Setting Up WordPress

“I want to write,” I said. “So I need to set up a blog.”

Actually, I needed two blogs. For technical and scientific writing, I have long been using sphaerula.com. (I recently wiped the site because the content was dated. I am reinstalling WordPress and creating new content.) For creating writing and photography, I am using conradhalling.com.

Two days later, I’m still working on configuring WordPress on conradhalling.com, and I haven’t written any posts yet. WordPress has so many fascinating pieces and ways to customize the installation that it can be a huge distraction from writing. I remember when the Macintosh computer first came out and people wasted hours if not days experimenting with page layouts and fonts. There were reports that people were actually less productive on a Macintosh than on a DOS/Windows PC because they spent so much time making the page look good. That’s the trap I have fallen into.

My needs are simple. I’m not trying to run a business from my blog. I need a basic content management system (CMS) that is easy to use, that looks good, and that makes public my creating writing and photography.

On conradhalling.com (hosted by DreamHost), when I started the One-Click Installation of WordPress, the only theme choices the installer provided were themes from Crio. I experimented with a Crio theme after installing it and decided that the theme was too complex. At that point I discovered that the installer had copied in ten other themes. I tried the Elementor theme, but that was also more complicated than I wanted. I finally switched to the Twenty Twenty-One block-based theme since it was simpler.

I have been paring down the features to the point where I have only two plugins. I have turned off comments, which eliminates the need to add a plugin to manage cookie notifications. It took me hours of experimentation to understand how the pages, customization, posts, and widgets work for the Twenty Twenty-One theme, but now I have finished configuration and created two placeholder posts, one each for my Writing and Photography categories.

To keep things simple, I plan to use the Twenty Twenty-One theme for my blog here at sphaerula.com.