My Web Page Enters the 21st Century

What could keep an author from posting for more than two weeks? Marathon sessions to recreate her webpage, which I believe I began building in about 1999,

The initial design was busy and used a builder that didn't lend to a modern look. I had postponed an upgrade because it is soooo hard for me to learn new technologies. I should not have waited so long.

However, I've learned more about my writing, and can now describe it better. As you'll see, I have much more to learn, but elaineorr.com now has a clean look. I like it.

Why Now?

The redesign did not happen on purpose. First I had bad luck, then very good luck. My host (who will remain nameless because I won't give them publicity) cancelled the proprietary software they provided. No email warning. They said if I had logged into the host panel I would have seen announcements. 

Why would I do that? I write books and update a webpage. I only go into the panel to pay my bill. (Make that past tense.)

I bit the bullet and transferred my hosting contract to WordPress, which I've never been able to learn. Bought two books. Still could not do more than title a page. There's a certain amount of operator error, but I just don't find WordPress intuitive.

Here's the very good luck. I posted a note on my church Facebook page, and a wonderful friend stepped up. She taught me a lot, but also did a good portion of the design and template building. And gently corrected my mistakes. 

She introduced me to Elementor, a developer tool specifically for WordPress. I can do enough to be dangerous, so to speak.

Learning New Technology

Learning new software has never been easy for me, but I usually jump in. I bought a Toshiba laptop when they had 50K (yes, K, not even megabytes) of memory. You loaded (and used) software on floppy discs. I think this was the late 1980s. (Yes, I'm old. Seventy next month. Going strong.)

I could absorb new software because I worked a lot for a nonprofit, and they graciously let contractors attend training when they bought new software. They also had very patient staff two generations younger than I who answered questions. Even if asked three times. 

Repetition is my personal key to learning new software, but now I work alone. I may find a course about WordPress or Elementor. I need to keep learning.

The personal aspect of learning new things works best for those of us (at least me) who memorized multiplication tables in the days before calculators.

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To learn more about Elaine, go to elaineorr.com or sign up for her newsletter.