounds.
But anyway, I’ve gotten slightly off-topic here and started talking about my own work once again. I’m fairly good at that, and don’t exactly try to do it. That’s simply how I can most easily relate to what others are trying to accomplish. So, that said, I wish you good luck and I know that I’ll definitely be interested in what you find out.
March 29, 2008 at 8:22 pm |
I think its great that you are writing tutorials. I never know how thoroughly I really understand something until I try to teach someone else. Let me know if you post them online. I’d like to check them out.
May 6, 2008 at 7:39 pm |
How do I set the permission files at GoDaddy for my wordpress.org blog?
I want to make sure the permalinks and everything else works properly. I know you went through this process.
For the various files…Web Visible and Executable? Read, Write, Execute?
Thanks for any info.
May 7, 2008 at 12:35 am |
No need my friend! Don’t change a thing. Just follow the directions on the wordpress site to upload your blog to the server. Set everything up the way you want it in the CMS. If everything is completely f’ed up after you select permalinks, just WAIT. For whatever reason, it takes the godaddy servers a while to read the .htaccess file, which wordpress writes to when you change things in the CMS. Wait 20 minutes to a couple of hours and check your site again. It will probably be fine.