Narrowboat Alacrity

Spam spam spam spam. Lovely spam! Wonderful spam!

Scene:  A cafe.  One table is occupied by a group of Vikings wearing horned helmets.  Whenever the word “spam” is repeated, they begin singing and chanting.  A man and his wife enter.  The man is played by Eric Idle, the wife is played by Graham Chapman (in drag), and the waitress is played by Terry Jones, also in drag………………………. Wouldn’t it be great if all Spam was as funny as that Monty Python sketch.

I get totally sick of junk mail, flyers included in newspapers and leaflets stuffed through my door.  I get bombarded with spam mail at home and at work not to mention cold callers on my mobile and land line….Before you ask I have installed software and registered with all the appropriate agencies to try and stop this…………

I am lucky on my blog as Wordpress uses a heavy duty filter “Akismet” but I still choose to moderate any comments I receive. I don’t want adverts for dodgy pharmaceuticals, deviant practices and the chance to make eye watering amounts of cash.

Sarah on NB Warrior in her post Moderation in all things writes that she would prefer not to moderate so as not to be accused of applying censorship. I am unfortunately not as tolerant as Sarah.

My father when he was alive used to take great pleasure in sending the days junk mail back to whoever sent him a reply paid envelope…….some may say childish but it made him feel like he was striking back is a small way.

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..

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 today has been my own SWMBO has been at work so I’ve had some peace and quiet to get to grips with Wordpress and its plugins.

Being an engineer by trade I’ve always learned with a hands on approach so I like to read how to do a thing then figure it out how they work for myself. Well on Friday my copy of “Wordpress for Dummies” arrived from Amazon  so I sat down to read through it in conjunction with this Blog………………yes well….. one day later and I’m not too further on, I guess age has something to do with it.

 Joking aside I did have a lot of problems getting the plugins downloaded off the Wordpress site to work, I tried to sort it out myself but had to admit defeat, one quick email to Richard at VARiHOST and a few minutes later a reply with a solution “Thank You Richard” now theres service for you.

“Practice makes Perfect” In my case maybe not so perfect yet, but I’m not giving up……………………………….