Recently I was working with one of my mentors, Dr. Streletz. This lady is an amazing family medicine doctor and just a very sweet human being. She was very proudly telling other colleagues about my blog and how it’s impacting people online. This was after she had told them about my nonprofit organization and asked me to show them the website. As she was just beaming with excitement about what I was doing, she paused and said, “Kenneth, you know, I have to be honest with you, I really don’t know what a blog is.” I was surprised that she didn’t know. You know, when you are so familiar with something that it seems simple to you, you can forget that there are many people out there who don’t know about it.
I remember my mentor, Dr. Mdulli (Infectious Disease doctor) who also didn’t know what a blog was and my good friends Charles (Family Medicine Doctor) and Hilal (Pediatrician) who also recently asked me to show them how to start blogs of their own. Then there are the thousands of people who visit my blogs monthly, many of whom want to start websites or blogs for either personal or ministry reasons.
I have been doing websites and blogs since 2005 and they have transformed my life and allowed me to transform the lives of thousands. I started learning how to design websites and blogs in 2005. Why? Well, I had just started my first nonprofit organization, Shaping Destiny, to help orphans in Africa. At that time, it was still a very small organization and there weren’t many people to help. I knew that a website or blog was going to be crucial to the success of the organization. But I didn’t have someone to do it for me, so I decided to learn it myself. I started learning this in my first year of medical school! Back when I started, I didn’t know about powerful platforms like WordPress. Back then, I used the now discontinued Microsoft FrontPage and then Microsoft Expression Web, and then Dream weaver. I googled and googled and googled to learn. Then I took numerous online courses on how to design websites and blogs.
Related: How to start a website or blog in 20 minutes or less
I learned website and blog design the hard way. I underwent a lot of stress and put in countless hours, probably more than I would have needed if someone had held my hand and shown me the way. Yet, I am proud of the outcome. Because I learned to design websites and blogs, over one thousand orphans have been helped in Cameroon through Shaping Destiny and the organization is still going strong. It’s best years are still ahead of it. Right now, I have more than ten different websites and blogs on the internet that are reaching and impacting thousands of people every month.
The good news is that I get to teach others like you how to create websites and blogs without going through the pain and frustration I went through. Wouldn’t you want that? And you know what? I enjoy doing that. A theme that runs through my life is that I love to help people avoid painful situations that I have been through. For example, I grew up as an underprivileged child unable to afford to go to the hospital or school. That inspired me to start an orphan care organization to make sure that doesn’t happen. My father died for lack of medical care and I was inspired to become a medical doctor. I can point to many instances in my life where this theme shows up.
So, for my sweet Dr. Streletz and the billions of people out there who don’t yet know what a blog is, and for my friends like Mdulli, Charles, Hilal, and the thousands of you who visit my websites and blogs who would love to start one of your own, this series of lessons on how to start a website or blog is for you. I hope that by teaching you how to create a website or blog, I would have helped you to change the world one page or post at a time!
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