Thanks Kelley!

Thanks for the help with the images business – I was asking about the big image but I’ll use the logo info too!

J.

You’re very welcome.

And for everyone else, who is wondering what the hell we’re talking about (grin)….

My site is based on the Revolution theme by Brian Gardner, a nice guy and an ace designer. Brian has developed a gorgeous, elegantly-coded and amazingly flexible suite of Revolution themes for WordPress, both for traditional blogs and for content management sites (I’ll be using this one for the Humans At Work website later this spring).

When I started working with Revolution, I had no WordPress experience, no php experience (the code on which WordPress is based), no css experience, and limited HTML skills. But I swallowed hard and took Brian’s word that Revolution is “an insanely customizable theme,” and am glad I did. I dug in, learned stuff, had some Very Scary Website Development Moments (you know, where you refresh your screen with the updates and suddenly everything is black…!). But I did my entire site myself, and had a blast.

And now (finally!) we come to the point. Brian set up a support forum for Revolution users, and it’s turning into a vibrant community of people willing to just pitch in and help each other with everything from the basics to the unbelievably esoteric. I swim in the basic end of the pool — I’m such a beginner myself, seems like my best help can be to explain to other beginners exactly how I figured things out, and I’m willing to outline process step-by-step in a way that doesn’t always occur to the more expert folks. That’s fine — there’s room for everyone to help, which is the beauty of the community that is developing around Revolution.

I believe in helping in this way. I am not the friend of a friend who will show up to help you move, or your emergency babysitter, but I like to share information and skills. I like to help people learn to fish.

And it’s interesting to me to realize when I sometimes resist helping (on the support forums, or anywhere else in life) — when it’s clear that the person asking for help has done a sum total of nothing to help themselves.

In the forums, this takes the form of “do my homework” questions. There are two categories of DMH folks. One type peppers the forum with questions — how do I install WordPress, how do I get change the logo, how do I put my own text in the template — that are already answered in tutorials on the site, or in other threads, or on the all-powerful Google, if one takes fifteen minutes to search and read. The other type (and here are the folks who really get up my nose) radiates with outrage at learning that “insanely customizable” doesn’t mean “just tap your heels together three times and wish real hard.” Well, I’ve never used WordPress before! How come that Brian Gardner guy doesn’t publish a complete step-by-step guide to installing WordPress, understanding css, and customizing every aspect in exactly the way I might ever want? He should send that to me with my download!

Grrr.

Usually I have to click away, and come back later when my patience is restored. Because it’s hard to tell from words on a page when people are just butt-lazy, or when they truly don’t know how to learn for themselves. If you ask me, the biggest educational crime our culture commits is that Suzy can’t read: the second biggest is that Suzy has no fucking idea how to learn for herself — how to do research, how to identify patterns, how to break down new ideas into component parts, how to relate new information to what she already knows, how to generate theories and test them. How to separate wishes from opinions, and opinions from facts. How to teach, and so learn more.

Since I believe it’s important to teach people to fish, I do my part by assuming that people really do want to learn, and don’t just want me to do their homework while they go out and get a latte.

And hey, J., this rant isn’t about you (waves). It has, as coffee used to, been percolating on the back burner for a while. Thank you very much indeed for taking the time to track me down, and I’ll be happy to help again if I can.

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The management wishes to remind you that J. started this by talking to me. You can too, by using that link or the one on the blog sidebar. I enjoy interacting this way, so if you have a topic in mind, bring it on. Thanks to the Magnificence of WordPress, we can all get in on these conversations.