My website was supposed to be online in March 2020. I had time scheduled in my calendar to create it: twenty hours. More than half of those hours have been used just to gather the technical information to start with.

The IT savvies among you will laugh at me, but I did not know WordPress.com and WordPress.org are two different things providing different services. I learnt it the hard way, after spending money and time on one and realizing I needed the second to implement my ideas on a budget.

I have a thing for passwords. I hate them. Hate is no good, right? I think so too, so probably that’s why I push away all thoughts about passwords in my life and rely on the automatic saving from Firefox. Bad decision. I had WordPress installed in my local computer and Firefox messed up with me (yes, it was it, who started the fight!); I ended up with no access to the half ready website: I did not know the password. Zero-idea. I did not know the login either…yeah, eyes rolling is allowed, go ahead.

I was also very confused about the sheer number of plugins. I thought that there was a unique and specific plugin I had to use; it took me a long while to understand that they were just a slightly different versions of the same. Just like a shampoo, I only had to pick the one I liked most, make sure that it did what it claimed to, and forget about the others. Unless there was a compatibility problem, in which case I had to change the shampoo, or the plugin.

Thus, if you want to create your website with little experience, my suggestions are:

• Plan at least double the hours you think you will need
• Write down any login and password you create along the way
• Confusion is just a waste of time. Just make a choice and go ahead.

What was your best IT fail? Let’s see if you can beat me :D!

PS If you want to have a tip how to recover a password to a locally installed WordPress for which you have no login, here it is: marry someone who has excellent IT skills!