Chapter 3:Tech Woes
Ellen-So after I collect my oldest from school and welcome my youngest off the bus, I go for a run. Oxygen to the brain is a wonderful thing. And I come up with a whole new slew of names including Sisterhood of the Sensible Moms. So I run faster so that I can get back to my computer to email Erin. No reply, no reply, no reply.
Erin- Oy.
Ellen- I start blowing up all forms of communication to Erin: cell, home phone, text, email, and facebook. Um, she’s not on Twitter, but that is a whole other issue. She finally calls me back. How are we going to have a conversational blog if you are stone cold ignoring my brilliant inspirations?
Erin- I answered your emails! I told you how much I thought the concept of sisterhood explained who we are and what we are trying to do.
Ellen- I am looking right now and I have no emails from you.
Erin- Let me see…wait…they are all in my outbox. I don’t understand how Gmail…
Ellen – Um, I’m buying the domain name.
LATER THAT NIGHT
“The” Regret.
Erin – This is where we trade roles again. I actually develop a flopsweat thinking AFTER we…
Ellen- Um, me!
Erin-. . . have already purchased our domain name, that perhaps there should not be a “the” before moms. Suddenly, the lovely cadence of it sounds exclusionary, proprietary, just plain wrong. I have climbed to the top of the proverbial domain name tree and am setting up new digs. We are exactly 1% of the way through getting things started, and I am hyperventilating and firing off melodramatic emails. Ellen at this point might be rethinking having me on board. Ellen’s response to the freak-out and I quote, “It is no big deal…that decision is done. Although Justin Timberlake in “The Social Network” did seem to think it made a difference.”
Ellen – I am feeling this reference aging into oblivion as I type. Timberlake played the Napster guy who told the facebook guy to drop “the” from in front of “the facebook” to make it just “facebook.” If we become famous and you are reading this in our biography, go ask your grandma what facebook was.
FAST FORWARD ONE WEEK
Ellen- So now it has been a week and we have checked wordpress books out of the library, we have googled ‘blogging’ to death, and we are bleary from reading actual blogs. (BTW, not gonna google “two women” again. Not really the angle we were going for). And how much closer are we to getting a blog online: not very close. I feel like I am walking in a dark room with a blindfold on. I hate wallowing in ignorance and uncertainty!! Hate it! About the only thing we have figured out is that we don’t want to start on blogspot because of questions of who owns the content. So with turning our backs on the easy path, we now have to figure out servers and templates. There are hundreds, if not thousands of templates on wordpress.org and wordpress.com and we are not understanding how those skeletons turn into fabulous blogs. So, we do some reverse research. We look at the bottoms of blogs we like and try to see what template they used. Hmm…it looks like the blogs we really like are customized/designed by web designers.
Well, now we are getting somewhere. There is a solution: a web designer! Let’s check the budget. Imagine a Bugs Bunny cartoon where moths flutter out of an empty wallet.
Erin- It’s always darkest just before dawn, but we were feeling a little lost at this point. How to proceed? Who could help? We start brainstorming friends we know who might be tekkies.
There’s more…Chapter 4: Tech Angel to Tree House
