My blog journey started because work was consuming my life and I needed new interests or at least some creative outlet unrelated to work. I started this blog in April 2024 and I’m surprised I’ve been able to stay consistent with posting entries once a week.
Learning the setup for how to get a site going was not easy, but I somehow managed. And now I’m afraid to touch anything for fear of breaking it. Last week I added a plugin that changed the entire look of the site and made it so my regular pages were no longer visible. I was frustrated that I couldn’t figure out how to fix it, but I found a way yesterday where I got my original theme back. There have certainly been a number of challenges in getting this blog stood up, especially related to navigating WordPress settings, plugins, and the like, but looking back at my 5 months so far, I have learned a lot.
What’s happened in my day-to-day
My stress levels have been down and this may be a combination of work getting more manageable, but also starting at the gym (also in April), reading, and writing.
I have a notebook dedicated to brainstorming and ideas, which has been helpful to spur creativity, track site to-do lists, mind mapping, and overall blog writing. It’s been cool to look back at the ideas I’ve had and all the things I’ve checked off.
I don’t usually find the time to brainstorm or write during the week unless I make time early in the morning to do so. Most of the time I will do some writing on Saturday, proofread and re-read on Sunday, and then publish that same day.
The random things I’ve learned
- There’s more than one “Wordpress”. There is a difference between WordPress.com and WordPress.org (.org is self-hosted and is much more flexible)
- Website-building platforms. While other sites like Squarespace and Wix are easy to use, WordPress is more customizable and might be better in the long-term (the learning curve is much steeper)
- Web hosting. Finding a web hosting provider that has some level of decent customer support is important because unless you’re tech savvy, you may need someone’s help to diagnose and troubleshoot
- Domain name registrars. Stay far away from GoDaddy for web hosting, domains, really anything. Porkbun was what I went with
- Discipline over motivation. Truthfully, most of the time I don’t feel like writing. Similar to getting to the gym, writing has more discipline than it is motivation. Most of the time I don’t feel like writing or have anything to write about
- Doing this for me. I’ve stopped being embarrassed about my writing skills because this blog is meant for my own personal growth
- Plugins can mess with your site if you’re not careful. I downloaded the WooCommerce plugin and chose the option for a WooCommerce template. It took over my webpage and I lost some of my content. So if you have an existing site and decide to add WooCommerce, don’t do what I did. To fix it, re-activate your original theme. For this reason, I am considering figuring out how to set up a staging version of my site, but that is yet another topic I will have to learn about
- There is a lot to learn about SEO. My limited knowledge of SEO (search engine optimization) is really only scratching the surface
- Learning about topics. As part of writing, I have learned a lot about some of the topics I’ve written about, like gum disease
- Learning about myself. I’ve learned a lot about myself reflecting on topics I wrote about (e.g., aging, death, feeling “stuck”)
Thanks for reading!
