secondgradereading

Inspired to write I think I will take you up on any help you can give me on my blogger accounts. I spent more hours trying to get wordpress configured right but it only got worse. I spent time googling for answers but I found so many posts that were not answered. I also found links on wp that the code writers are not maintaining. So all in all I think wordpress reminds me of linux. Lots of free code for the taking but not much support on many levels. If google owns blogger.com then my guess is they will be continually adding more functions and maybe a way for better ranking since they are a search site. I see you have a blogger site about blogger.com that I shall check out closer. Thanks again. Goodbye WordPress and Bluehost.

Your a gem I will see what I can learn by tomorrow.

I see where there are wp theme generators. Does anyone know of a good one? Maybe I could set up a basic page with generator and then ad plug ins that would allow me to add more things to the site.

Well I found Shadowbox and installed it. The color choices are like a handful of color sets. I found Shadow Box options and I just don’t see any picture options for the widgets in either the default theme or shadowbox. There must be it just wants you to dig more for it I guess. I know I have read the possibilities are infinate with wp but I am not seeing them in the theme options.

I am not sure if redirecting folks from blogger account to my own domain would help me in rankings at all. Wouldn’t there really be a disconnect with the search engines as far as rankings? Unless you already had a following that would follow but my blogger account is only one week old and not set up completely yet. I think the search engines look at the domain name and they look at content and links you have for ranking. What site would they rank?

I don’t think this will not be a big commercial site but I would like to attract folks to it. Maybe it could be? So having folks be able to find the site is important. Can I do that with blogger? Will the rankings be harder to affect with blogger than with wp/bluehost? If they are equal as far as setting it up to attract visitors the same number of folks then blogger wins hands down for me. Is the shorter domain name and the utilities like SEO or linking with others the same or better with wp?

2) Also like the idea where I can make it feel more personal and that is why I like the minima so that folks will feel like it is more of a personal connection with personal blog like surroundings. The content should stand out, not all the designs. I use color and fonts and layout to make it easy to find things. Not too busy.

I know infinate possibilities is a good thing but I think sometimes it is overwhelming that is why I titled my post about the soldier who gets back and has so many choices of cereal he can’t make a decision. I want such a basic thing and I don’t even see it at wp and that has me confused if they are not even addressing that they what else are they avoiding? Here their biggest competitor uses a very popular template and they aren’t even providing one like it.

I am willing to learn up to a point and at this point I have no idea where that point is with this. Will this be another linux nightmare or will it be just learning a bit more to get desired results?

I have geek leanings but not super geek by any means. I do all the clean installs, replacing hardware, flashed the bios way back when even my instructors hadn’t. I can tear down the box and put it back before most. With blogger I could find so many places for an answer on something but here I am not so sure. Finding a basic template was not that successful.

Is there a good site that I should check out?

As far as the link to themeclubhouse there was no install at that link. I did search for it online through wp but the theme plastiques didn’t pull up. That is why I think they want me to buy the pdf for 27.00 to create it on my own.

Ok inspired you have inspired me here goes.

The shadow box looks like the simpliest looking. I guess I could try installing it and playing around with it. I think blogger really faked me out since I thought if I can figure this out in a day or two how hard can wp be? Wrong. I will attempt this but instead of spending so much time making busy templates how about making some basic ones that can be easily customized like blogger? If it turns out to be like reinventing the wheel I think maybe I should go back to blogger. My main concern was that with blogger your domain name is longer and less likely to get anywhere in the rankings. But the more I read I think that if you have a good name and good content, link with like sites, get your self on some sort of directories and update content at least weekly if not daily then you will maybe be the same as having the site hosted by bluehost??? I do think to make this worthwhile it has to be user friendly and not take up too much time just trying to get it going and updating it. Blogger made it fun in a way. I was looking for other things to add to it. But with wp I would be kind of cringing at the thought of having to dig deep to find the answers to how to add something. I am sure it is keeping lots of folks employed making templetes and helping folks out of website nightmare.

I checked again and no download button.

I saw the editor but there is no way to click on the certain widget area and then copy and paste what you want there. It looks like you have to figure out the area on the page in the html in order to change it. When you say simple text editor, it may be simple to you but never had to use one before. So I would have to know how to structure the change and type it in to the editor in just the right place to get a simple widget?

Very good links you provided about the minima. I like the stretch version.

Well first you choose the templete and stretch minima allows the header to be very wide on top. It also allows two columns. Basically you just go into dashboard, layout, colors and fonts and then click for example background color, then click on of the few they offer or you can type on html color code and voila your page is now a different color, of course you save the setting or try another color and it will automatically change it so you can see it before saving. You can do this color and font changes with various parts of the page. Very easy.
There is the top header where you can just put in picture or also include text. All you do is at layout you select page elements and then select the header area and then you can upload picture or just put in Title. Under that is another long wide area where you can upload picture or paste in html for another function or put in text. Then you have a widget area on the right hand side and you can add as many as you like by finding widget html code on web and paste it in. You can move the widgets by dragging them around to change the order they they line up on the right hand side. Also a widget area on the bottom of the page where you can paste in html. Also you have a choice of things you can do in widget areas like create lists, and a bunch of other things. For list you click it and then a menu pops up and you fill in the title of the list and add something to the list. Or you can select links and add a link. You should try it and open one up for free.

When I do look into making changes to the default theme I noticed there is html numbers to change the header color. I also notice there is an editor that appears to be html where changes can be made. I know nothing of php. I just learned how to paste html to make changes at blogger. So is there a good editor that would be the interface like blogger does for changes to the basic theme? I down loaded Gimp yesterday and have PSE 5.0 along with MS office 2007 with Win7 64 bit. Would like to do this simply with minimal expense.

Yes I have been slowly going through the themes and figured it out while waiting for a response. I did try to limit my search but still have many pages to go. I also figure out that I would have to buy a book at themeclubhouse and make all the changes myself no set theme to download from what I can tell. I am just surprised that wp doesn’t have your basic stretch minima which is one of the common templetes you can choose from at blogger since so many folks migrate from blogger. I only migrated so I could get a shorter domain name and use bluehost to place ads if I want. With blogger I was up and running that day figuring out all sort of changes. What is great about minima is how it allowed you to do so many changed with it and you didn’t really have to figure out the code so much just track it down and past it in the area you wanted it.

Is this a free theme? I went to the link but not sure how to go about using it.

Here is what we started at blogger now we are at https://www.secondgradereading.org at bluehost.

https://secondgradereadingblog.blogspot.com/