Starting a blog for my family

A while ago I bought a domain name my wife’s family. I bought it at speednames.com. The nice thing is that I can create email aliases for all family members which is kind of cool. It also allows me to configure a web site. At the time I had no specific idea what to with it….to be decided later I guess.

However, when I went to visit my family during new year’s eve, I thought it could be an idea to configure a blog for it. That way we can write some stuff on the family gathering and perhaps it can also be a way to keep in touch later on. The idea sounds nice but I still have to see if my family members will use it…after all they are not all so web 2 as I am!!!!

And so I did. I created a blog using blogger. Why? Don’t know, it was the first thing that came to my mind and considering it is now owned by Google I thought it would probably be ok. So in a stroke of impulsiveness I created the blog and wrote the first posting. The creation process was excellent, no difficult questions and you are up and running in less than five minutes. Good job.

In general I am still happy with my choice, but let me tell you about some first experiences based on one week of usage:

• After creating the blog it puzzled me how you actually log in!!! At the top of the page there is a bar with a link called “sign in” but that only takes you to the blogger homepage. At the top right corner you see this:
  …Huh? What do you mean with “new blogger” ??? I just created one!!! Anyway, I figured that I probably was a new blogger since I signed up using my gmail. So I clicked on it and I see this:
  
  Ok, I get it…and finally I am logged in. But why does it have to be so COMPLICATED??? Clicking on the “sign in” link could have showed my my Google account based login since blogger can know I am one of those and I could have logged in without even leaving my blog!!!! Arrrgh…I guess it is those marketing guess that want to force me to see the blogger homepage. Rather chanceless if you ask me. If my task is to log in, I will not waste any time in looking what is on the blogger homepage. I will log in and that’s it!!! The really bad thing is that WordPress which we are using here does exactly the same….:-(
• The second thing I noticed concerns uploading images. Inserting images works really well in blogger. Simply click on the insert image button and you can upload an image. WordPress is not that smart in this area. Anyway, I upload the image and I am then asked what size it should be. Seems a logical questions and the options are small, medium or large. Ok, but how large is large? Is that the full width of the article space? It doesn’t say anywhere so I simply give it a try…..aaaaaand…no it is not the full width. Why on earth would I like a large image that is about 20 pixels less than the maximum width? I also tried small and medium and I still can’t figure out how big that is….they are different sizes for sure but that is about it.
• So I am able to insert images so I plunder my collection and add five images. I insert the first image, type some text with it, hit return and then insert the next image. Guess what happens? It is placed at the top of my article and not where my cursor is? Aaaaargh. So I thought I’d move it down to where the cursor is. That doesn’t work since the editing window is supersmall and dragging didn’t work as expected. So I had to switch to HTML view and do it manually……my wife wouldn’t be able to do that…
• Now comes the worst of all……my upload pictures look like crap!!! The colors are all wrong and they look very pale…if I click on the picture I get the original which looks perfectly ok. Apparently, blogger is trying to be clever and convert my images to an optimal size….but it fucks up the colours along the way…:-( The saddest thing of all is that I had already optimized my pictures manually in Photoshop…
• But then I needed to invite my other family members! And yes, you have guessed it….none of them was using a Gmail account. So I first have to send an invite to them using the argument that they do not have to use Gmail, they only need the username & password combination for logging in. I know many dislike Microsoft for trying to solve the “I have too many usernames and passwords” problem with Microsoft Passport. But the world really needs something like that. I am getting absolutely mad with all these sites that require me to sign up. I have a file on my desktop with all my usernames and passwords for all sites. I have about 40 of them now….please let somebody figure out a solution for this!!!

Anyway, my family is happy and they enjoy the site. Now let’s see if they also start writing something….