Good morning!  Welcome to Computer Tips with Becky!  Today we are going to go over one of my favorite projects – updating your personal website. We’ve got a lot of material to cover, so let’s get started.

1. You’re going to migrate over to WordPress eventually, but until you can pay someone to do it for you, you need to make do with Blogger.  You’re a big-time, important writer now.  You’re creating article proposals.  You’re submitting short stories.  You deserve a website that reflects how big-time and important you are, so you need to make sure you research it and do it right the first time!
2. Spend a long time on Pinterest, looking up blogging tips.
3. Congratulations – you have now designed the world’s most amazing imaginary pantry for your kitchen. What do pantries have to do with websites?  Nothing, other than the fact that you’re on Pinterest, and ohmygosh, look at the shelving space on that one!
4. No, really.  FOCUS.  Websites.  You’re here about websites, and researching what makes one look professional.  Here, let’s just focus on one thing.  Why don’t you find the world’s most perfect Blogger template?  Surely you can focus long enough to do that, right?
5. Oh, you found it!  Oh.  Oh, oh, oh!  It’s perfect!
6. Oh, wait.  The “World’s Most Perfect Blogger Template”  costs money.  Start your search over, and include the word “free” in the search bar, because that’s how you roll.  You’re classy like that – nothing but the best for you, baby.
7. Find the “World’s Second Most Perfect Blogger Template”.  Go to download.  Realize that it’s a scam.  Start over.
8. Settle on something that looks good enough – it’s not flashy, but it’s clean and it’ll do nicely. Save it to your desktop.  The last time you saved it to your downloads it disappeared and never resurfaced.
9. Upload the template onto your blog.
10. Stare at it in horror for a few minutes.  That’s…. that’s not what it looked like on the preview mode.  That’s not what it looked like AT ALL.  Screw it – you should just go back to your old template.
11. Wait… where is your old template?
12. Oh.  CRAP.  You mean that “old template” you were supposed to download before uploading the new one?
13. Spend several minutes cursing.  Your kids are hanging around eavesdropping on your mumbling, so try to make it creative.   MOTHER FLETCHER!  FLAMING HECK!  OH, FOR THE LOVE OF PICKLE FARTS…. STONE OF A PEACH!
14. Realize with a dawning sense of horror that it’s up to you to fix this monstrosity of a website. Why is your header so teensy-tiny?  Why is it off-center?  Why are all the gadgets all over the place?  Why does nothing make any sense?
    
15. Spend 45 minutes clicking around uselessly.
16. Spend another 30 minutes clicking around angrily.
17. Finally lose your temper.  Is something out of place?  Delete it.  Is something else out of place? Delete that.  In fact, delete everything. If it wanted to stay on your blog, then it should have behaved, amiright?  DELETE EVERY SINGLE THING THAT DARES MISBEHAVE. That’ll show your stupid website who is boss.
18. Calm down.  Realize you deleted important stuff.  Calmly try to re-add those important items.
19. Wait, what were the  actual links on your sidebar of your favorite websites? You can’t remember.  That’s why you created those links in the first place – so you wouldn’t have to remember.  You mean you didn’t even screenshot the thing before going on your deleting rampage?  Crap.  DOUBLE CRAP.
20. Give up on fixing the “Most popular posts” or “Websites I Like” gadget.  Instead, you should probably try to fix your header.  I mean, it’s the most important thing, right?  It’s the first thing that people see when they first go to your page, so it should probably be gorgeous and perfect and reflect who you are as a writer.
21. Fiddle around with the teensy-tiny, crooked header for another 45 minutes.  Get angry and decide to start from scratch. Delete it.  Look in your computer for the saved version so you can try uploading it.
22.  BOB SAGET!  You accidentally deleted the old header when cleaning out your pics the other day, and you even emptied the trash can. Settle in for another round of creative cursing, doing your best to avoid anything that has the word “fart” in it, because your kids still haven’t finished singing “Pickle farts!  Pickle farts!” at the top of their shrill little lungs.
23. Fifteen minutes later you should probably give up and delete the header entirely.  Whatever. You didn’t need a header anyways.  Headers are for stupid people.
24. Give up trying to fix your “Pages” section.  That’s okay.  Nobody needs an “About Me” section anyways.  “About Me” sections are for stupid people, too.
25. Spend several minutes trying to delete the navigation bar at the top.  It’s cool, but you can’t figure out how to fix it.  What the heck’s a shortcode, anyways?  How do you get that to redirect to something useful?  What’s a layout button?  This seems important – I mean, you’re having problems with your layout, so wouldn’t accessing this fix everything?  Then why can’t you access this to fix?
26. Maybe you should take up drinking.  You can’t help but feel that an entire bottle of tequila would make this night marginally better.
27. Whatever.  Websites are stupid.  Turn the computer off, turn on some Norah Jones and Jack Johnson, and pick up a book about werewolves.  You can’t actually kill anyone,  even if you’re in the mood to, but at least you can pretend to be a main character who can kill people, right?

Anyways, this concludes my latest installation of “How to Update Your Website.”  Tune in next week for “How to Throw A Computer Through a Window” or “How to Stab a Laptop Screen”.