Entries Tagged 'Blogs' ↓

When I decided to retool my website at work into something useful, I first thought I would use Blogger. I had used Blogger once before while teaching a class on music technology. But I decided that I wanted the blog to stand on its own and to be hosted on a server other than the web server at work in my personal directory. I knew it was time to break down and buy a my own domain name.

While domain shopping, I considered buying my name as a domain. I decided not to do that for reasons mentioned previously. I didn’t want the blog to be about me, so why would I choose that as a domain? After checking many variations of instructional, technology (two very long words), digital, learning, etc., I was happy to discover that digitalearning.org was available. At that point, I stopped shopping for the cheapest domain/host available and decided to focus on which blog tool I would use. I found this great webpage at the USC Annenberg Center for Communication that compares many blogging tools. After reading the page, I decided on WordPress with price being a big factor. It’s free!

The WordPress website has a lot of great information including information on finding a web host. Based on their recommendations I chose bluehost. There may be better deals out there and I won’t go through all the specs in this post, but after a quick check on Go Daddy and many other recommendations on the WordPress website, I considered their offering the best. I particularly liked the auto installation feature of WordPress and many other tools like TikiWiki and Moodle. A domain name, domain listing privacy, and site promotion are also included in the bluehost offering.

Deciding on a domain name and finding a web host were the easiest parts of the job. After signing up with bluehost and installing WordPress, I then spent what seemed like forever deciding on a theme for my blog. Be warned; there are a ton of themes. You can sort the themes by layout and colors, etc, but I had limited success with this.

If you’re starting a blog with a new domain, best of luck. I hope you’ll find this information useful.

Last year, I was looking at my website at work and I thought, who would look at this? I mean, who wants to see a small picture of me that’s about ten years old, my job description and where I went to school? I had forgotten something I learned in 1996 when I first learned how to create web sites. That is - make it useful. Sure, on my old website I had links to user guides that I had created and to other technology websites. Maybe those were useful. But I realized that for years I had been using the web to research technologies to serve the faculty I support and for my own purposes and that process had been a one way street.

I hope that this blog, which will focus on my personal and professional (instructional) experiences with technology, will be useful, especially to other instructional technologists. Let the opinionated commentary begin!