I’m going to be starting a new series of posts based on the idea of a 5 Minute How To. The whole purpose of these posts is going to be just to give the most basic information on a topic or task that will allow someone to pick up just enough to hit the ground running.

I’m constantly searching for tips on how to do something new. Often this is something very simple, but I’ve never done it before. The problem lies in the fact that many of the how tos out there are either way too complicated or just too thin on details to be of any use.

Here’s a great example: I downloaded and installed the GIMP a couple of weeks ago so I could do some editing of header graphics for this and other pages. I was all pumped up about being able to use an advanced image editor for free until I opened up the program. The first thing I realized was that I didn’t even know how to open a file. Once I figured out how to do that, I didn’t know how to resize it, crop it, or save it in a compressed, web-friendly format.

I searched all over the internet before I found a tutorial that showed me just the basics. It took me several sessions over several days, though. Most of the tutorials I found were great, but were many pages of highly detailed information when I was just looking for a short paragraph or list of 3-5 steps on how to do something.

I’m sure many readers of this blog have run into the same problem. So, that’s what these posts are going to be all about. I’m going to use topics that I’ve been looking for information on or that I already find useful and I’m going to try to break them down into the most basics steps. Hopefully, these bite-sized chunks of information will find some use. Please leave a comment if you have any ideas for How Tos.