So far the blog rebuild is going well. The bit that takes the time is re installing the Gallery section, which due to it’s large size takes a long time to upload. Those of you who had links in the boat blogs section and don’t now, I’m slowly inputting them and will get there soon.

You have probably seen Alacritys blog messed up over the last few days this was because it had been Hacked…….

I am well on the way to sorting it out and we will soon be back to normal so please keep reading.

I  noticed this morning when doing my usual scan of incoming links (people who have linked their posts to my blog) that the Blog Meister Andrew Denny of Granny Buttons had mentioned in his post “How to start your own website or Blog” that I had learned the self taught hard way.

Remember that Matthew Stibbe is an expert. If you want advice from someone at the self-taught-the hard-way end of things, you might ask John of NB Alacrity. He seems to have taken this same route to getting his blog going including buying the book, so would be a useful second opinion. 

Yes I bought the book, its a good guide but if you use “WordPress” as your blogging platform their support on the web is second to none, if you are more of a try it and see person who learns hands on like me give it a go.

I found that if you are contemplating your own blog or website the first thing to do is find a domain name.

What you have to remember that it will be the first thing people will see and what seems a good idea at the time may not seem so good in 5 years so “choose wisely” (as the knight said to Indiana Jones).

For us Boaters try looking up nbyourboatname replacing the yourboatname with the name of your boat with no spaces as in nbalacrity you will probably find it available for use.

As Matthew Stibbe suggests use 123 reg to check that your intended name is not in use. Don’t do what I did and register the name and buy a hosting package then find the package doesn’t cover what you want. I tried using the free blog registration from WordPress.org but found it to limiting in the themes you could use, so I went independent.

I chose  VARiHOST to host my blog on the basic package  they are so helpful and will sort you out in no time, just read what other people say about them. VARiHOST will register and manage your domain name and provide space for your blog and give you your own email addresses for £3.99 a month (no I don’t get anything for this plug I just believe that they offer best value for money).

If you go the independent route you can customise your blog how you want and have total control of what you see on your blog, yes it’s hard work getting it how you want it and yes you may want to throw your PC into the cut but blogging is addictive, fun and all yours, gripe if you want, your blog is your voice on the web……………………………………………………….

If you want any help or advice on starting your own boating blog use the contact page, I will try and help if I can..

I have now made the changes to the Photograph Gallery. So I should not be messing about with it in future apart from adding new content.

I have added today the pictures from the Tring Canal Festival  last Bank Holiday.

Please take a look.

Well I’ve been slaving…….(whose he kidding)… over a hot keyboard today trying to set up a better gallery for the blog. The plugin for wordpress was straight forward but altering the coding in the page template for the gallery took some doing for a non savvy person like me.

I will be running the two galleries in tandem for a while just to see which on suits the blog better.

If you look in the lefthand sidebar under the pages tab you will see Test-Gallery click on this and see the new gallery the Slideshow also in the lefthand sidebar is generated from this.

Well I just wanted to share with you that NB Alacrity’s blog just had its 1001 visitor at 18:10 today.

 I know that other blogs have had more but it’s special to me.