This endeavor, as the saying goes, is a learning experience. As in the sense of a button I saw years ago, which said, "Oh, NO! Not another learning experience!"
If I mention one other datum, you might have a better idea comprehending my initial statement. This endeavor is also an exercise in OCD. These entries are crossposted to four different blogging sites -- Xanga, LiveJournal, Blogspot, and WordPress, not to mention that notifications of new entries are posted to my Facebook page. Learning the various quirks of each site, and trying to overcome said quirks, can be just a little . . . well, I would have to say that the feeling is somewhere between "irritating" and "annoying."
Getting things to look the way I want on each site has probably been the first learning curve. As you might well imagine, each of the sites has its own ways for customizing the look of an individual blog. So far, Xanga has been the easiest to nudge, tweak, or otherwise sledgehammer into looking the way I want. I selected its most no-frills approach, and after that, it was merely a matter of adjusting the colors. I may still need to adjust a color or two a little, but I think I have that site looking the way I like it.
With LiveJournal, I believe I may have looked at just about every theme they offer before I selected one -- and looked through them again when I decided that I did not like my first choice after all. I need to adjust the color on the links, but I believe that it should not be too difficult a task.
I am still trying to find a look that I like on both Blogspot and WordPress. I have not yet found anything that I can say that I like; it is more a case of going with something that I do not overly dislike. I may have to spend a few hours looking at all the alternatives on each site, then seeing how I might be able to customize a choice.
(Incidentally, if you are curious enough to wonder how each site looks, that can be easily satisfied. My username on each site is the same -- "jamesnorcross." Simply go to the address bar of your browser, and replace the site where you are currently viewing -- be it Xanga, LiveJournal, Blogspot, or WordPress -- with one of the others.)
While getting the look right for each site has been interesting, I have been more surprised by how the last two entries looked when I posted them. I write the entry first, then copy and paste the text into a "New Entry" page on each site. And I adjust the time so that it is the same for each site. (I did mention that this was an exercise in OCD, did I not?)
When I posted "Sum Qui Sum, Et Qui Omnis Sum," the entry included the code for the results of the online quiz I took. With Xanga and LiveJournal, the images of the results posted just as I thought they would. With Blogspot and WordPress, however, the images did not appear. Instead, what you see are the blocks of code that should have been translated into the images. There must be a simple reason why everything did not post correctly, but I am still trying to determine what that reason might be.
I had a different surprise when I posted "The Pledge, According To Red And The Duke." Each site handles the posting of links a little differently. LiveJournal makes the links automatically; Xanga and Blogspot need a little nudging to change plain text into a link. The big surprise was when the entry posted on WordPress. Instead of the expected links, what actually appeared were the videos from YouTube.
As I said, I am trying to master multiple learning curves at the same time, and hoping that I will not be too surprised by what I might see once I click the "Save" button.
***jn***
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