My story
Why I set up a series of blogs
This page explains how I came to set up a website as a series of blogs. If you're only interested in the actual construction, skip to Blog setup notes.
I learned the basics of HTML and CSS at Leicester College, after which I set about creating a website. To start with, I decided not to use a style sheet because, with my limited knowledge of CSS, the benefits were marginal at that stage and I didn't have anywhere to save my HTML permanently in HTML format. I actually saved all my HTML in e-mail folders (it was either there or on floppies) because the public area on the Leicester public library computers are only available for temporary use. In any case, I didn't use the same computer each day. Thus, I created HTML files during a session purely for testing purposes.
Originally, I planned to set up a small website as a starter, then build on that as I learned more about HTML and CSS. When I learned that HTML tables are controversial in some quarters, I decided to spend a lot of time studying HTML and CSS offline, while using my limited online time to build a much more substantial website. In the event, I decided to make extensive use of HTML tables, which was always my original intention anyway, although I made extensive use of CSS much earlier than I'd originally intended. I actually tried some alternative HTML methods that avoided the use of tables but none of them worked properly for my intended purpose. Some but not all of the reasons will become clear in the ensuing paragraphs. I am aware that CSS version 3 (not yet generally supported by browser software) has some table capabilities but until it becomes the standard, there's no point in worrying about it.
Because of my personal circumstances resulting from my Bankruptcy, my biggest problem was getting space on the net. However, I was able to practise by creating pages offline and testing them that way. I had big ideas but I was quite content to learn and practise without actually having anything to show the world. By the time I was ready to look for somewhere, a lot had changed at the place recommended by my tutor and my website wouldn't load there. In retrospect, I think that it might have been because my web pages may not have passed the
official HTML validation tests (which I've learned a lot about since) at the time, but I haven't tried there again. Instead, I loaded it into the Geocities space that I'd acquired with my Yahoo e-mail address. This only lasted a month or so, at which point Geocities decided that I'd infringed their rules, claiming that I was trying to run a commercial website. Maybe it was Amazon's widgets that they objected to. I therefore resumed my original policy of offline testing.
Some aspects of the Geocities service displeased me anyway, but it had one particularly useful feature that allowed me to set up forms and to have the results sent to one of my e-mail addresses without letting the sender know what the address is. Good security, eh? Eventually, I used the Geocities space to conduct surveys about music and Amazon and to allow people to contact me by e-mail if they wish, avoiding the spammers. Yahoo's decision to shut down Geocities in October 2009 deprived me of these options, although I've saved copies of all the code. I may want it some day.
I later found the web space I wanted in Blogger. The restrictions imposed by Blogger are different. I can include anything I'm likely to want to include, even Amazon's widgets, but I can't use the whole of the screen. I'm restricted to less than half the screen's width because of the space used by Blogger for its own indexing, etc. Another necessary annoyance is that I have to use the URLs generated by Blogger, but I can work within these technical limitations. I converted my web pages held in my e-mail space to Blogger format in such a way as to make the reverse process as easy as possible, should I ever decide to set up a website in my own space, assuming that I ever have that option. Because I also updated things while converting to Blogger, keeping the old web pages was not a sensible option. I have kept a sample shell that I can wrap around all the blog pages should I convert back to web pages, but such a conversion would still be a major task because I'd have a lot of URLs to change.
It's just as well that I didn't become heavily dependant on Geocities. Life will be much more difficult if Google decide to shut down Blogger, but as my blogs are designed to be transportable, it will be the quantity of effort rather than the difficulty that will concern me.
