Blog Building Experiment

This article discusses the types of tools available to users to aid in building and maintaining a blog. 

When initially starting a blog, you must decide whether you would like to build a blog the “old fashion way”, or whether you’d like to use third party blog building software. The old fashion way involves manually coding webpages or designing them using a visual website building application such as Adobe Dreamweaver. You’ll also likely want to be running some sort of server-side scripts on your blog at some point, which will once again, involve more manual coding. This method is very labour intensive and requires that you are proficient in writing HTML code, as well as server-side scripts if you plan for your blog to be more than very basic. 

Building a blog the old fashion way is generally reserved only for a programming purist and even the majority of them wouldn’t bother. If you’re starting a blog purely to learn HTML or a new scripting language however, then this might be the way to go. If you’re starting a blog for the reason most do; in order to get your content published on the net and you want things up and running quickly, then the old fashion way is definitely not for you.

The alternative to the old fashion way is to use some sort of blog building software or tools to create your blog, which is what this article is centred around. These tools let you concentrate your energy on writing content rather than code and allow you to produce a high quality blog in a minute fraction of the time it would take to code an entire blog by hand.
Blogging software and tools can be broken down into two discrete categories:

1. Blogs hosted by the provider of the blogging software
2. Blogs hosted independently of the software provider

When a blog is hosted by the provider of the blogging software, all of your blog content is held on servers owned by the company who provides the blogging tools. This is a more service oriented blogging tool, in that you’re not only getting the software to write your blog, but you’re also being provided the service of having your blog hosted. One prime example of this is Blogger, a blogging tool owned by Google. When you create a blog using Blogger, Google takes all your content and hosts it on their servers for you. When people go to view your blog, the content is being downloaded from the Google servers where it is parked. This is perhaps the easiest way to start a blog and it tends to require the least amount of effort. The other benefit of using tools like this is that you don’t have to pay to host your blog; it tends to be done for you free of charge.

The alternative software method, which has already been mentioned, is using blogging software that requires you to host your blog independently. This basically means you’re given the tools to create your blog, but it’s up to you to find hosting so you can get your blog onto the Internet. To get your blog up and running on the Internet requires that you purchase your own domain name and web hosting space.  For more information regarding this, have a look at the articles “Purchasing a Domain Name” and ”Purchasing Web Hosting“.

Self-hosted blogging software generally comes bundled as a series of files which you have to first download from the software provider’s website. Once the files have been downloaded, you’ll usually need to make a few minor configuration changes to some of the files using a basic text editor like notepad. Once these changes have been made, the files need to be uploaded to the server of the company you’ve purchased hosting with. Once the files have been uploaded, you’ll most likely have to go through a short series of steps to configure your blog further, after which you can commence blogging using the publishing tools provided by the software package you have chosen. Detailed installation instructions can usually be found on any piece of blogging software’s respective website. 

There are a number of high quality free blogging tools available on the net, one of the most notable being WordPress (which this blog has been made using). I was surprised to find that a large number of the most successful blogs on the internet are actually made using WordPress or other free blogging tools. While many of the blogging software tools available are free to download, as mentioned earlier, there is of course the cost associated with purchasing a domain name and web hosting space. The benefit of having your blog hosted with your own paid web hosting provider of choice is that you inherently get allot more freedom and flexibility. This means you’ll have more ways to not only customize but monetize your blog, with the freedom to use whatever advertising or other monetization methods you see fit. It’ll also mean you’re no longer at the mercy of your free blog host, should they decide to change the terms and conditions or go tinkering with their technology. For anybody serious about blogging, using paid hosting in combination with some sort of downloadable blogging software is generally considered the only sane option.

It is sometimes possible to find web hosting providers who offer free space on the Internet. It might seem that this way you can get the best of both worlds by not having to pay a cent and still getting all the customisation and monetization opportunities you’d hoped for. The biggest problem with these free web hosts is that there are usually all sorts of strings attached to the so-called “free” space. With a free webhost, you’re much more likely to get poor reliability, service and performance and you’ll almost certainly have your site’s pages laced with unsolicited advertisements, among other things.

In summary, if you’re trying to get a blog off the ground quickly and you’re not prepared to sacrifice on quality or flexibility, blogging software such as WordPress combined with paid web hosting is likely to be the best candidate. If you’re not willing to spend a dime and you’re happy to sacrifice a little on flexibility and monetization opportunities, a service like Blogger will get you up and running quickly. If you’re a hard-core code enthusiast, you might consider the option of building the whole thing from scratch. Just keep in mind that a similar or better blog can likely be produced using free blogging software in a tiny fraction of the time and with significantly less effort being expended. With the number of options and plug-ins available for free blogging software such as WordPress, you’re generally not too limited in what you can do in terms of customisation either. Coding a good blog from scratch is certainly not an overnight task.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, January 15th, 2008 at 11:20 am and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.