I know lots of you are writing blogs. Could some of you please help me?
What is your preferred blogging software?
Do you host your blog in the same place as your web site (I don’t have one yet, but I’m working on getting one set up).
I want to set up a blog but I’m totally not familiar with doing it … and these days, if your image is not perfect out of the box – well you know.
Any other tips, please?
Quality repairs for your home.
AaronR Construction
Vancouver, Canada
Replies
Hi Aaron,
What are you looking to do with your blog?
You could incorporate it into your site, or you can have it stand alone. I like Wordpress for a number of reasons, chiefly because it's very user friendly. It is designed to be a blog, but you can easily build a small site with it. http://wordpress.com/
Here's an example of one I built for a client: http://www.marcgunther.com/
Many free templates to choose from so you can have something decent out of the box.
And, you can choose to host it at Wordpress, or on your own server somewhere.
There are others like Blogger and TypePad, but I think those require you to host with them. Wordpress is completely open source so you can pick it up and do whatever you'd like with it.
Hope that's helpful.
Best,
Steve
What I would like to do is put it up as a complement to my Craigslist ad and my local paper advertising.
I want to post the blog to current and historical clients, and do it an educational thing.
I have looked at Wordpress, but I was not sure.Quality repairs for your home.
AaronR ConstructionVancouver, Canada
If you’re not quite sure about how to go about blogging, go to one of the free blog sites (wordpress.com, blogger.com) and practice with a user name that you consider to be throwaway. That way any embarrassing mistakes aren’t associated with your business (don’t ask me how I know).
If you want to host your site yourself, you’ll need access to a MySQL database to run the data-driven portions of the blog — some inexpensive hosts offer them, many do not, so be sure your host has the option if you decide to do it in the future.
One of the nice things about wordpress (the platform with which I am most familiar) is the use of “Pages” — these are “static” posts that live outside of the blog. You see them most often used for “About” pages, but some sites use them extensively to display content that has a bit more permanence, or for very popular items.
Here are some sites I’m involved with that show some of the various options:
Independent static site + blog: Not An Employee. You access the blog content from a link in the footer.
Blog only site: urban sprawlette
Blog with a few static pages: Odd Ends. Click the links under the main title. “A Piratical Ballad” is content I wanted to have in a more prominent/permanent location.
Note that each of these blogs have a separate MySQL database. They don’t have to, but it was easier for us to do it that way.
(I’m not a designer, nor in construction — just building a house, so please don’t think of these as ads!)
As already mentioned: Wordpress. Wordpress is probably the most ubiquitous. A lot of web hosts have it preinstalled, and you can get it installed yourself without too much pain. Lots of us web developers also work with it so it's usually not too hard to find folks who can incorporate your site branding into the templates if you so desire.
I'd definitely suggest just starting at wordpress.com, which is their free hosted version. Just sign up and start blogging. If/when you decide that you'd like to bring the blog into your own domain name, you can always migrate the content to your own install.
Another option is Google's Blogger, which is another free blogging hosted solution.