Smash Notes
Episode 64: Customise Your Microblog with Miraz Jordan, aka @Miraz
This week, Miraz Jordan returns to the podcast to talk about her new project, How To Customise Micro.blog . She first appeared on Micro Monday Episode 35 . Miraz tells us how she went from a teaching career to creating her own business as an internet instructor and co-authoring a book on Word Press. Then we take a look at the tutorials she’s created…
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Notes
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She is located on the coast of New Zealand and spent many years working on tech related blogs. She is now working on microblogs and sharing tips and tutorials.
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She started out as a journalism teacher. She then got involved in an adult literacy organization that had a Mac, which peaked her interest. Miraz dove in to understanding computers and the internet and helping beginners with using technology.
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Miraz Jordan tells Micro Monday that much of the help around Micro.blog is written for people who are already past the basics. She likes total beginners because she can change a lot by teaching what everyone else assumes they know. She learned that earlier, running internet classes for mostly older adults at a local third-party Apple shop, before Apple had its own stores. A simple demonstration was enough to unlock the room. The same instinct shapes her customization tutorials: start with a site title or a heading color, and only later ask a reader to touch HTML. The gap she wants to close is the one experts no longer notice.
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Miraz didn't like some of the formatting on her blog and started exploring with ways to make changes. From there, she started experimenting and learning. "Scratching her own itch" got her started.
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They should go to the "Archive" section and explore from there.
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Miraz Jordan tells Micro Monday that the tutorial archive on her Micro.blog customization site runs from oldest to newest, and the lessons get harder as you move down. Changing a site title is for anyone. Later posts ask you to open a text editor, not Microsoft Word, and to understand a little HTML, because that is the code behind every web page. She includes a tutorial on what HTML is and how it works, written for bloggers rather than designers. Changing the color of a heading also means a little CSS, since a style sheet only works together with the HTML. She breaks each step into a small chunk, the way she used to teach web design.
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Going with the basic micro.blog themes and writing nothing out of the parameters of what the site supports is a good place to begin. Worry about styling later. The important thing is to get the content out there initially.
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Yes! They are not intended to be seen for people viewing your webpage. For example, one can make a note if using HTML from someone else's site to remember where the information was found if there are issues, etc.
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On Micro Monday, Miraz Jordan says she has just expanded the Contact Me page for her Micro.blog customization tutorials and added a page for future topics. Someone on the Micro.blog timeline had asked whether she would cover a particular subject, and she already has more ideas than she has published. She tells listeners to use that contact page, to find her on Slack, or to email the address printed on the Contact Me page. The requests she wants are tutorial ideas, including the beginner questions that more advanced Micro.blog users assume everyone already knows.