When you’re taking up a new role in your life or your job there are always things that you need to learn how to do. The same is true with blogging in ministry.
Here are some skills that you’ll need to learn, some for every blogger and some just for self-hosted bloggers.
First, you need to learn how to read a manual. No, really, you do. I seem to be able to pick up a program and figure it out naturally, but that only gets me so far. Just like in Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, I need to learn from a master to be able to truly use my skills. Every good blogging platform has some official and some non-official “manuals” that will help you learn how to use it better. Wordpress.com has their support site, self-hosted Wordpress has the Codex, Tumblr has their help section, TypePad has the Knowledge Base.
Next, and this is important to everyone who uses a computer or any piece of technology, you need to learn how to use Google well. It should not be hard to find out just about anything about how to do something relatively normal to your site. Want to moderate spam comments on TypePad? Try typing “spam comments TypePad into Google. Want to change the banner on your WordPress self-hosted blog? Type in the name of the theme that you’re using and “header image” and I guarantee you’ll find info. Try doing this before you email the “experts” that you’re friends with, because I guarantee that’s what they’re doing when you ask them.
For self-hosted bloggers, there is one more thing you need to learn: FTP. (Wikipedia article on FTP – just read the first two paragraphs.) This is how you upload things to your blog that aren’t directly included into your posts or pages. (Hint: this is probably how you’ll have to upload your new header image.) Most blogging platforms have done a lot to remove this from being required in your toolbox, I’d still suggest learning how to do it. Most of the time it’s barely more complicated than moving a file on your computer.
More skills you’ll need to learn that we’ll cover in the future: Image Editing, Tag Word Choices, How to Not Get Sued.
Image from http://www.flickr.com/photos/chefranden/ / CC BY-SA 2.0
