Starting over after illness
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I need help understanding what I’ve already got, what I want to do, and what I need to light a fire in it.
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Hi there,
Would you mind expanding on what you need help with? I might be better able to assist you that way.
Thanks!
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Ah, yes, I see it. I’m Jack. I’m 77; I live near Seoul, on a fixed income of $700/mo. I worked an online teaching gig for about 14 months of self-quarantine. That followed five years that begain with a family death, and included hospital stays for surgery on a bad aneurysm on my aorta at the same time as treatment for several conditions of the eyes, including glaucoma. My eyes and back are weakened; my legs, heart, lungs and mental function are quite good for my age.
Thank you for your offer to help. I need to refresh whatever I knew before things fell apart, but I fear it will be a test of anyone’s patience to stay with me long enough to set up a site from which I can operate a very modest teaching practice for English, humanities and social science. I have, in various states of disrepair, three domains; I’m considering paying for a new one. Any suggestion(s) at all will be welcome and much appreciated. -
By “teaching practice”, I want to offer stand-alone sessions of 1-2 hours long, using Zoom, written chats, payment in advance using PayPal or alternative, email and a scheduling calendar. Everything is/would be managed with Hostgator and WordPress.
Thank you again!
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Hi there,
Everything is/would be managed with Hostgator and WordPress
If you want your site to be on Hostgator, you’ll be using the open source WordPress software made by the community on WordPress.org. The forum you’re posting in now is for WordPress.com, another hosting provider for that software.
So in that case, the best place to go for advice would be the WordPress.org forums at https://wordpress.org/support/forums/
However, you might want to consider WordPress.com instead. We’re what’s called a managed host – we take care of all the technical stuff like server setup, software updates, security, etc. for you, so you can just focus on your site. Additionally all our yearly plans include live chat support with the WordPress software itself, so we can help with any issues that come up with your site.
We also have detailed tutorials, as well as free webinars and paid courses to help you learn how everything works.
From what you describe, either our Premium or Business Plan could work for you, depending on how you want to do it.
On the Premium Plan you can use a combination of a Google calendar, a contact form, and our PayPal block to take bookings and payments on your site, with the actual sessions hosted on third party tools like Zoom, Slack, etc.
https://wordpress.com/support/pay-with-paypal/
Or on the Business Plan you can use a booking plugin that lets people book and pay directly on your site (a booking plugin will need to be bought separately), and then you also use plugins to host video and text chat directly on your site.
All our yearly plans include one free domain for the first year, which you can use either to register a new domain, or transfer one of your existing domains to us. We also offer monthly plans, but those don’t include live chat, and you’d have to pay separately to register/transfer a domain to the site.
Let me know if you have questions about any of what I laid out here.
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I really appreciate the effort you are giving my query, and you’ve cleared up something that has caused me great confusion and headache, which is the difference between wp.org and wp.com! The password headache alone drove me nuts. Also, the agreements about what I’ve paid for, to whom, and what I get/have gotten from it. The problem for me is the dueling email notifications. Of course, as a “newbie”, many of the problems originate here with me.
Bottom line: If I can consolidate Hostgator and WordPress to the extent that Hostgator (and wp.org) is all covered by wp.com w/o more cost &/or confusion, seems to me that’s a good idea, as long as it doesn’t steepen the learning curve for me, or complicate the technical issues.
I’ll have more questions about the other issues, i.e. plug-ins etc. that I’ll need. The one quick thing relates to the payments issue and my residence outside the US, but maybe that’s a question that I should address elsewhere?
And once again, thank you so much for your help.
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Hi there,
The one quick thing relates to the payments issue and my residence outside the US, but maybe that’s a question that I should address elsewhere?
That’s something you need to ask both the local and US tax authorities. Or you can seek professional advice from a tax consultant.
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Underneath our photo (on the left), you can see if a responder is a “Member” or a “Staff”.
Staff are Happiness Engineers, who are employee of WordPress.
There are many volunteer members though, like myself, who are happy to help you as much as we can!
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I am sorry, Happiness Engineers are employee of Automattic, the people behind WordPress.com. This is the accurate information. :)
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