Introducing “ask geekmummy”

I’m very excited. I’m taking a step away from my regular video roundup to introduce a new monthly feature I’m bringing to the BritMums blog. This feature will quite simply be called “ask geekmummy”, and it will be your chance to get answers to any blogging questions you might have.

Why do I think I can answer your questions? Well, I’ve been blogging for quite a long time now – my first blog post ever was written in 2005, and since then I have written a number of different blogs, and also produced podcasts and video blogs. My most recent (and most successful) blog – geekmummy – celebrates its second birthday this month. Being a geek by nature I enjoy finding out how things work, and solving problems, and I’m pretty good at getting the answers I need out of Google when I don’t know them myself. Once I’ve figured something out I like nothing more than helping other bloggers, and I’d like to think I can explain technical things in a way that less technical people can understand. I hope very much that this new feature will allow me to use those skills in a way to help the wider blogging community.

Going forward this feature will run on the first Wednesday of the month, dropping into the slot previously filled by the Blog Talk roundup by Nickie from Typecast. Sadly due to other commitments Nickie is unable to continue writing this roundup, and I must say we’re all very sad to see it go.

To get the ball rolling I’m going to start “ask geekmummy” with a question that I received today from the lovely Marianne. She wrote

I want to change themes but am scared to do so although I’ve heard it’s dead simple – what do I need to do before trying and any good tips for giving it a go?

The absolute best way to test drive anything for your blog, be it a theme, a plugin or anything else, is to use another, test blog. If you’re on Blogger or WordPress.com you can simply create a brand new blog, set it up to look like your existing blog and then make the changes you’re considering. It’s a good idea to change the settings so that this test blog is not visible to search engines (On both platforms you can find this in the “settings” menu under “privacy”). You could copy your content across from your real blog if you wanted to, but for simple testing this is probably not necessary.

Creating a test blog when you are on self hosted WordPress can be a little more difficult, and what you can do will depend on your hosting company, your confidence in your own technical ability and what domain names you have access to. If you’re the kind of person who registers domain names just in case they become useful in the future (I have no idea who would do that *cough*!), and you have hosting available for an additional domain, you could set up a new blog with one of those spare domain names and use that for testing. Another option (again, depending on your hosting company) would be to set up a new subdomain (for example test.geekmummy.com) and set a new installation of WordPress up on that for testing purposes. And if your hosting doesn’t allow either of those options, or if you simply prefer the idea of a local copy, you can install WordPress on your Windows PC for testing purposes.

Once you’ve got your test system set up, you can see what will happen when you install your new theme, and make notes on any changes you’ll need to make to get things to look the way you want. Once you’re completely happy make sure you back up your current blog, and then go ahead with your new theme. I also find it useful to take screenshots of my current layout before making any significant changes, just in case I need to rebuild sidebars or menus.

One useful feature recently added to WordPress (both .com and self hosted) is the Theme Customiser. This allows you to make some configuration changes to your new theme without activating it on your live blog. To access this, go into Appearance/Themes, install the new theme if you haven’t already done so, and then click on “Live Preview” under the theme name. You’ll see various options you can configure, such as colours, header image etc alongside a preview of what your site will look like using the new theme. It doesn’t allow you to configure every theme option, so you should still be prepared to “tweak” once you’ve activated the theme.

So, in summary my advice is to test everything in advance, take backups before changing anything on your live blog, and hopefully then you’ll have a smooth run when you implement something new. If you want me to go into any more details on any of these steps, or have any other questions please just let me know.

So now it’s over to you. Do you have any questions about blogging which you’d like me to answer? You can either leave them as a comment here, or tweet them to me, or drop them to me via email. I’ll try to include as many as I can in my next “ask geekmummy”.

About Ruth Arnold

Ruth Arnold is geeky, tech-loving wife to one and mother of two. She has been blogging and podcasting in various forms since early 2005, and started her geekmummy blog in August 2010 whilst on maternity leave after having her son. Ruth blogs about living family life surrounded by technology, and particularly enjoys sharing her love of apps with her readers. Ruth enjoys using a variety of media on her blog - she produces not only written posts, but audio and video as well, and was delighted to be awarded the MAD Blog Award for Most Innovative MAD Blog in 2011.

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