These last few days have felt as though I wandered naked into a High Society party wearing nothing but rollers and bunny slippers. It?s that nightmare we?ve all had ? feeling vulnerable and a little too out of our league.

I?ve been online with a web presence since my first site in 1997. I was so excited about it! I had to teach my Speakers Bureaus about getting my information directly without waiting for a Press Kit. The idea of a Virtual Press kit was scary and very foreign. They would argue with me: ?No one wants to log onto the computer to look at your materials! We need videotapes and hard copies of your Promotional materials!? Now what we hear is, ?Can you please update your virtual press kit? We need new photos. And can you have that for me in an hour??

The earliest screenshot I can find of Web 1.0 is from 2000 ? ah I was so young then. And look! Clothing and no rollers!

My First Website!

So much of the internet is seamless and behind the scenes that we take it for granted. Most of us live on a scale from completely clueless to reasonably adept at taking care of our tech needs. For the really dicey stuff we need the TechNerds. I?m a little closer to Technerd than clueless ? but that just means I?m dangerous to myself and my websites if I stray too far off the path. And I tend to multi-task, so I?ll have my desktop, laptop, iPad and cellphone all watching how the site looks? but then, Oh Look! a Chihuahua on roller skates! And down that rabbit hole I go.

I only like to think I?m a nerd, I have this T-Shirt from betterthanpants.com. (you have to buy this shirt! It?s so cool) but maybe I only play a nerd in my head and the shirt doesn?t count as a certification! Truth is, I like messing around with code and the inner workings of that there interwebby thing. But I don?t really know what I?m doing most of the time. Flying on instincts without training is like jumping in the seat of a Boeing 787 with only Piper Cub flight time.

All this is to explain why I have a new love affair with my brand-spankin?-new webhost ? Aptly named WebHostFace, these young whippersnapper international TechNerds (I say that with the greatest respect) have saved my bacon. Without any recriminations whatsoever, they gently took my hand and helped me limp through the process of fixing my white-pages-of-death primary website screwup, moved my blog and site to their webhost, and gave me great advice on how to not get in trouble again. Namely: CALL THEM FIRST.

My ex-husband Stan is an electrician. He used to say that he made most of his living fixing up the DIY jobs done by husbands who didn?t know what they were doing. My advice to all college kids? Go forth and be Tech Nerds! The world needs you! I need to adopt one of you!*  You will save the world and make some cash in the process.

Now, I need to spiffy up and get these rollers out of my hair. I have a website to fix! (But it?s coming along! Go look at BethTerry.com and tell me what you think! Hint: it?s better than the white screen of death I had for 3 days!)

Cheers,

Beth Terry

* True Confession: I tried to talk Stefan at WebHostFace into marrying my beautiful stepdaughter so I could have him in the family! But alas, he?s in Europe!

© 2014 Beth Terry, CSP ? All Rights Reserved