Well, I've spent most of the past week fluffing around with my new web site, which is stored on my laptop for development purposes. After having got the main guts of the site downloaded and installed in about 3 days, I'm now up to my armpits in the fine tuning.
I can see that I am approaching the end of my present knowledge about web sites, and that I'll need some professional help sooner rather than later. There's only so much you can do before you have to start fiddling around with the source code, and that's a place I don't want to go to at all - too dangerous for the uninitiated like me! I've looked at a few other sites which are using the same template as me, so I'll try to do as much as I can before getting in the professionals.
The old adage that the last 10% of the process takes 90% of the time is pretty much true in this case. I have spent hours trying to change one small thing. Sometimes I can, sometimes I can't. Sometimes it's because I have to delete one space from a line of code. I don't mind doing this if I know what to do, but I'm not a computer programmer, so the lines of code look like Sanskrit to me.
I love the idea of this open source programming, though, and have nothing but admiration for the people - unpaid - who create and develop it. This must be a true labour of love. One major hassle I see, though, is that the documentation and help which accompanies this free software isn't terribly good. Unless you can "talk the talk", you are going to get stuck. Then you'll either tear what's left of your hair out and throw your innocent laptop out the window, or you'll pay to have someone fix it for you. The ideal scenario would be for each development team to find a computer geek who also is able to explain the entire installation and modification process very thoroughly and systematically. Such a person will not be easy to find.
I suspect that most geeks have progressed way too far along the path of computer coding to remember what it was like to be a rank newbie. Writing something as particular as a help file for a computer program requires some real communication skills. You would have to keep simplifying the language, whilst at the same time remaining factually accurate. This would be a lot harder to do than it may sound.
So, I'm heading back to the laptop now to see what useful changes I can make to my site - wish me well.
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