Practicum Post #2

I had heard lots of good things about Wordpress as a tool for creating blogs. What exactly it was, though, I was not quite sure. As it turns out, Wordpress has a couple different incarnations. The first, Wordpress.com, holds you relatively strictly to the settings of preset themes (more so, even, than Blogger). Wordpress.org, however, allows you to download Wordpress templates to your computer and allows you to edit them manually to create your own fully customizable page. As it turns out, some of the most popular blogs on the Web use this method—even those at the New York Times.

So, I decided to start going down the Wordpress route. As I began, though, I ran into more questions than answers. Apparently, in order to create a test-site, I had to set up an application called "MAMP" in order to run a local server from my laptop. The Wordpress files needed to be installed in these special folders, and they came in the form of "dynamically related" php files.

Luckily, the people at Wordpress.org created a number of very helpful tutorials that walk new users through these steps. I was slowly starting to realize, however, that creating this website would be no easy task.