Web creation annoyances

The temperature went down to minus two overnight and stayed there until mid morning. I got up at eight, had breakfast, prepared this week's set of texts for readers at St John's and St Luke's, then started a new edition of Sway for next week. It all went without hitch, and by eleven thirty, I was investigating website building software - the free version. I tried one called Hazel Pro, but couldn't get the hang of it, and after an hour of frustration uninstalled it. It was very detailed, with helpful instructions, or so it seemed, but I got no further than doing a title page. I couldn't find out how to write text or import it. Probably easy when you know how. It's twenty years since I last built a website and now there seem to be too many embedded options. 

Then I tried Wix, which has a good reputation for being easy to use. I set up a new Google account to use, that I could pass on to others if my product was found fit for purpose. It offered free web hosting but you still have to subscribe to a custom web domain if you want one. Someone else may have already done that, on behalf of WCMA so I decided not to bother, and deleted the new Google account I created. Not quite a wasted couple of hours, but more of a steep learning curve, let's say.

Clare cooked a curry for lunch. Mid afternoon with the temperature in the sun rising to four degrees, we walked together for three quarters of an hour. Then Clare left me to go and buy some fruit. I carried on walking until sunset, pondering on what essential content might consist of for a Ministry Area, both text and images. I spent a couple of hours after supper on content and page image creation using Libre Office Impress, its equivalent of powerpoint. Just as capable but not quite so user friendly. I remember using ten years ago for a Cardiff  Business Safe presentation, and hadn't got much more than a basic recollection of how to use it in detail, so progress was laborious. 

The chore was made even worse by my efforts to create a collage, using the Google Picasa legacy app which I keep on my workstation. This gave me grief, as it was downloading files from OneDrive, and wouldn't let me transfer the photos I needed to make into a collage because it was busy. I thought I had found a workaround but succeeded in deleting the folder containing the relevant photos, which I then had to reassemble from a couple of sources. No idea whatsoever how I did that but in the end I acquired the file I needed of a collage photo of Ministry Area Churches to use on the presentation front page. I made a .pdf of this work in progress and sent it to Iona. Hard going, but satisfactory to create and learn how to create. Enough for one day! Now to bed. Minus three tonight!