Well, it took a few hours over several days but I think I got the blog set up. That was the hardest part: domain’ing the blog. I’ve hosted my website on Crystaltech for years. But they didn’t have CPANEL. So I dropped several dollars to get that set up with Cast Iron Coding.

Here’s what I think I did:

• Set up a domain (puzzlingmix.com)
• Set up a WordPress blog account
• Configure my Flickr, YouTube, and Twitter apps to work with #ds106

How it all connects together, in the background (?), with tags and # signs and whatever else, I have no clue. I suppose a server at my end (WordPress) sends out a notice somewhere (I stumbled over a WordPress setting that does that I think) or a script on #ds106′s server periodically strobes (or is activated by an event triggered by who knows what) and points itself towards the new material. I’m left to wonder if this is a digital storytelling course or a more technically oriented setting up the architecture for digital storytelling class.

The instructions on the domain-and-webhosting assignment page mentioned something called “syndicate”. I guess I’ll research that at some point too.

The odd thing is: I’m not inclined to figure that stuff out. Getting people to a point where they want to get their story shouldn’t involve having to immerse oneself thigh-deep in tech. All this I learned during a week when Apple came out with iBooks 2 and free e-book authoring software. I took a peek at it. It seems easy. I signed up for an account with Apple so we’ll see where that goes.