Setup a Blog
Thursday, August 23, 2007
Blogware & CMS - where to create a blog?
There are dozen of way to publish a blog. This article covers some of the most popular service and software to create a blog.
It would be every blogger's dream to just start writing and never worrying about anything else. While that would certainly be wonderful, most of the time we have to manage everything in running a blog. Fortunately, there are blogging service & blogging software/scripts/blogware out there that take the most tedious and technical aspects out of running a blog. In fact, sometimes you might just be able to setup your blog with a few clicks and start writing (rest of the time is where blogcrowds comes in :D). Since blogging service/blogware can make your job incredibly easier, it is crucial to choose the one right for you.
Social Blogging
There are some distinction between different types of blogging; one of the being social blogging. If you are blogging about your personal life like your cat, your calendar etc with friends and family, social blogging is for you. As you can see, this is very close related to Social Networks and most major social networks have a blogging section. The largest social networks MySpace, Facebook dominate this side of blogging while MSN Space, Yahoo 360 also draw a crowd with their email, IM service etc. Signing up these services is very simple usually you just need an email address.
Online Blog Publishing Services
For those who does not need as much social element, you can sign up for blogging service such as Blogger, Live Journal.
Blogger
One of the first weblog publishing system on the internet, Blogger was initially launched in August 1999 by Pyra Labs. Unfortunately at that time it requires a subscription fee. As blogging become more and more popular, Google acquired Blogger in 2004 and made it possible for more people to use blogger by eliminating the premium!
Google subsequently improved Blogger by integrating its photo-sharing software Picasa and Hello. Another popular feature of Blogger is the FTP and SFTP for more advanced users to directly update their blogs. For less tech oriented users there is even a Microsoft Word add-on that allow users to use Word to edit their blogs on and offline.
Today, Blogger is characterized by a variety of clean cut validated CSS templates, ease to sign up and publish and one of the best blog publishing service on the web.
Live Journal
One of the earliest blog communities, LiveJournal was founded in 1999 by Brad Fitzpatrick. In early 2005 it was purchased by Six Apart which also owns Movable Type. LiveJournal is largely free with additional features for paid users or advertised sponsorship. Despite some social network features including user info, contact information, user avatars, LiveJournal is still heavily blogocentric. Users have a list of friends or flist who are allowed to comment on blog in message board style threads and view private entries effectively hidden from most search engines and viewers. In addition, LiveJournal provides group journals consisting of members who are allowed to post in the journal and moderate it. LiveJournal is written in PERL by volunteer programmers and therefore it is open-source. Because of this, many other sites also runs LiveJournal software including DeadJournal, GreatestJournal, InsaneJournal, Blurty and numerous other more shortlived communities.
Blog Publishing Software/Scripts
For even more control in blogging, you can host a blog on your own server with a blogging script/software. If Blogger is the most popular blogging services, than WordPress would be the most popular blogware. Other blogware includes Drupal, MovableType. While setuping WordPress can be a little more complicated than signing up for Blogger, it can still be done in a few minutes and the enhanced feature/control is certainly worth the extra clicks.
WordPress
WordPress is the free blog publishing system written in PHP & MySql. Many current stand alone blogs use WordPress. Along with the cost, WordPress attract bloggers with its multiple features:
- Manage multiple blogs on one server.
- Manage static html pages
- Manage users/groups
- Moderate comments
- Simple template system with excellent skins
- Integrated link management
- Extensible plugin support to take advantage of open-source communities.
- Subcategory, multiple category entry
- Ease of formatting and styling
Drupal
Drupal is the content management/blogging system written in PHP by Dries Buytaert. The name is Dutch for drop.
Drupal is initially written as a bulletin board system. Drupal supports pluggable extension for advance functions such as Amazon Item module, workflow, mailing list, photo galleries, CVS integration. Drupal also offers unique content classification system and tighten security. However, because of the additional features Drupal is in comparison more difficult to install. In addition, Drupal is known to have a less attractive appearance compared to other blogware, but its clean code allows advance users to add their own features to take Drupal from a blog to a full fledge community. Because of this, Drupal is used in company intranets, online classrooms, and other online projects. Special versions of Drupal includes, DrupalED, DrupalArt, vbDrupal.
This covers many flavors of blogging platforms to publish your blog, but by no means exhaustive. If you have any questions fell free to get in touch.
Happy Blogging!
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Domain Names - choose the right one for your blog!
An overview of domain and sub-doman names and which one is right for you!
After you choose a blogging platform, it time to decide your web address, URL or domain name of your blog. All three mean the same thing, the http triple w etc etc (referred to as domain name from now on).
Your domain name is what the world knows your blog/website as. How else would visitors remember or get to your blog? All sorts of important information is attached to your domain name. For instance, your PageRank, links to your blog, bookmarks and so on (all these hopefully I will eventually cover in this blog). If you are unsure of what they are right now, it is suffice to say it takes a lot of hard work to improve your Page Rank, build up links and bookmarks etc. You definitely don't want to spend hours upon hours promoting your blog only to switch to a new domain names after some success and start all over again. I see many blogger do this, which is one of the reason I emphasis bloggers to choose a domain name and stick with it.
Usually a blog would either have a domain name or sub-domain name.
Domain Name
As mentioned before a domain name is http://www...com. For example, the domain name of my blog forum would be http://www.blogcrowds.com/. You can register an unclaimed domain name with ICANN through many domain registrars. Some domain names with certain ending are free, but they are not very popular. For more widely used domain extensions, .com .org .net, the price to register is relatively inexpensive ranging from $2-10 USD for an unclaimed domain name. Sometimes you may find deals or host package that will include a free domain name.
Sub-Domain Name
Like the name suggest, a sub-domain is a web address that is a level lower than a domain name. As an example, the web address of this blog http://blogger.blogcrowds.com/. http://blogger.blogcrowds.com/ is a subdomain of http://www.blogcrowds.com/. Sub-domains are identify by a period(.) separating the web address with no www after http://. Sub-domains are often given by free webhosts, so it maybe something similar to http://something.awardspace.com/.
Domains vs Sub-Domain
For obvious reasons, you should try to use a domain name rather than a sub-domain. A domain name give you much more control - technically, the subdomain belongs to the domain owner. For this reason, you cannot apply for certain web services with a subdomain. For example, if you wish to run certain ads networks, you should not have a subdomain. And of course, a concise and memorable domain name is much better than a long sub-domain name.
Many bloggers, especially alternatively hosted BlogSpot or MovableType bloggers will use sub-domains. Of these bloggers, some write about their personal life and their cats for friends and family while others are more ambitious and try to turn blogging into a full time job. Most of the bloggers who seek blogging as a career path usually start out with a subdomain plans to move on to a domain after they have a steady number of visitors and traffic. The basis for this route is mainly financial - most bloggers want to earn enough money before seriously invest in blogging. Once they change their web address though, they will have to start all over promoting their blog and build traffic. However much these bloggers made before, be it $10 or $100 a day, is at risk. Redirecting traffic to the 'new' blog could be easy or hard depending on the content and reader loyalty. Nevertheless, easy or hard, when you have a steady readership, what you should do is write more quality content and not worrying about promoting the content yourself.
That, is the reason why, if you ever want to have your own domain, you should buy it in the very beginning. In any case, a domain is not that expensive. I hope everyone can get a domain name if they want to. If you can't purchase one, try to obtain one through webhosting packages, domain name give aways etc.
Choosing the right domain/subdomain
I won't dwell much on this topic, bloggers always do a good job on choosing domain names. Just choose something between 4-10 letters that is related to your blog and make it unique and memorable. There will be instances when the domain name you want is already taken by someone. Instead of paying an unreasonable whopping amount someone demand for it, just be creative. For example, del.cio.us or flickr.
One last thing when picking domain is the domain extension, the most popular being .com, .org, .net. There are many other domain extension such as .tv, .info, .tk etc. Selecting a domain extension is entirely a personal preference. Most people view the extensions .com, .org, .net equally and a category above all other extensions. Personally, there is no other domain extension other than .com with exception of 'location' extensions such as .co.uk (United Kingdom), .us (United States) or .ca (Canada).
To sum it all up, pick a good domain name you like that will create a desirable image for your blog/website and stick with it!
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Webhosting - find a reliable home for your blog.
Here we explain some basic concept of webhosting, some of the simple technicalities, and what to look out for in a webhost.
Now that you have chose a domain, its time to find a server to host your blog/website. Most alternatively hosted blogs such as BlogSpot or TypePad users won't have to worry about this. You are already hosting by Blogger or TypePad, but it is still good to know about webhosting.
Websites & Servers
First off, website are hosted on servers. A server is just a computer(s) which contains your website files that is always on and always connected to the web. This way, the server can send your webpages to people half way around the world even when you are sleeping. The reason why sometimes you receive an unable to connect error from your browser is because the specific server for the website is down or too busy for some reason.
Because of the nature and speed of the modern Internet infrastructure, the location of the web server does not really matter. You can even use a spare computer as a web server. However as your blog/website out grows the capacity of your computer and bandwidth offered by your internet provider, you will be looking for a webhost. Besides, its much easier to let someone else worry about the technical stuff while you write.
Disk Space & Bandwidth
When talking about webhosting and servers there are two technical details you have to understand, disk space and bandwidth. Many people often mix the two since they are similar and both measured in megabytes or gigabytes. The concepts are quite simple, let me illustrate with a MP3 file. Although most bloggers won't offer songs for download, I will use it as an example because everyone is familiar with MP3 files and how its 'exchanged' around the world.
So, say you have a 5 megabyte MP3 file on your server, then you would have used 5 megabyte of disk space. The disk space usage won't change until you add or delete something on the server. As for bandwidth, when someone request the MP3, your server will send the file using 5 megabyte of bandwidth. When someone download the MP3 file again, the server will use another 5 megabyte of bandwidth adding up to 10 megabyte of bandwidth for a total of two downloads of a 5 megabyte MP3 file. Your bandwidth accumulates over the month while disk space quota remains the same until files are added or deleted.
It is important to know these two concepts and understand you pay for webhosting in terms of both disk space and bandwidth.
Type Of Webhosting Packages
Webhosting services rent their servers in two ways. First, shared hosting, which means a number of websites/clients are hosted off one server sharing the space and resources. On the other hand with dedicated hosting you have control over an entire server and its up to you how many websites the server will host. In comparison, dedicated hosting naturally give you more control, disk space, bandwidth. Needless to say, dedicated hosting cost a lot more than shared hosting.
Most webhosts should several different hosting packages such starter, intermediate, pro for shared hosting and different server specs for dedicate hosting. Some webhost also has free hosting packages.
Choose the Right Webhost
There are literally thousands of webhosts out there, so how do you find the one right for you? Some people trust big hosts like HostGator or Dreamhost while others prefer their local webhosts so when they have a problem they can talk to someone in person instead of waiting for a phone call or email reply. To find reviews for webhosting, you can visit http://www.webhostingtalk.com/ where many people share their hosting experience.
When choosing webhosts, make sure you have enough disk space, bandwidth, specific features (eg. PHP & MySql for WordPress) and an option to upgrade later. Also check the reference and reliability of the webhost. You don't want visitor only accessing your site at one o'clock in the morning. In the beginning, the minimal shared hosting package provided by most webhost should be sufficient. Finally, there is one very important advice that should remember: you get what you paid for. Never signup for a host that only offers free hosting or free hosting that give you a whopping amount of bandwidth/disk space.
Never Signup For A Host That Only Offers Free Hosting
Never signup for a host that only offers free hosting? Why? Well, these kind of hosting usually only have one administrator, and one server. In this scenario, some must have server features such programming language or database support may be missing. Additionally, without monthly charges there are really only two incentives for the administrator to offer free hosting.
First, the admin wish to build a large user base so he/she could sell the hosting service quickly. To build a huge user base, administrators offer free hosting and often oversells (covered shortly). After sufficient level of membership, the hosting service will exchange hands. Sometimes there will a lapse of service ranging from days to months as the new owner sets up. When the hosting does return, the new owner most likely will stop overselling and charge for webhosting. Those people who are attracted by free hosting and overselling will probably move on after these changes.
The other reason is just plain good will. I'm not saying there is anything wrong with the good will of the admin. I have found many admins taking hours a day to help people with their webhost. What I am questioning is without monetary incentive, how motivated is the admin to restore the server after it had been hacked or the database crashed. How motivated is the admin to make sure these disasters never happen again? Unfortunately, usually with only one admin, these disaster are more than common.
Avoid Webhost That Oversells
You should also avoid free hosting that offers a whopping amount of bandwidth/disk space. In other words as described earlier, overselling. The biggest problem with overselling is not that the offer may disappear soon, but the practice itself.
As mentioned before, most free host only have one server and limited resources, yet they advertise as much as 5gig disk space/10gig monthly bandwidth. It would all right if the hosts limit the number of users to how many 5gig accounts their server can take. Instead, these hosts assume that most users use less than the advertised 5gig/10gig. In a sense these hosts are selling more resource than they actually have, hence overselling. There will be serious problems when the host's demand exceed its resources. Stop signups won't solve problem, the users already signed up are expanding beyond their 'actual' limit but far from the 5gig/10gig offered by the webhost.
Overselling is the reason why some webhosts are often down or extremely slow.
Those are the reasons you should never signup for a host that only offers free hosting or free hosting that give you a whopping amount of bandwidth/disk space. People who uses these services usually have to switch hosts every few month. After reading that, you might think that totally against free hosting, but that's not the case. For free webhosting, I recommend signup for a reliable paid hosting service that also offers free hosting. One example is awardspace. It offers 200megabits of disk space. Honestly, in the beginning, that is more than enough. 50megabits for wordpress and a domain name, you are good to go with your blog. When you exceed the limit, you are doing very well and hopefully able to pay for webhosting.
Posted by gzleus 4:37 PM
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