Switching from a free blogging platform such as Blogger.com to a hosted solution seems like it is the smart thing to do since Blogger likes to delete blogs for no apparent reason.

However, learning how to modify your template and get some tools on your blog to help you work better is a huge chore. I spent nearly 5 hours the night before last just trying to figure out how to change the color of the background on two columns of a template I downloaded. Well, nothing worked, so I switched to another template. I then spent 4 hours yesterday just figuring out how to get my new individual pages listed in my sidebar and have them formatted to look good.

I also downloaded a spell checker plug-in because WordPress doesn’t have one in its text editor (I’m sorry, but that’s just incredibly lame even if WordPress is free). Well, I installed it and, of course, it didn’t work.

All of this gives me hope though because I figure if it’s this difficult to get going and the learning curve is so huge, it’s going to keep most people from doing it. Many people would have given up if they would have had to deal with what I’ve already dealt with.

For those of you that are new to blogging, Darren Rowse over at Problogger.net is starting up a series for beginng bloggers. I believe it’s going to be more about actually blogging than any technical issues with a blogging platform but I read Darren’s stuff fairly often and I’m sure it will be good.

AlanLeS