Do you know what one of these is? It’s called a typewriter and they were everywhere. Think of a laptop without a spell checker. Oh, and the backspace key? Well you could backspace, but deleting what was typed required several steps and a special add-on app.

The “app” came in several forms. The cleanest was in the form of small, white rectangular tabs that were held behind the black ribbon. When the key was pressed to type over the mistake (with the same mistake letter), the appropriate letter would hammer against the ribbon (which normally puts the ink onto the page) and that impact would carry through to the white correction tab. When struck, it would deposit a white film in the form of the letter onto the paper and (hopefully) cover all the black ink thereby “deleting” the letter.

A messier alternative was found in bottles of white solution that could be painted over the error with a brush attached to the cap. And if your typewriter allowed, you might be privileged to have the “app” built into the typewriter in the form of a special correction ribbon. On these machines, one could load a ribbon with two colors. Often one would see black and red on the ribbon. But if you were like me, it would be more useful to have the white correction tape paired with the black.

So, what does this have to do with WordPress? Absolutely nothing, except to show how blessed we are to have the tools necessary to create the page you are now reading. WordPress is by no means the only tool available to create and edit a website. It may not be the best tool. But WordPress is used on almost 40% of all websites. hostingtribunal.com/blog/wordpress-statistics/

It can be downloaded to your computer as an app if you are hosting through a site such as GoDaddy or online at wordpress.com as I am doing. I find learning a new app difficult and WordPress is no exception. So, many thanks to the people who provide tutorials on YouTube. It took a couple tries to find the right one for me. The first videos I found focused on building e-commerce sites. I found this tutorial to be very helpful in learning the basics: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kYY88h5J86A&t=106s

I doubt I have to warn you that videos seldom match the latest version of the app you are trying to learn. Even though this video title mentions 2022, my WordPress menu structure is different. Indeed that may be because the video uses the downloaded app while I am working on WordPress.com. Regardless, it is close enough.

I hope my experience will give you the courage to try this yourself. It can be done!

If I can do it, YOU can do it!