The title of this lens does not mean that this is my first lens, but that this lens is about my first lens, the one just before this one. I looked around Squidoo for a couple of months before deciding to actually click that "Make a Lens Now", button. I just couldn't put it off any longer. I told myself that I needed to know everything I could about Squidoo before joining, but I was just putting it off. There is only so much you can learn about a place without going in, so I clicked the "Create A Lens", button, and all the buttons after that, that led me into Squidoo, as a member.

Now I'm in, now what do I do? What goes where. I mean where do I put all my brilliant ideas, and profound thoughts. Where does stuff go? I don't know. I start reading, "how to", lenses. After a while I notice that this word module keeps popping up, so now I am looking for some modules. I don't know what modules are, or what they look like, so I don't know what I am looking for. I came to understand from reading lenses that modules are where input gets put in. But still what are they, where are they? Turns out that they are not hard to find. They were right in my face, but I didn't know what I was looking at.

So after clicking and clacking around this is what I finally discovered. ". When you sign in look up in the upper right of the page you come to, and click on "My Dashboard This will bring you to your dashboard, and you will see a row of tabs.

Click "My Lenses". When that opens look down to where it says "Lens Title". Roll the courser over the title of your lens, and underneath the title will appear a list of options. Click Edit. On the right hand side of that page, under "Publish", are places were you can enter or edit your Bio, Lens Category, Tags, and Payment Category. Just click on the orange "edit" to enter or change content.
To the left are the modules, those horizontal blue fields with the orange edit button on the right.
When you first get there there may be only two modules but all you have to do is click on that add module button and a list of available modules will appear. You pick what you want .

To open the module click the edit button, and than the little gray arrow head on the left and the module opens for business. Enter your content, and click save, if you like what you entered or click cancel to get rid of it. You have now gone through the hardest part of the squedoo experience. Here is a lens that will school you on the artful use of these modules. Now go do it.

Having gotten the module search out of the way and the actual writing out of the way I had to consider the task of HTML. I wanted to promote my Cafepress Shop , and what better way than to create a link to it. I had fiddled with HTML a few years ago but, had never done anything constructive with it. I even had a couple of books around on the subject. In fact I had my hands on just a few months ago

I have my Squidoo account, I have found the modules, and I have my text written, now where is that dang HTML Book? All I want to know is how to make, "Come visit my cafepress shop", a link to the shop, so where is that friggen book? Now I'm running all over the house riping the place apart when my wife who was trying to watch a movie said, with all the tact she could muster, "Why don't you sit your crazy ass down somewhere so I can watch this movie." Which turned out to be a good idea, because as I sat there I pulled the laptop over and googled HTML.

The first site I came to quickly took me to my answer. I already had the code I just needed to know how to put it in my text. This is a great site for one who is not intending to build an entire site with HTML, but just needs a quick reference. It solved both my problem, and my wife's problem, which was me, at once.

As I write this I have created one lens, which has had only visitor at this point, and that was probably me, and I am, just a few days later doing another, and it is great fun. Can't wait to get this one done so I can start another. Maybe by that time someone besides me and my tactful wife will know I'm here.

If it happens to be you please leave a comment.