Perhaps I can save beginners a lot of time with some startup issues from the viewpoint of another beginner.
Even with lots of experience with HTML and Frontpage, jumping into this with all the php and endless options can overwhelm. I spend far too many hours beating my head against the wall over a few things that this may help you get past.
First is the installation. I got stuck there for three weeks!
Bad server support. In the HOST NAME you can try: myname.com, localhost, and 127.0.0.1, but if those do not work, contact your server and ask. Mine turned out to be 20 letters long of something I would not have guessed in a gigazillion years. Once installed, choose a theme with two side bars and leave the appearance alone for the time being. Choose in regard to the size and look of the header you want. Changing the headers, the backgrounds and the colors is the hardest part of this, leave it for last.
With two sidebars, you can move all the plugins from one side to the other side and one sidebar will disappear. But it is still available if you want a second sidebar down the road, all you have to do is switch the RIGHT AND LEFT of a plugin.
When you log on from your computer, WINDOWS knows who you are, so you will always get ADMIN status and see everything from that point of view. To see what others see you have to go to another computer. This is also handy in registration tests and to see what you can do as a registered user.
HTML NUGGETS is the key to most things for a beginner. It keeps you out of the code files. The trick is the < > command in the editor to hide the code. Once you figure that out you can put links, graphics, mailto: and ads in the sidebars.
The ADMIN page is at first complicated, just fiddle away and see what things do, you will learn it in a few hours.
Go to another computer and see what unregistered and registered users can do and see. Start playing with ENTRIES and COMMENTS and security issues mostly regarding rights to PUBLISH. (Your moderation or approval)
Once you get the hang of it its time to personalize the appearance of your blog. This is done in the style.css file. Php code is different than HTML, and at first alien, but you can get past this using the FIND option in your editor to look around. Before you begin, save the style.css file with a letter missing or an OLD at the end so you can get it back. With all the spaces or blank space in PHP code, best to WORD WRAP the file. In the style.css file change things where you find BACKGROUND, IMG and COLOR and such, save and look. Remember, when you change a style.css file, it changes all instances of that file in all directories. Or as I was told, that is mostly true most of the time!
Begin playing with trackbacks and rss feeds with other blogs in your area of interest.
And lastly, play around with everything, and if you get stuck, sleep on it before you come running to Garvin with your panties in a wad.
I woke up many times with the answer. Garvin is good at this, and prompt! Very unusual. So don’t take advantage of the poor man! I installed WordPress and played with that for awhile. Serendipity seems easier. Though support and plugins are not yet at the WordPress its growing very fast. My issue with WordPress was having to edit the blog from their server. I didnt like that.
And when will Bill come out with FRONTBLOG?
