How to Blog - 1/8 Start Offline February 12, 2007
Posted by The Probabilist in : [Articles], Productivity, Technology, Blogging , 8 comments
Step 1 and 2 will be the briefest ones. In the first step of this blogging tutorial we’re going to install and use XAMPP and WordPress on your computer. XAMPP enables you to tweak your blog offline and WordPress is the most used blogging platform.
The reasons for starting with this step are several. Firstly, it’s a safe and free environment for you to try the WordPress platform. Secondly, you won’t annoy your readers with downtime, errors or continuous small tweaks every time you decide to implement a change. Thirdly, this reference comes with lots of suggestions so instead of having to upload new material constantly to your online host through an FTP application, you’re testing things out quickly on your own hard drive. And fourthly, whenever you upgrade WordPress to a new version, you’re better off first doing it on XAMPP to see how your plugins and design performs and what has to be done if everything doesn’t work the way they’re supposed to.
Installing XAMPP
First head over to the Apache friends site where you’ll find XAMPP for download. Choose your operating system, then XAMPP Lite and finally download either the .exe or .zip file. Extract it to your desired location (I’m going to refer to C:/xampplite - the installer will create the xampplite folder if you just choose C:).
- Go to the xampplite folder and run setup_xampp.bat (press any key when done)
- Run the xampp-control.exe file
- Click the start button for both Apache and MySql
- minimize the window when they both show ‘running’ on a green background
- Open your favourite browser and enter http://localhost/xampp/splash.php
- Choose your preferred language and click phpMyAdmin on the sidebar
- Enter the following exactly as described in the picture and click create:
Installing WordPress
- Go to the download section and get the latest version
- Extract the contents of the zip file into the htdocs folder
- The folder structure should be C:\xampplite\htdocs\wordpress
- Download this wp-config.txt file and put it in the wordpress folder
- Open it with notepad and rename it to wp-config.php
- Enter http://localhost/wordpress/wp-admin/install.php in your browser
- Follow the guide and save the login details to where you keep your passwords
- Go to http://localhost/wordpress/wp-login.php to log in to the platform
If you’ve already been blogging online, download your existing online WordPress folder and replace it with the one in your htdocs folder to have an offline duplicate. The posts and categories will not be copied, you have to activate the plugins and you also need to tweak the sidebar widgets if you have any. Remember that you have to change the wp-config.php file to the one that works on the offline version. The login details for your offline version will stay the same.
If you’re an established blogger, then the rest of the advice in this article as well as part 2 will not be of much interest. Steps 3 to 8 on the other hand are for everyone.
Using WordPress
All right, now we’re all set up to start making the essential stuff that makes your blog efficient. First browse through your user interface and check out the different panels and be sure to go to the options panel and change whatever settings you want. Clicking on the (View site) button next to the title of your blog reveals the basic look of your blog and I bet you’re inclined to start off by applying a new theme (a look or style) to your blog to make it stand out. You’ll find lots of different themes available for download here, here, here, here, here and here. Choose one close to your taste knowing that you can tweak every single detail of the theme that you want later on. Extract the theme folder to the htdocs/wp-content/themes folder. Then just go to the presentation tab in the control panel, choose one from the available themes and view the site.
Here are the most important files you need to do know about. Notice that they are all in the folder for the specific theme you’ve selected, which means that the changes you make only apply to the theme you’ve chosen and using.
- style.css - Defines every border, colour, background, font, etc
- index.php - Defines what’s displayed when you write a post
- sidebar.php - Defines what’s found on the sidebar
- header.php - This is where the code starts and defines the head
- yourpage.php - You may want to create your own php files for pages
More on how to change and use these files is presented in step 4. For now, just take a look at these files with notepad and how they function, write a post to see how it comes out and visit the WordPress support section to browse through more detailed information.
Checklist for step 1 - starting offline
- Install XAMPP - Quicker, easier and more secure environment to tweak a blog
- Install WordPress - Self explanatory step
- Get a new theme - Take a good look around to find one that stands out
- Get familiar with the essential files - You’ll need to tweak these in the future
In the second step of this workshop (Friday, February the 16th), we’re getting a domain and a web host, configuring an ftp software to upload files to your host and putting the blog online. It will be quite a short post since the most essential tweaks and upgrades are presented starting next week.
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Easier Doesn’t Make Things Easy February 11, 2007
Posted by The Probabilist in : [Articles], Consciousness, Goals, Personal Growth, Productivity, Beliefs, Abilities , add a comment
It’s time for a reality check. Or more of a perspective check. One of the biggest reasons people fail to push their personal growth up a notch is because they don’t seem to grasp what making their lives easier really means that they have to do - or how to relate to it.
All personal development is geared towards being at greater ease, doing things more easily or having things come to you more easily. But that basically never means that the path to get those things to happen to you is an easy one. And that’s why you need to have a more accurate perspective of what an easier solution to your problem or challenge is actually about. Many people fail to lose weight, make more money or improve their relationships because they seek easy fixes to their issues, when there truly aren’t any.
It makes me think of people competing in a race. Even the person that is at second place is doing worse than one of the competitors. And the person racing at next to last place is doing better than another one. This is the power of perspective that many fail to understand when trying to make improvements to their everyday life. They hear about a method that is supposed to be easier than what they’ve tried before, yet it still doesn’t seem easy for them to apply it.
Granted, the confusion often stems from poor advertising that states that a company’s or person’s solution is easy, not easier. Or quick when in fact it’s quicker. Or cheap when they mean it’s cheaper than their competitors’ products. It all also depends on what kind of a product, service or solution is provided. People don’t get very disappointed over small issues, but when it gets to emotionally and substantially more important issues like health, wealth, appearance, career and happiness, they get disappointed over self-improvement programs that promise easy routes when they never are. Sometimes the program and how it is presented is to blame. But when it comes to the consumers that fail to reach their goals (if they even have any), it’s because their mind-set and perspective is faulty to begin with.
Going back to the race analogy, in the first case, the person that is almost the best one of everyone competing will push himself even harder if and only if he thinks of himself as doing worse than the others, even though that he’s doing tremendously well in most of the other competitors’ eyes. He also understands that the leap he has to make in his own performance to improve his placement is incredibly much greater than for the person at next to last place to improve his.
On the other hand, the person sitting at next to last place needs to do much less in order to improve his placement. But the reason he isn’t is because he’s either complacent about his performance or doesn’t have faith in himself. He might also have the perspective that he’s doing better than the worst one competing, so it’s all good because of that. The biggest error is that he compares himself with people doing worse than him instead of those doing better than him - and this keeps him trapped. He may be constantly looking and buying into what he thinks are easy solutions that require little effort on his own part.
The bottom line is still that you have to think about your perspective. If you’re already performing say in the top 20 % of people in an area of your life, the going gets tougher and tougher to make even greater improvements and achievements. You’re bound to stagnate if you don’t remember that easier solutions don’t make them easy.
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