Website Blog CMSs For Custom Domains

A new goal for my GwG Udacity Challenge Scholarship for Beginner Front-End Web Dev:

Figure out a couple good options for blog CMSs (content management systems) on basic-but-not-awful low-cost websites with custom domains. Figure out how to set those up and how to set up custom-domain email addresses, practice on a few different URLs, then write down all steps in the procedure so we can do it quickly and correctly in the future.

The reason for this new goal is that for a low-cost "website for a side project," we're using a domain someone has had registered for many years, fullybuzzed.com, and we want to do a blog "on" fullybuzzed.com. Since none of us working on the side project are highly-skilled web devs, and since we're on a nearly non-existent budget, we're initially just using Blogger, pointing it at fullybuzzed.com, and adding a couple static pages to the blog page. That should give us pretty much what we want for early days on the side project.

Slight problem. The three of us working on setting up the fullybuzzed.com web presence, blog, email, etc, have pretty close to zero experience pointing a Blogger account at a custom domain, using a free Gmail account to point to a specific fullybuzzed.com email address, or a few other back-office kind of things. So we've got things working somewhat, but not smoothly, and not the way I think it
should work.

For example, I created a static page for Events on the Blogger site. When you access the Events page directly with the blogspot.com URL, everything works fine. I can send someone this link, https://thehivefullybuzzed.blogspot.com/p/events.html, per the screenshot graphic to the right, and that link will take them to the Events page, just like it should.

BUT, things only sort of work when I want to access the Events page through fullybuzzed.com. If you type in http://fullybuzzed.com/, you go the Blogger website, which is all good. AND, when you click on the Events tab in the navigation bar on fullybuzzed.com, it brings up the Events page, which is a good thing. UNFORTUNATELY, you can't send someone a fullybuzzed.com link to the Events page, because the way things work as of the writing of this post, the Events page when accessed through the fullybuzzed domain only shows http://fullybuzzed.com/ in the URL bar, per the graphic to the left. Every blog post and every static page on the blog shows http://fullybuzzed.com/ as its address. We're hoping the re-direct is just incorrectly set up, and the person who has the domain fullybuzzed.com registered is supposed to work on figuring that out and fixing it tomorrow.

It shouldn't be this hard, though. Especially not for three people who've played with technology, and enjoyed it, for quite a few years.

So that's my added goal for this GwG class -- getting skilled at quickly setting up a low-cost website with the custom-domain email address I want and an easy-to-use blog CMS that has the expected custom-domain URLs for various pages on the site.

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New GwG Scholarship Opportunity: Google and Coursera

An interesting post popped up on TechCrunch today related to the Grow with Google program (GwG), "Google and Coursera launch program to train more IT support specialists."

"...Coursera...is today launching a new IT course with Google...the pair announced a

new program to train IT support professionals — a course written by Googlers for the Coursera platform to teach and then test across six fundamental areas of customer support: troubleshooting and customer service, networking, operating systems, system administration, automation, and security... 

The IT Support program — which is launching globally, but will offer courses initially only in English — has 64 hours of coursework in all, and students are expected to complete it eight to 12 months, at a cost of $49/month...Google is also offering financial aid to 10,000 people, based on need, and also via a few charitable partnerships...the typical cost of the course for full-paying students will be between $392 and $588 depending on how long it takes, which comparatively is a pretty good deal...I’ve seen courses from reputable companies that can cost as much as $1,230 for 20-25 hours of IT support instruction. 

For Coursera, the IT Support course is part of a larger strategic push for the startup to promote more vocational training...It’s also a way to tease out other potential business lines for the company in areas like career placement. After you finish the course, Coursera can then help you find (but does not guarantee) a job, tapping its partner network of businesses, which includes Bank of America, Walmart, Sprint, GE Digital, PNC Bank, Infosys, TEKSystems, UPMC, and Google... 

For Google, the course is one of the bigger efforts it has made to date for its Grow with Google program, an effort that the company launched in October 2017 to offer training, scholarships and other tools to help train people in skills related to tech and entrepreneurship..."

It's interesting to see the different approaches Google and other tech-related organizations are taking to increase the number of people with marketable tech skills.

I wonder how many people in the Udacity-Google GwG scholarship program now wish they'd applied for this new Coursera-Google program instead...

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Wednesday Will Be A GwG Work Day

So... Really looking forward to Wednesday.

Half the day is blocked out for working on the GwG / Udacity Lessons. With luck, I'll squeeze in a little bit more.

Snowed here last night and today -- first significant amount of snow in a bunch of days. Almost like first snow of the winter. Many people apparently forgot how to drive in snow. Which meant they drove 5 to 10 miles per hour below the speed limit. I hope that means they had or caused less accidents than if they had driven at the speed limit. But with many impatient drivers, wanting to get places in a hurry and not wanting to drive less than the speed limit, the cautious drivers probably ended up getting into or causing the same number of accidents as they would have if they drove the speed limit. It's an interesting world!

Only interaction with GwG today was a bit of Slack team time. Did some work on the blog/website for The Hive (mentioned in yesterday's post), but no time working on Lessons.

The days are flying by. And it felt like they were flying past even faster when I saw a comment in Slack by someone who said they finished all the course material yesterday, and they guessed maybe they should have signed up for the intermediate course...

When I see all the Slack comments from people discussing the numerous coding courses they've completed prior to this GwG beginner course, two thoughts go through my head. First, why are they taking the beginner course if they've already learned all the material the class will cover. Second, having so many GwG scholarship recipients in this course who are already very experienced in what the course teaches seems to suggest my odds of getting a scholarship for a full nanodegree course from Udacity are between very slim and none.

But that's ok. As long as my course participation means I finish the GwG 90 days with the ability to do a simple website that feels a step above what I've managed to do with Blogger in the past, I'll be feel it was worthwhile applying for the scholarship and doing the coursework. Appreciation of moments and opportunities in one's life is often (usually...) a matter of perspective.

Perspective is an important part of nonduality. I didn't want it to snow today because it meant shoveling the silly white frozen water off the driveway. On the other hand, I appreciate how nice the past couple weeks were in terms of much less snow to shovel than many recent years. And I keep remembering that each day has a bit more daylight in it, and summer is on the way here!

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Changing Priorities & GwG Slack Team

Because I have a couple wide-open days coming up, I don't feel too badly that my priorities got changed today. Car repairs and a couple other things. Which meant that my "FOR SURE, at least 3 hours of Lesson work" mentioned in yesterday's post just didn't happen today.

In a way, in addition to about an hour poking around on the GwG Slack team, I actually did do a little bit related to websites and HTML.

I'm in the midst of working with several other people to organize and launch The Hive, a network of like-minded and complementary-minded people focused initially on NE Wisconsin. Did some content and formatting work on the blog/website for The Hive today. Had to smile when my early Udacity Lessons paid off while making a couple HTML changes on our site. Went right to the Mozilla Developer Network resource linked by Udacity in the course. Quickly found the HTML formatting info I needed, went back to the site and made the changes we wanted.

So even though I didn't complete any additional Udacity Lessons today, I did reinforce the learning from early Lessons... :)

But speaking of the GwG Slack team, I went to the channel for Wisconsin people and Slack only would let me see the ten most recent messages. Slack and/or Udacity is trying to squeeze money out of the people awarded GwG scholarships. There was a message saying I had to pay for Slack if I wanted to see more of the previous Wisconsin channel messages.

When I was in the Wisconsin channel two days ago, I looked at 50 - 100 previous messages, right back to when Nick launched the channel. Learned a lot about Wisconsin people in the GwG program. If someone checking out the Wisconsin channel today for the first time could only see what I saw, they would learn almost nothing regarding the Wisconsin GwG people. And that's a shame. Very poor way to set up the Slack team/channel free restrictions. Doesn't feel like an appropriate business model for Udacity and/or Slack, especially if they're trying to promote active participation by GwG people in the various communication channels.

Might mention it to Nick B, but I'm pretty sure he's already aware of the Slack limits/permissions for free usage...

New day tomorrow!

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Juggling Too Many Sharp Knives

It sometimes seems like I'm juggling too many sharp knives!

Several of my To-Do items for yesterday took waaay longer than expected, and I sort of lost track of time and was pretty much worn out and brain-dead by the time I went to bed.

As a result, I forgot all about writing a GwG scholarship post for yesterday...

I spent a bunch of time in the GwG Slack channels after my brain already shut down for the day, but couldn't make room earlier in the day for actually making progress in the Udacity Lessons.

Today was spent on a few non-GwG follow-up items from yesterday, plus had to make a new batch of pumpkin bran muffins because I ate my last one yesterday. Important Stuff! One must have priorities.

So today flew by almost as fast as yesterday. While I ate lunch, I poked around more on Slack, but still no progress on Lessons. Finally done with non-GwG stuff, so I'm going to work on a GwG Lesson, but since my brain-energy has about run out for the day, the time in the Lesson will likely be mostly review of preceding work and a bit of poking around at Quiz 3.7, the one I was last working on.



Tomorrow's goal:  FOR SURE, at least 3 hours of Lesson work in the early afternoon. When brain is awake!

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So, I poked around a little with the Grow with Google Udacity scholarship program yesterday.

That was Day 1, the day Udacity notified me Google was giving me the scholarship. That was fun.

Today was Day 2.

Starting the Lessons on Udacity.

Logged in to Udacity, clicked on the Grow with Google link. Went to my first Lesson.

Lesson 1 and Lesson 2 were pretty simple and straightforward. No issues.

Lesson 3. Oops. Time for Bob to learn something.

Argh. I experienced the same thing that happens with pretty much all other computer science learning experiences. At least the ones I've been involved in.

The challenge isn't learning what they say they're teaching. The challenge is learning what they're not showing or saying they're teaching you.

One challenge -- because this is an asynchronous online class with programmed evaluation of your work, you have to present your work in a format that the programmed evaluator can parse or understand.

At one point they present what a standard html template looks like. They have the student use an online validator to learn what happens when you don't use the correct formatting with the html template. I figured that means using the standard html template is important to Udacity and this course. Then they have you figure out how to create an html button tag. And they quiz you on the button tag, having you type your button html code in a quiz field. So I create the standard html template and put the button tag in the <body> of the file, just like they want. I figured now I know how to do an html button. Submit answer. BONK! Not right. Try a few changes, bonk, bonk, bonk! So I delete all the standard template html coding (which they just taught us was very important) and left just the one line of html for a button tag. Hit Submit...

CORRECT! You finally learned how to create an html button tag!!!

NO. What I finally learned was how you wanted the answer to look. Just the tag code without the rest of the standard template.

Another "learning" issue is that in order to do the assigned task, you often have to figure out several steps they leave out. Steps that some people know, other people don't.

The lesson gave four steps to follow. I followed exactly what it said to do, and didn't get the desired answer. Tried a bunch of stuff. Still didn't work. Read through the forums. Other people had issues with the same Quiz. The info on the forum didn't really help me. After a lot of poking, googling, and

Slack discussion, I finally figured out a couple things that weren't mentioned (that I was already supposed to know or was supposed to figure out). Then I got the right answer for the quiz.

So, in a way, with Lessons 1.1 through 3.6, I am learning how to write html. But the real work is figuring out all the stuff in addition to writing the html for <p> tags, <button> tags, and <h3> tags. You might call it learning how to learn all the ancillary stuff that will make the html you write work!

My first Grow with Google Udacity online course is hereby relabeled, "How To Learn How To Learn HTML."

(I want to spend a few hours tomorrow on the GwG html course instead of the other activities my calendar says I'm doing... :)

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Awarded "Grow With Google" WebDev Scholarship!

Woohoo!

Google & Udacity selected me for a webdev scholarship!

A Udacity email arrived today telling me Google has chosen me as one of the people to receive a 2018 "Grow with Google Challenge Scholarship" to the Front-End Web Developer track at Udacity.

That's the fifth Excellent Thing that Google has done for me.

1. Launched the Google search engine to dramatically improve on the web search results of Alta Vista.
2. Gave me a Gmail account shortly after launching the initial beta program.
3. Chose me as one of the lucky people to receive the v.1.0 Chromebook.
4. Launched Google Fi cellular service and had the high quality, reasonably priced Nexus 5X to use on Fi.
5. Gave me the Grow With Google webdev scholarship through Udacity.

The above list started out with three items, then grew to four, then five. I was tempted to add five more, but resisted.

There are many more useful Google services and products, along with the inevitable negatives inherent in a profit-focused organization which has scaled to tens of thousands of employees and

billions of users (who are not also customers). Such is the world we live in today.

Enough time spent on this inaugural post.

Time to refresh my memory by re-reading the background story about the Grow with Google scholarships and begin developing my plan for completing the Udacity courses successfully, with a target of finishing them in 80% or less of the time allowed under the Grow with Google program.

Yippee!!!!!

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