I may be of a pre-baby-boomer generation, but that does not mean I’m afraid of computers. I was hand coding in FORTRAN on punched cards for an IBM 360 forty-five years ago. My first home computer was a Kaypro running a CP/M operating system, with two 64 K floppy disks. (Really floppy; no hard drives or even the plastic-cased “floppy” disks then.) I learned HTML in the days when Netscape 1 was state-of-the-art, and the first page I made is still (with some editing but looking much the same) up on the web. I created an extensive website, still referenced, on Shetland Sheepdogs, Border Collies and canine coat color genetics back in the last decade of the 20th century.
At the time I retired, thus cutting off daily meeting with other geeks, there was no such thing as social media, aside from email.
Then I published my first book, Homecoming, with iUniverse.
Left to right: my MacBook Air, iMac, internet screen for iMac, monitor for old G3 Mac (pre-USB.) Not shown: G4 MacBook I use if I need to transfer a file from the G3. Don’t you hate “upgrades” that leave your files and programs useless?
I knew that my best bet for publicity, living where I do in Alaska, was the internet. I knew how to make web pages but not how to find a place to post them, and I’d never heard of social media. One of the few iUniverse publicity packages I’ve signed up for that was worth the cost was web publicity.
They set up pages for me on facebook, MySpace, Goodreads, Twitter, an email account (which I didn’t really need; I’ve had email for years), LibraryThing, Flikr, an author webpage and a WordPress blog. Yes, the one you’re reading now.
I have to admit that most of them have fallen by the wayside or get occasional auto-posts. (I discovered HootSuite on my own.) Twitter (@sueannbowling) and facebook get a daily quotation (with a challenge to identify the context.) The two still really active are my author website (the ongoing science fiction story and backdrop to my published science fiction, Jarn’s Journal, is regularly updated there) and this blog.
I’m not 100% happy with the mechanics of the blog, though at least I finally figured out how to get WordPress to send notifications (including follows on other WordPress blogs) to the email address I actually read. What infuriates me is that in order to change the type size (I’d like it larger) I have to get in and edit the cascading style sheet, which is something they invented after I learned HTML. And the latest problem: the option to open a new page/tab has disappeared from links from images. (Things are changing fast here; I did learn how to use an image in my sidebar to open a new window for a linked blog.)
Would anyone like to help me?
Buy Homecoming from iUniverse
'Homecoming' Blog 
Wow, Sue! You are computer savvy. I can not help you. All I do is push the send button!
Problem is they’re changing so fast.
The funny thing is I’m familiar with so much of what you’re describing. My dad did all that stuff, too. I learned computers early but couldn’t write code very well. I still have a real floppy disk somewhere. 🙂
Wordpress is beyond me. I still have trouble w/ Blogger sometimes.
HMG
Nice office. I definitely can’t help you and I have the world’s slowest computer.
My 2008 iMac isn’t exactly fast, but I don’t want to have a whole new system.
My problem with WordPress at the moment is that they’ve dumbed it down (just in the last few weeks) so you can either use it in very simple ways or if you really know your stuff do lots of things. I’m in the middle.
I’m a baby boomer, so of course lived without a computer up until my 20’s. I learned mechanical drafting with paper and pencil, then switched to CAD in my early career as a drafter/designer. Where would we be without our computers!?
I hand wrote my PhD dissertation on yellow lined paper and literally cut and taped to revise. And the typescript was on mimeograph stencils. But we did have computers, just not word processing or copiers.
Can you imagine the world without computers? I sure can’t! Excellent choice for C. My mom is a baby boomer, but she isn’t computer savvy in the least. haha
I remember when computers ran on vacuum tubes, but they certainly weren’t home computers! Neither was the IBM 360.
I haven’t done the punch-card coding, but I’ve done a lot of FORTRAN programming (both 77 and 90). Nowadays, I mostly use Matlab and Python because it’s so convenient. My career in programming and serious numerical math started on the Cray Y-MP in the early 90s. My first computer was a Commodore 64, which I bought when I was in highschool >:)
I learned FORTRAN in the 60’s, and punched cards were the only way to get a program into a computer. Even the CDC’s (6600 and 7600) at NCAR used stacks of punched cards. One of the toughest bugs I had to find was due to the fact that they occasionally read cards out of order, so you couldn’t just cancel a line with the following line.
Okay well the best way I know how to explain it is this: CSS essentially creates classes of object, which means that instead of doing all the code manually for each thing you add, you specify the class which you’ve set up in your style.css and it (for example) opens the link from an image in a new tab.
These classes of object can inherit styles from the top of the CSS which sets out the style for all your major HTML tags. It’s all a bit confusing but the main thing to concern yourself with is that you can add your own entry there and get it to do what you want.
However, in WordPress, rather than editing the theme (which contains the style.css file) directly, it’s suggested that you create a child theme, which means you do not need to edit all of the files associated with your theme and, if something goes wrong, you can always revert to the ‘parent’ theme while you fix it.
Hopefully that will give you an idea of what to look at!
Embarassingly, my WordPress blog looks to be down from here, so I’ve had to post my C post over on Tumblr (burneplasmafire.tumblr.com) in the meantime.
WordPress has been making changes which I do NOT like. Neither do a lot of other people.
Well actually I think that that was my fault, I’m not hosted on WordPress. Anyway, did an emergency plugin deactivation, and I’ve figured out which one isn’t working very well so that’s sorted.
All in a day’s work! 🙂
Baby boomer here too. I do love all we can do with computers (digital art for instance). But for me it’s the internet that is awesome. I would never have imagined I’d have friends I talk to every day from all over the world! I’m afraid I can’t help you with the problems with your blog… I’m on a self hosted WP blog, and that seems to have it’s own good and bad things. It’s very nice to meet you on this A-Z Challenge… I was sent by Stormy the Gnome. 😉
My boss sent you? Cool.
I’m pretty sure it was him, I think I recognized him behind his devious disguise today. 😉