My Mexican Mid-Life Crisis

This post really belongs under “Trials,” but I’m sticking it here for everyone who asked me when my blog would be up and running. It will double as a disclaimer because setting up this blog has been a hot mess and it’s your problem now because I have given up on making things look good.

Turns out that 20 years of practicing law didn’t prepare me to produce any kind of creative content other than Word documents and the occasional Powerpoint. Oh, and email. Go figure.

I set up this blog/website to avoid the pain in the ass that is sending group emails. Seemed like a great idea. Everything in one place. People can access content when it works for them and no one will be left off the email chain. Every Google search turned up articles filled with rapturous praise of WordPress and its simplicity. Supposedly, it is idiot-proof. I’m sure it generally is, but not for this idiot.

According to Google, in order to use WordPress I needed to get a domain name. Googled “what is a domain name.” Then Googled “how to get a domain name.” Bought one from Google but it came with complications in migration to web hosting services and is unavailable for 60 days. Oh, and I needed to subscribe to a web hosting service. Googled “what is a web hosting service.” Subscribed to BlueHost because it came up first in a Google search. Yes, I had to pay for it. Got a new domain name through them that would be active immediately. Progress! Then I needed to choose a “theme” for my blog. Googled “what is a theme for WordPress.” Realized after some time that the theme is just the design of the website. And there are templates. Thousands of them. I bought one. Then I learned about the free ones. Next, I needed to “customize” and set up the “back-end” of the blog, with pages and posts and menus and widgets. Googled “what are [pages, posts, menus, widgets] on WordPress.” Then I needed to figure out how to upload media content (pictures and videos). Googled “how to add videos to posts in WordPress.” For videos, I needed to set up a YouTube channel because most videos more than a minute or so are too large to upload to WordPress directly. Googled “how to set up a YouTube channel.” For photos, I wanted to upload from DropBox instead of uploading pictures from my phone to DropBox and then downloading them onto my computer in order to upload them to WordPress. Googled “how to upload pictures from DropBox to WordPress.” Turns out I needed a “plug in” from a different vendor. Googled “what is a plug-in for WordPress.” Didn’t see any free ones for connecting DropBox to WordPress so I bought one but can’t figure out how to use it. So last night and this morning I went analog with the phone-DropBox-computer upload-download process. So close! But not so fast. Turns out the pictures that are finally ready to be uploaded from my computer were too big to upload to WordPress so I needed to copy and resize each one to no more than 2500 pixels before I could upload them. Googled “what are pixels.” Then Googled “how to resize images.”

This afternoon, I am bracing for my arm wrestle with the uploaded-downloaded-resized-uploaded pictures that are finally in my WordPress media gallery in order to get them into my posts. I am ordering gazpacho and more coffee and then I will Google “how to add [images, YouTube videos] to WordPress posts.”

Don’t wait up.