www.diyara.com

Warning: this article, by necessity, touches on some technical webmastering details. If you want to set up a blog but do not want to use a free host, then this article is for you. However, if you find it too technical, you may want to consult a a friend who understands this stuff. I’ll do my best to keep the technical aspects to a minimum. I do not provide specific details of installation and configuration.

So, you’ve decided to forego a free host and use your own web domain for your new blog because of the freedom it affords you. The steps to do so are functionally simple, but there are important differences compared to using a free host. Here are the general steps:

1. Choose a domain name for your blog that best represents what you will be writing about.
• When you choose a domain name, you might consider the terms “blog”, “diary”, “journal”, or “letters” as part of the name. There are some bloggers who think that the term “blog” might not be in use in a few years. I personally don’t think it matters that much: use what you are comfortable with.
• Unfortunately, a lot of short, popular keywords and phrases have already been registered as domain names. You may have to come up with a large list of name options, and check them in decreasing order of preference.
• There are a number of websites that offer free domain name checking. For example, http://www.internic.ca, http://www.internic.com, and variations thereof for several other countries. Most Internet hosting providers also offer a domain name checking service that tells you whether the name is taken or not.
• If you plan to use your website to promote your business, it is recommended that you register your domain name for at least two years. This helps your standing in the Search Engines, and indicates that you intend to do serious business on the Internet instead of becoming a “spammer”. Of course, if you are promoting your business, the domain name should probably be similar to your business name. Your blog can then simply be setup in a subdirectory of your domain.
2. Choose a hosting plan.
• Once your domain is registered, you need to pay for the monthly cost of site bandwidth. With most hosting providers, you can register a domain and set up the hosting all in one session. However, you should understand the difference:
• Registering a domain name is like registering a business name with the government, but it also gives you your future web address, or URL.
• Setting up a hosting plan is the equivalent of paying for monthly rent for an office space for your business. If you choose the right hosting provider, you can do all the setup in one place.
• Compare the hosting plans of several hosting providers. Most of them will let you upgrade later, painlessly. But changing providers later is a pain and is best avoided, so choose carefully. If you’re just starting out, there’s no need to spend lots of money getting advanced hosting plans. Unless you have tons of money and plan a huge promotional campaign. In which case, it’s unlikely you need to read the rest of this article or series
3. Set up your blog. Here’s where things could get technical, and there are a lot of options.
• If you don’t have a technical friend you can rely on, your hosting provider may offer a service where they do this for you, as part of their hosting account package, or may charge you a setup fee. One of my providers has an administrative panel where you can enter some information (such as your new blog’s name, etc), and the blog will be set up for you after you click “install”. Many providers offer this type of easy install, but they do not always have any of the popular blogging platforms.
• If you want to use one of the more popular platforms, such as MovableType, WordPress, TextPattern, Drupal, etc., you’ll need to download the software from the source, then upload it to your new domain’s web server (host), then install it. This is too technical to explain properly in a single article. I recommend finding a host or a webmaster that will do this for you. For example, both MovableType and WordPress have teamed up with hosting providers to do this. You would have to register your domain name elsewhere, but then set up hosting with them.
• There are far too many blogging platforms and too many differences of installation to get into the details here. In fact, I could fill a book talking about the different blogging platforms. All of the popular platforms have reasonably well-written instructions. Here’s my summary of a few platforms I’m familiar with:
• While Blogger.com is most often used with the controversial Blogspot.com domain, you can use Blogger.com’s interface to set up a blog on your own domain.
• Blogger.com is very easy to set up and use. It’s a bare-bones blogging platform, but it’s not a bad starting point for new bloggers.
• WordPress.org’s WordPress is super-simple to install and has a whole host of “skins” (templates) and plugins for special functionality. I love the easy install, but many of my favourite WordPress plugins slow the website down, forcing me to disable them. This platform is quite popular amongst non-technical bloggers who manage their own domain.
• SixApart.com’s MovableType is easy to use. I enjoy the interface, and use it almost daily for a blog I write for someone else. But because I focus on free, OpenSource CMSes (Content Management Systems), I haven’t used the full version of MovableType on any of my sites. (There is an older free “personal” version.)
• SixApart also offers their own free OpenSource platform called LiveJournal. You can use their free hosting, which in principal is like Blogspot.com. But if you don’t want their banner ads showing, you have to pay a monthly fee. You can also down load the LiveJournal platform code and install it on your own domain. Unfortunately, unless you have a background in using the Linux operating system, you probably shouldn’t even attempt it.
• Drupal.org’s Drupal is arguably one of the most versatile and well-supprted blogging platforms. I’ve selected it for my next round of blogs. However, it’s not an easy install like WordPress. Furthermore, according to the Drupal community, domains set up with some hosting providers may produce database problems. I’ve encountered this issue myself and haven’t decided what to do.
• TextPattern, BoastMachine, Nucleus and several other newer platforms are gaining in popularity. They’re relatively easy to use and install. In fact, some hosting providers offer one or more of them with point-and-click install simplicity.
• Most of the above require that you at least know how to “FTP” files, and what that means.
• OpenSourceCMS.com has a detailed survey of many more blogging platforms and other CMSes. There are demos of each platform as well.
4. Set up a welcome page. Once your blog is set up, you can start posting entries. Most blogging platforms display entries in reverse chronological order. Nevertheless, it’s appropriate to start with a “welcome” post, explaining what your intent is, what you will be writing about, and how often.

Keep in mind that you can combine a regular website with a blog. In such an instance, the main page looks like a regular website, but there would be an area on the page with a “featured article”. My suggestion, if you’re just starting out, is to keep it simple. There is time later to re-design your website, and to customize the page template. I know I’ve glossed over a lot of very technical details, but you can learn along the way.

In the next article, I’ll talk about how to promote your blog, whether you’ve used a free host or a private host. In a still later article, I’ll talk a bit about ad networks and how you might earn some advertising revenue.

(c) Copyright: 2006-present, Raj Kumar Dash, Chameleon Integration

Raj Kumar Dash is a writer, author, and Internet consultant. Visit his hubsite at http://www.chameleonintegration.com/ to find the full introduction to blogging. (A free ebook on blogging is in the works.) Newbie bloggers can also visit Raj’s BlogSpinner blog at http://blogspinner.countwordula.com/ for a “how-to guide to blogging”.

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It has been established that having a ‘blog’ helps your web site gain visitors and higher rankings in search engines. But a small study which I have just completed shows that blogging is much more important than this. Blogging appears to be absolutely essential to your web site success. If you are not blogging, your web site will fade into obscurity.

Since blogging took off in the past year or so, there have been several ‘theories’ about it’s importance. Some people have suggested that it will mean the end of journalism, as we all become our own ‘reporters’. Others have predicted it will mean the end of civilisation as we know it. More practically, there have been several well sourced articles which suggest that blogging is a significant component in a web site’s success. Sites that include a blog, the theory goes, will be rewarded by Google with higher positioning on search engine results.

Like all theories, there is only one way to find out if they are true and that is to put them to the test. So, I decided to test the ‘Google ranking theory of blogging’.

My site, http://www.infoselling.com has over 200 pages in it, most of which are indexed by Google. Last week, one of those pages was consistently number one (out of 42,300) for the term ‘infoproduct’. Two other pages in the site were ranked consistently at 12 and 13 (the top two slots on the second results page).

Up until this point I had been writing a daily blog at the site and ‘pinging’ it to the various weblog sites. To test the theory, I stopped writing my blog and then re-checked the results. Five days without blogging has had a significant impact. The page which was number one, is now number six. The pages that were at the top of page two are now at the bottom of page three.

It would appear that no other web pages for the term ‘infoproduct’ have been added to the Google list in the past five days since the number of pages in the results is still 42,300. The only thing that I changed in my site was the blogging.

Now, it’s true that other sites may have changed and that I have suffered as a result. It may not be just the lack of blogging on my part. However, the top two pages are from a site which adds pages on a daily basis - and they were immediately below me while I was blogging away! Hence, whether you add content using traditional techniques, or you blog, the number one rule for maintaining your web site ranking in Google is add content - every day, without fail. As I’ve discovered, even five days can have a dramatic impact. If you are not adding content to your web site every day, you stand a very real chance of losing your place in the Google search results.

Graham Jones is a psychologist who has specialized in the way we use the Internet. He is an expert on information products and runs Infoselling.com where you can get a FREE report on how to sell your own infoproducts.

http://www.infoselling.com

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Okay, you’ve decided start a blog and you’ve put together a rough publishing plan: how often you’re going to post long and short articles, who is writing, who is editing, who is managing the webmaster-related tasks (blogmaster). [See link at bottom.]

If you’re a small business owner, you’re probably going to have to wear all of these hats. But if you’re prepared, the next step is to set the blog up so you can start posting articles (sometimes called “entries” or even “posts”). (All links shown at the end of this article.)

You have two blog hosting choices:

1. Set up your blog on a free host such as Google’s blogspot.com, or Typepad’s Livejournal or WordPress’s WordPress.com.
2. Set up your blog on your own domain that you’ve registered and that you own.

This article will focus on choice #1. A follow-up article will discuss choice #2.

If you’ve visited any number of blogs, no doubt you’ve seen little text ads crying out “free blog”. There are numerous choices and this article has no intention of listing all of them. While I have registered with several free hosts including Typepad and Wordpress, I’ve found that Google’s blogspot.com uses a very simple, easy to use blogging platform and client (interface) called Blogger.com - so I’ll focus my example on these services.

To clarify, Blogger.com has both the blogging “platform” and the “client“. A blogging platform is the software that generates the blog pages for you. Examples include MovableType, WordPress, TextPattern, Drupal, and Blogger.com. Every one of these platforms has an administrative panel page where you can manage your blog - add, edit, and delete articles; add article categories; etc.

The admin panel page is typically called the blogging client and its features are platform-specific. However, there are standalone software applications - also called blogging clients - that you can download to your computer, and which do not work from a web browser.

With these standalone clients, you can write your blog entries and pretty much post to any of the platforms. That means you can have one client to manage multiple blogs on several free (or private) hosts. (But let’s not get ahead of ourselves.) I’ve tried numerous standalone clients, but use two of them exclusively.

One is Zoundry.com’s BlogWriter, which is a true standalone client. The other is Performancing.com’s Firefox Extension (PFF), which works as a panel within the Firefox web browser. (While I find both of them highly efficient, I am not necessarily endorsing them.)

Other choices are Qumana, w. bloggar, Loch Journal, amongst many others. For those of you familiar with Microsft Word, Blogger.com has a plugin that lets you manage your blog directly from MS-Word. You don’t have to learn a whole new interface - beyond the setup stage.

As this article is intended for absolute beginners to blogging, I’m focusing on Blogger.com’s platform and default interface. The steps are relatively simple, and you don’t require a degree in computer programming to set up a blog - unlike some of the other platforms.

1. Go to http://www.blogger.com and sign up for a free account. (I’m using them as an example. Feel free to pick whatever you like.) The form will ask you to enter your real name, a screen name, a password, and email address. If you have a GMail (Google Mail) account, use that. For your screen name, keep in mind that it will appear at the bottom of each article/entry that you post live to your blog. So pick something suitable. Rules for names are provided.
2. Now create a new blog.
• You’ll be asked to enter a title for the blog and a sub-domain name.
• The title will appear at the top of your blog at all times - unless you change the page template. (More in a future article.)
• The sub-domain name will be part of the domain “blogspot.com”. For example, if you are starting a blog to promote your plumbing fixtures store, you may want to use something like “home-plumbing-tips”.
• This will mean that your blog address/URL will be http://home-plumbing-tips.blogspot.com. (Some bloggers and readers don’t like hyphenated sub-domain names, but I see nothing wrong with them.)
• You could, of course, use something like “plumbing-fixtures”, but it will not convey the idea that you are providing helpful tips.
• Now it’s entirely possible that someone has already registered the subdomain you want on blogspot.com. If so, you’ll get a warning message and you’ll have to choose another sub-domain name.
• As a result of this, some of my blogspot.com blogs have fairly lengthy sub-domain names, which are easier to remember because they’re hyphenated.
• You’ll also be asked a number of other optional questions, and be given a chance to enter the URL of a digital picture of yourself, if you have one elsewhere. (There are several services, including http://flickr.com, that let you upload pictures and graphics for free. The only drawback is that the terms generally say that in return for free hosting, other people can use your images, with some conditions.)
• Next, choose a page template. All of the free hosts have some pre-formatted page templates. Pick one from the samples displayed, and you can customize it later - although this does take a bit of technical know-how. Once the template is selected, Blogger.com (or what have you) will create the blog for you, and you can start posting entries.
3. Post a “Welcome to Such and Such Blog” entry.
• You should see a button that says something like “start posting“. What’ll happen is a edit page with a form will appear. There will be fields for the article/ entry title, the body text, and a date/time stamp (which defaults to right now). There will also be a number of tabs that let you use the large text area like a rich-text editor. Play with the tabs and “buttons” a bit; get acquainted.
• On blogger.com at least, there is a link that says “show preview“. You can click this link and see what your article will look like formatted (but not with your template features). When you’re happy with the “welcome” article, click the “publish” button. (If you’re not happy but don’t want to lose what you’ve written, you can click the “save as draft” button and come back later to edit and publish.)
• Depending on the time of day, and since this is a new blog, the article should publish very quickly. You’ll see a message like “100% complete”. Voila, you now have a live blog. You can click on the “View site” tab to have a look.

You now have a blog. Get acquainted with the adminstration panel. Most of the popular blogging platforms have fairly thorough details, but sometimes they may be a bit too technical.

Now that you have your blog live and running, the next step is to post several more relevant articles in short succession, then start promoting your blog. I’ll talk about blog promotion in Part 4 (after 3b, which is an overview of setting up a blog on a private domain).

Links: Part 2: Planning Your New Blog

Raj Kumar Dash is a writer, author, and Internet consultant. Visit his hubsite at http://www.chameleonintegration.com/ to find the full introduction to blogging. (A free ebook on blogging is in the works.) Newbie bloggers can also visit Raj’s BlogSpinner blog at http://blogspinner.countwordula.com/ for a “how-to guide to blogging”.

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