How I became a RELUCTANT Web Programer

Before I was ever a doula or Hypnobaibies Childbirth Instructor, I created my first webpage.  Pregnancy Birth and Babies.  I was a member of this great Hypnobabies Yahoo Group and moms kept sharing their wonderful birth stories.  I wanted a place where everyone could read them.  I also wanted them divided into sections, so moms could choose the types of stories they wanted to read.  It started off with 3 sections, Enjoyable (completely pain-free); Comfortable (some manageable discomfort mentioned); Other (I then had a short description of the birth and situation)  It has grown to include, Induced Births, Cesareans, VBACs.  It also has other pages about, believe it or not, pregnancy, birth and babies. 

Actually I guess I actually made my first web page 9 years ago when Devon was a baby, using Front Page then too.   But that no longer exists.  I of course have a blog about my family, which is way more fun and easier than building a website.

I used Front Page to create Pregnancy, Birth and Babies too.  I checked a book out of the library to relearn the program.  It was fairly easy, it took some time to learn it, but once I figured it out, I was fine.  It was good practice for when I created my Hypnobabies Web Site, Enjoy Birth. 

Then 9 months ago I started this blog.  Again, blogging is EASY compared to building a site.  But I had a system wtih my Front Page program, life was good.  I would sometimes make changes to my Enjoy Birth site and continued to add birth stories to the Pregnancy Birth and Babies site. 

I made a HUGE mistake when I switched from Go Daddy to 1and1 to host my site.  Luckily I left Pregnancy Birth and Babies at Go Daddy, but I moved Enjoy Birth.  Long story about why, but I did it.  AFTER I moved it, I noticed they no longer support Front Page.   Which meant my whole site, which I had on my computer was not able to be uploaded onto the internet.    This was probably 3 weeks ago now, right before school let out. 

I was so grumpy about it.  I really don’t have extra time to learn something new when my boys are all home.  I really didn’t want to spend my energy with this.  But I did some research and found that Coffee Cup was a good program, with a supposedly easy learning curve.  I got something simple up and started transferring all my files from Front Page into Coffee Cup. 

What I realized is that to really have my site look good I needed to learn HTML.  What I also realized is that you can’t do that well by reading things on the internet.  I needed a good book.  I checked one out from the library, but that was just frustrating me. 

I then ordered 2 books off of Amazon, but for some reason chose free shipping.  (The cheapness in me sometimes overpowers my logic.)  So when I was freaking out yesterday I realized I needed a good book NOW.  So I went to Borders and bought Head First HTML with CSS and XHTML.  It is over 600 pages and has 15 chapters.  I figured one a day and in 2 weeks I would be ready. 

Well, it is written in a very brain friendly way and I actually have read 4 chapters/165 pages and learned SOOOO MUCH.  I no longer feel the need to throw things at my computer and I have been able to fix some really easy things, once you know what the heck <a> and <p></p> and other random looking things mean. 

Horray for books!  Horray for Blogs which allow everyone to get their thoughts out there without knowing this stuff!  Horray for me! 

My Enjoy Birth site is slowly getting back up.  I am thinking of moving all my positive birth stories over to that site and eventually close the Pregnancy Birth and Babies site.  It seems silly to have 2.