The following is a chronicle of my fun and frustrating journey as I pursued my goal of creating a website.
I began my learning journey by signing up for a WordPress account and playing around with it. After deciding to pay $80.00 for a personal account and the accompanying logo package, I checked out. It was late in the day, so I shut down and went to bed. A few days passed, and I went back to it. I logged in. It didn’t work; I tried again, didn’t work.
I was stressed, so I went back to the beginning and started with the course WordPress.com Essential Training – Build a site with WordPress.com(2022). As every good training should, it starts with the chapter “introduction.
The training had me start by opening WordPress and logging in (you’re getting ahead of me, you have to wait for the rest of the story) I logged in using a new username and password and started the course.
The course is well structured, and its layout starts with a walkthrough of the administrative areas, including how to set up your profile and adjust your account, security, privacy and notification settings. It also has tabs that provide suggestions on how the instructor would set things up and why.
I completed these tasks and moved on to chapter 3, which included an overview of the behind-the-scenes setting, including configuring general site settings, optimizing site performance, writing settings, site discussion settings, reading settings, and hosting configuration.
So far, so good. There is a multitude of settings, but with the instructor Carrie Dils easy to listen to the voice along with a thorough explanation of what and why these settings are there, I’m moving forward. I can stop and reverse the videos so I can see what’s going on if I miss something. It is logical but time-consuming, taking almost an hour on settings in addition to the time required to go back and understand some of the pieces, so this section took about two days of fitting things in when I could. I’m finally where I want to be right from the beginning, creating content.
Creating content
Chapter 4 in the course is when we start making content. I started by following the course but then jumped to setting up my website, starting on the Homepage and Safety Jobs Section, which aligned with my learning goals.
I realize that I have been doing all the setups on the free site, and I need to get signed into the account I had already paid for with its higher functionality. I sent a message to WordPress Support within a day, and they sorted out the problem. I had mistakenly used one of my other e-mail addresses as the login without realizing it. With work, school and personal email addresses, it is easy to mix up which address is used for which sign-ins. I try to block time to work on one thing at a time, but when things get busy, I end up putting out fires in several different areas of my life, creating cognitive overload (Sweller, 2011), and mistakes happen. The next stop is transferring the completed work to the free version. I compare the settings between the old and new sites, switching and toggling as I go. I realize that I am understanding more as I re-do things and return to the training video to confirm the settings; once the setup is to my liking, time to move the content over.
This was also challenging; the way the website functions is in functional blocks. When I tried to move the content over, it didn’t go well. The formatting was lost as was the function of the blocks. I read in the help section that I could “point” the paid site to the unpaid one. Another approach is an import and export function, or I could simply copy and paste the material, which seemed the easiest. I first tried the Ctrl-A Ctrl-C (Yes, I have a PC) approach. Time for Plan B. I switched things to the HTML view, copied that, and transferred it into the site. BINGO, that worked. I also tried to write some of the content in a word processor, an I had the same issues. The copy and paste function did not play well with the functions of the blocks, and the website reverted from block mode to classic mode. The transition of modes leads to further formatting issues. Once this was discovered, I completed everything within WordPress.
Back on track
The course then walked me through how WordPress displays the content I wanted to use. I developed the website relatively quickly, and the site came together into something I’m proud of. There are some functions that I found I did not understand. The course did discuss many concepts and showed basic functioning. However, I wanted more functionality than what the course described. The following is what I would have liked to see.
The block layout margins do not necessarily align, and there was no clear explanation of why.
There was some confusion regarding
the blocks, as there are over 150 different blocks, and understanding their functionality is daunting as they are not titled. No explanation is provided in the WordPress editor, which is limiting. The course did point to WordPress documentation on what the blocks do.
Image: Build a site with WordPress.com. (n.d.).
Another essential concept is the use of categories and tags, which the course describes well.
Build a site with WordPress.com. (n.d.).
However, I struggled to correlate the use of categories with the appropriate blocks to produce my desired result. I wanted to use the categories to place updates as posted content in specific parts of the website. But I am only able to produce a link. The course did not outline how to do this. It is unclear if this is a more advanced function or if WordPress has this ability.
Despite the challenges I encountered, I understand the essentials of WordPress. The course provided an excellent starting point for creating a WordPress website. If I had followed it step by step without experimenting with different WordPress functionalities, I would have had an excellent basic website/blog. The course accomplished its stated goal with the rigger and detail that I expected.
Demonstration of what I have Learned
I invite you to look at the rest of my website to see what I have learned. Despite the issues expressed above, I’m excited to share my results. I have the essential groundwork and structure. Moving forward, I need to build content, and I will continue to improve the site as time allows. Overall, I have a few tweaks to make, but I have a site that will meet my goals.
Please check out the rest of the site.
humphrey-learning.com or hit the home page button on the top to see what I’ve accomplished.
Follow the next link for my reflections on the self-directed learning process.
Humphrey Learning 
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