Building a new website almost broke my brain
I’ve come a long way in the past two weeks.
In late June, I decided to revamp my very old, very basic website, on which I kept a selection of past columns. It was a good resource for people who liked reading about my daily life, if only to reassure themselves that they weren’t the most boring people in Addison County. But I never updated it and didn’t remember how to even access it.
According to the commercials for the platform I was already using, I could create an elegant new site almost instantly with just a few clicks. Ha. It took me 45 minutes just to find my old username.
Once I got access to the site-editing area, I spent hours repeating the same process: scan the screen for clues, try to make changes, then sigh and wail, “Why doesn’t this work?!” The dog gave up on going for walks. Laundry piled up. Mark came and went, I think, or maybe he left for the week. I was distracted.
“It took me 45 minutes just to find my old username.”
I wanted to add a newsletter feature that would update readers by email when I posted a column each week. Like everything else related to the site, this was marketed as a free feature but wasn’t. Without paying an annual fee, I could only send three emails a month and only to five people. Not to sound full of myself, but I was aiming for a slightly more robust subscriber base.
After paying for that and every other “free” feature, I stayed up late each night trying to make the website, newsletter, and email all work—and work together. They refused. I seethed into the wee hours.
Reluctant to admit incompetence, I blamed my issues on the software rather than on the obvious PEBKAC (Problem Exists Between Keyboard and Chair). If I had a moment of joy, such as when I found my IMAP settings, it was soon crushed by confusion: “What do they mean by ‘Is this address an alias?’”
YouTube offers great help videos. But they’re made by people who have never used a rotary phone. And—I’m sorry to be harsh—it shows.
“After days of frustration—and underwhelming personal hygiene—I forced myself to close the laptop and walk away for almost a week.”
I tried to follow along: “To customize your home page, just click on Settings, then choose Styles, then select AARP, then choose the biscuit level you want. I like 10, but you could go as low as 2 unless your default 404 blocks the SSL header weasel, which might be disabled if you’re using version 6.2 or 7.0; check with your provider (or, if your script is undefined, your CPAP host) to confirm your delimiter values. Click save, and you’re all set!”
Videos like that sent me looking for related videos, starting with “Where is Settings?”
After days of frustration—and underwhelming personal hygiene—I forced myself to close the laptop and walk away for almost a week. It was a good move.
I took showers. I saw Mark, who apparently had been here all along. I made lists of website-related questions and next steps. Most important, during the break I somehow absorbed many of the processes that had seemed so baffling to me just days earlier.
When I sat back down at the computer, everything clicked. For example, I was able to log in without referring to a single YouTube tutorial.
Suddenly, I knew how to customize features and integrate email. I made a real-life drop-down menu, something I had once only dreamed of. I even “injected code,” which sounds illicit but is no doubt taught to schoolchildren these days in the time slot previously reserved for learning cursive.
I am happy to announce that the newly redesigned site, www.jessieraymond.com, is live. You can hardly tell that it was built by a woman who just a few weeks ago didn’t know her SSL from her CPAP.
On the site, you’ll find a “Subscribe” box—magically brought to you by code I injected all by myself, without incident. If you enter your email address, you’ll become one of the tens of subscribers who want to be notified each week when I upload another column.
The learning curve I’ve ridden over the past two weeks started out nearly vertical, but I’ve come so far in such a short time I’m basically a genius now. Unfortunately, that means I may not be able to maintain the new site for long; if my current rate of tech mastery continues, I’ll be off programming satellites for NASA by Labor Day.
