facebook – Rosepoint Publishing

Rob Moses at Rob Moses Photography started his blog about the same time as I, was one of the first to follow me, and I’ve followed with interest his beautiful and unique pictures. I’ve mentioned him before. He takes a lot of pictures; a lot of different types of pictures. Street photography and city skylines are some of his most favourite things to shoot, but he also finds himself shooting more landscapes than he thought he would.

Most recently, he ran a rant about Instagram vs WordPress which I found so exactly echoed my own sentiments, as well as recent discussions with many of my own followers, that I thought I’d share with you. No doubt you agree. Instagram is too much fun, gets too much attention, and so rewarding that’s it’s difficult to get back to the WP blog subject of the day. For me, of course, the time is spent in crafting “bookstagrams.” (And you have my invitation to follow my efforts in the widget column on the right or @rosepointpub.)

For me, Instagram is an attractive alternative to either Pinterest or Facebook. The two image-sharing platforms were both released approximately 2010 and I’ve yet to really figure out Pinterest. According to Digital Guide, there were approximately 400 million Instagrammers to 100 million Pinteresters back in 2016. Currently, there are almost 75 million WordPress sites out there with over 50% of those (or 37 million) on the free WordPress.com. There are articles on WP vs Tumblr, WP vs Squarespace and Instagram vs Flickr. (And I did try Flickr.) But Instagram–and further–Bookstagram really caught my attention. Now that Instagram has the “story” capability, the ability to add dialogue has expanded dramatically. I love books and they make some gorgeous pictures and now stories (posts) as well!

Time is at such a premium–especially at my age–and I no longer have a full-time job. As jmeyersforeman noted in part, “I think both Instagram and WordPress have their purpose, as you said, Instagram is great for it’s immediacy, while WordPress gives you a longer format to explore topics and it takes time to develop those posts…we only have so much time in the day and we have to decide where we get the most reward for our time.”

I Need a New WordPress Theme! (I think)

I liked the (free) theme of this blog, so much so it’s dominated the background since I created the site (and that’s been awhile).

However, I keep getting assailed with bigger and better–that’s what led to publishing my grandfather’s 2nd (and more) novels in the first place; created this WordPress blog, opened (or resurrected) accounts for Twitter, LinkedIn, Google+, Etsy, Facebook and Pinterest. Is all this really necessary?

Link Images — Yes, these were all clickable–but WordPress doesn’t do html?

I’m still mainly clueless regarding the purpose of half of the above and as I’ve alluded to previously, really don’t know what I’m doing. So it goes that there is a constant need for more knowledge, ever more studies into making the present, better. Yes, I’m one of those that must learn from my mistakes!

Behind the desire to make something more desirable, more topical, create a larger readership, open more channels, craft a better product, I’ve been looking into converting this WordPress blog into a “self-hosted” website. Having read what I could, I’m still not sure of the benefit other than to infuse the coffers of others with my hard-earned Social Security money–all those years contributing my portion of those pitiful paychecks into that which is now being called the “entitlement.” (Guess I missed the benefits–don’t get me started).

Do you have a compelling reason for converting from a regular WordPress blog into a self-hosted website? (Maybe getting it to accept an html graphic?) I’d love to hear it! Since this is not “big business,” I’m thinking maybe I should just do more with the blog I have:

Keep up the writing commitment
Offer a wider content
Continue with reviews (I do still love reading for fun)
Change that old theme

WHOA! I know what you are thinking! (I almost snuck that one in!) “But it has served so well!” Or perhaps, “It was obvious at a glance the blog’s subject.” Okay, the last, arguably so.

Therefore, in keeping with the aforementioned warning [she] “doesn’t know what she’s doing,” I’ll only say this–I’ve been surveying some new theme ideas. Uh Oh.

Ship’s Chart