Blog Building Experiment

Part of what makes a blog successful can no doubt be found by looking into the principles of user interface (UI) design.  The user interface is what the user sees and how the user interacts with a website.  In the eyes of the average user, the user interface IS the system - most users are not concerned with how a website or blog works; only that it does. 

Quality Content does not equal User-Friendly

Time and energy expended producing quality content can be easily negated by a poorly designed or structured site which fails to communicate that content effectively.  User interface design is a broad topic which warrants much discussion here at Blog Building Experiment where the focus is on determining how a blog evolves to become successful.  This article aims to address the topic of effective user interface design at a very high level and will hopefully provide some general insights into how one might go about achieving it.

I recently found myself asking the question “What are the characteristics that embody good interface design?”  It’s usually quite simple to tell apart the two extremes; most people know a poorly designed site when they see one, and the same can be said vice versa.  When you come to design your own blog though, being able to tell apart bad design from good doesn’t guarantee you’ll know how to implement the latter yourself.  You’ll need to know what it is that distinguishes good designs from the bad, not just that “it is”.  Seeing the Mona Lisa doesn’t mean you could paint it.

Texts on UI Design

I decided that user interface design was something worth looking into further, so I went searching for books on the topic.  The first one I came across was Wilbert Galitz The Essential Guide to User Interface Design.  At 857 pages, it’s not a short book, but for anyone serious about learning the principles of UI design, it does contain quite a bit of useful content and gets quite specific. 

I can’t personally recommend any other user interface design books, but one which I continue to hear very good reports about is Steve Krugs’ Don’t Make Me Think - A Common Sense Approach to Web Usability.  It’s quite a small book - 216 pages, for anybody not yet enthused enough about user interface design to crack out a textbook door stop.  The other thing which separates Krug’s book from Galitz’ is that Krug’s focuses only on the web, rather than user interfaces across the field of computing as a whole.  In hind sight, Krug’s book is probably a better place to start for a novice looking for a practical and light hearted introduction to web usability and design.  A search on Amazon will reveal a number of texts dealing with UI design.

Don’t Make the User Think

One of the core concepts underpinning all user interface design and usability texts is perhaps best summarised by the title of Steve Krug’s book - “Don’t Make Me Think”.  In general terms, a poorly designed interface makes itself most apparent when the user has to begin thinking to figure out how to use the platform which is supposed to be facilitating the task they actually wish to achieve.  Anything which gets in the way of the user completing the task at hand is a hindrance in terms of usability.

These hindrances can manifest themselves in a multitude of forms.  It could be something as simple as using buttons which cause confusion because they don’t actually look like buttons.  Another example would be using headings whose font size doesn’t properly distinguish itself from that of the body text, making page scanning difficult.  Yet another example would be using some special widget which shows you the time on your webpage, but isn’t actually serving any purpose, other than to distract the user from the task at hand.

Reduce thinking - use standards

In the context of web interface design, standards refer to widely recognised and accepted ways of implementing or structuring the visual layout of content on a webpage.  When a user sees blue underlined text on a webpage, there’s a general expectation that that text is a link.  This is perhaps the simplest example of a web design standard.

By adhering to standards guidelines in the design of a website or blog, you make it easier for the user to focus on the task at hand, rather than the technology which facilitates it.  Over time and with experience, users come to expect to see and interact with elements of a webpage in certain ways.  This is their mental model of how things work and how they should be.  When something contradicts the user’ mental model, cognitive dissonance tends to ensue.  All of a sudden the focus shifts from performing the task at hand to negotiating the technology which is supposed to be facilitating it.

Many First Sites will not be User-Centric

For people who have never built a website before, the concept of conforming to standards can come across as being a little draconian and crippling to creativity.  For many people, the first website or blog they create won’t conform to standards very well and won’t be very user-friendly.  This is usually caused by things such as a lack of consistency between individual page’s design structure and the application of bleeding-edge technologies.  These sites often contain little widgets or gadgets which are “neat”, but like a digital clock on a webpage, are unlikely to have much utility as far as the user is concerned. 

Intentional or not, the design of many people’s first site is what I’d refer to as “creator-centric”.  By this I imply that the focus of such sites tends to be for the most part on the creator’s experimentation rather than on creating something overly practical.  This is a great way to learn, but if you wish to draw more people to your site or blog, it becomes important to adopt a more “user-centric” approach.  One of the best ways to do this is by adhering to standards where they exist, so as not to disrupt the user’s mental model of how things should work.

Surviving the standards monotony

For those who look at standards as an impending doom for originality on the web, fear not.  There’s still plenty of ways to add your own distinctive signature to your work and leave your mark on the world.  The crux of the user-centric approach is to always ask yourself what would be most useful and unambiguous to your users and how can you make achieving the user’s goal as simple as possible.

UI Shortcomings of this Blog

At the time of writing, this blog is not the quintessential example of a user-centric blog.  The WordPress blogging software has provided a generally tidy layout for this blog, but I can see allot of room for improvement on my part.  Like anything, UI Design needs to be tended to in proportion to other aspects of a blog or site.  Unfortunately, not even the most user-friendly UI in the world would write my articles for me (I asked it and it said No), so article writing has taken priority at present.

Examples of good UI Design

If you’re looking for good examples of UI Design, think of some of your favourite sites.  It’s quite likely they’ll be the ones which require the least thinking on your behalf to use and allow you to do what you want to do painlessly.

 This article aims to give a brief overview of what search engine optimisation (SEO) is all about and the role it plays in getting your blog noticed.

What is Search Engine Optimisation?

Search engine optimisation is the process by which a website is designed or configured to make it as accessible and interpretable as possible to the algorithms search engines use to index and classify information.  There are certain steps that a blog or website owner can take in order to make their content more “search friendly”.  By optimising your content for maximum search engine compatibility, you’ll have a higher likelihood of getting your pages listed in search results which will in turn drive more traffic to your blog.

How important is getting your blog into search engine results?

For many blogs, search engine results will ultimately become the primary source of traffic.  Some keywords are searched for significantly more often than others, meaning the potential for different topics to gain exposure through search engines will vary.  Even for a mildly popular keyword search however, having your blog’s home page or its individual posts listed on the first page of Google search results essentially guarantees you a healthy flow of traffic.  It may take some time to get your blog ranked highly in Google search results, but working towards this goal is too big of a traffic building opportunity to overlook.

How does a search engine work?

Search engines scour the Internet applying various algorithms or procedures to the contents of webpages in an attempt to rank or classify information based on its perceived importance and relevance.  By doing this, search engines build up an “index” or list of pages found on the Internet. 

The largest search engines on the Internet such as Google have an index containing many billions of pages.  This index not only stores the addresses of pages found on the Internet, but also the perceived importance and relevance of a site, as calculated by the search engine’s indexing algorithms mentioned above.  When a user searches for specific keywords, the search engine looks to its index to determine which pages are most relevant to the user based on the keywords that were entered.

How can I optimise my site for search engines?

In the early days of search engines, the metrics by which a site’s relevancy and ranking were determined were somewhat basic and often well known to webmasters.  As a result, less scrupulous site owners would unfairly exploit their knowledge of search engines to get higher rankings.  While this may have worked well for some individuals, the overall effect was that the quality of search results became diluted by higher ranking, less relevant sites.  Today, search engines have gotten significantly more sophisticated and do a much better job of returning relevant results despite many unscrupulous attempts at “beating the system”.

These days, SEO has become more of an art than a science and what works one day may not work the next, as search providers continue to tweak their algorithms to provide the most relevant results.  Various SEO methods have been found to work with varying levels of success.  Allot of money is being made by “professionals” in the field of SEO who sell their knowledge, services and products to businesses and individuals looking to get a hand up in search results.  Unfortunately, telling good SEO advice from bad SEO advice can often be difficult, so make sure you carefully scrutinize any information you come across on the topic.

This article is not intended to go into any great detail regarding specific SEO methods, although a few simple examples of site optimisation techniques have been given below to give some context to the discussion. 

• Give your posts clear and concise titles that accurately describe the content they contain. The more accurate your title, the more likely it’ll appear when a user does a keyword search on the words contained in it, making your content more relevant.
• Add text descriptions to graphics or images. Most search engines can’t accurately interpret the meaning of images, so attaching an “alt” text description to an image helps.
• Check your spelling. If you spell something wrong, you’re relying on the user to spell it wrong also in their keyword search.

These are only a couple of very basic examples of SEO at work.  There are countless other methods designed to make a site more search friendly. This article however is designed primarily to introduce the existence of the field of SEO, rather than the fine details of its implementation.

Before attempting to perform any given search engine optimisation technique, make sure that it’s not something that is likely to get your site blacklisted by the major search engines.  Search engine algorithms often draw a fine line between search engine optimisation and attempts to unfairly exploit the system, which may result in the search algorithm omitting your website from search results.

What search engine should I primarily focus my SEO efforts on?

If you had to direct your efforts at optimising your blog towards only one search engine, the answer to which search engine you to choose would be simple: Google.  Google holds an online search monopoly and at time of writing handles almost 60 percent of all online searches.  To put this in perspective, the next two closest competitors, Yahoo and Microsoft, only handle around 18 percent and 14 percent of online search queries respectively.

Why you shouldn’t get too caught up in SEO

SEO may be an important step in enticing traffic to your blog, but try not to lose sight of the fact that your blog should ideally provide something worth reading.  Getting wildly involved in SEO before you have anything worth reading is like promoting a new restaurant, having your customers turn up and then realising you never got around to purchasing any food to serve.  If you have a restaurant that serves up fantastic food, you’ll only need a few customers to get things rolling.  From then on in word of mouth will give your restaurant plenty of exposure without you having to actively seek it out.  Always aim to provide quality content above all else.  This alone will play a major role in driving your site up the search engine rankings.

This article details my first impressions, or first “WordPressions” of the WordPress blogging software package.  I chose to use WordPress to create this blog based primarily on seeing the results of other successful WordPress-driven blogs and having read a number of positive reviews.  Both of these factors instilled in me confidence that WordPress would provide the exact capabilities I sought from a blogging software package.  My basic criteria required something that would allow me to get things up and running quickly that didn’t compromise on flexibility and extendibility.  This article though, is not designed to promote WordPress but rather to give an account of my experiences with using the software having only recently launched a blog, so let’s get on with it.

The “Famous 5-Minute Installation”

If you look at the WordPress website’s installation documentation, you’d come across the “Famous 5-Minute Installation“.  Here you’ll be told that under most circumstances, installing WordPress is a very simple process and will take you less than 5 minutes to complete.  Through my own experience, I’ve found this estimation to be a tad bit optimistic.  It’s true - there wasn’t anything overly complex about installing WordPress, just niggling issues that turned the famous 5-minute install into my own version - the Infamous 90-Minute Install.  Admittedly though, the reason it took this long was in no way the fault of the WordPress software package. 

First of all, I had to establish how to go about create a MySQL database on my web hosting space.  This wasn’t overly difficult; it was simply time consuming establishing how to go about doing this using the control panel provided by my web host. 

Once I’d done this, I had some technical difficulties getting the WordPress software package files to upload to my web host’s server.  First of all, it was going incredibly slow.  I did some searching on Google and found out that this was because the Macromedia Dreamweaver FTP client I had been using was by default configured to upload files using Active FTP as opposed to Passive FTP.  This article won’t attempt to explain the difference between the two, but you should know that the two different versions of FTP do exist.  If you find you’re getting incredibly slow uploads, try and find out which version of FTP your FTP client is currently using.  Most web hosts will allow you to use passive FTP, although no doubt there are some cases where you must use Active FTP for whatever reason.

After uploading the files, I followed the installation instructions by going to the page http://www.blogbuildingexperiment.com/wp-admin/www.blogbuildingexperiment.com/wp-admin/install.php to start configuring my blog, only to find that I was not seeing anything much at all.  So, I then downloaded the FileZilla FTP client, installed it, and uploaded the WordPress package files all over again.  I tried the same address again in my Internet browser, and thankfully, this time round I got the screen I’d been expecting.  After this the rest of the installation process was quite simple as the WordPress software guided me step by step through the small amount of information I had to enter.

The moral of this installation story - you’ll probably need more than 5 minutes to install WordPress.  This probably won’t be due to any faults in the WordPress software but the associated hurdles you’ll inevitably have to overcome like those I’ve described above.  You may however strike it lucky and have no problems what so ever.

The Administrative User Interface

I’m happy to report that thus far I’ve found the WordPress administrative tools and interface to be organised quite well.  It’s easy to navigate between the administrative tools and the general layout is quite intuitive.  I found it didn’t take long before I’d familiarised myself with the basics of WordPress and gotten a feel for how things worked.  Admittedly I haven’t explored many of the available options and features of WordPress just yet, but starting out and writing posts like these has thus far been a relatively pain-free experience.

The Post Creator/Editor

When I say the Post Creator/Editor, I’m referring to the WordPress toolset that you use to write and edit your blog posts.  My personal writing preference when compiling documents more than a few hundred words long is usually to use Microsoft Word first, and then copy the content into another program if necessary.  I feel this gives me a better view of the document layout while I’m creating an article and I find all the tools in Microsoft Word to be very familiar. 

For all the posts that have appeared on this blog thus far, I’ve written them out in their entirety in Microsoft Word first before copy/pasting the content into the WordPress text editor.  I found that doing things this way often left me with uncertain results, where things like line returns (space between lines) were removed from my articles and other small niggling formatting issues became apparent.  However, I’ve now found a special button on the WordPress “advanced” toolbar that allows you to specify that the text your pasting is coming from Microsoft Word.  When using this button I’ve found that I haven’t gotten the same problems I was experiencing previously when pasting from a Microsoft Word document.

Another niggling issue I’ve had is with bullet points.  The first post I wrote on this site contained a bullet pointed three item list.  In the post editor view I could see the bullet points, but once the post was published they were no longer visible.  I tried viewing the page in a variety of browsers and found that it appears to be for the most part a browser compatibility problem.  Internet Explorer version 6 displayed the bullet points perfectly, Mozilla Firefox 2 displayed two small arrows rather than bullet points, and Internet Explorer version 7 displayed no bullet points at all.  No doubt there is a workaround or fix for this issue that I’m yet to find, but as the title of this article suggests, this article is designed to give “first impressions” of using the WordPress software.

Plugins

The last thing I wanted to briefly mention in this article is plugins.  One of the biggest reasons why the WordPress software is so extendible and customisable is because of plugins.  I’ve found the WordPress plugins manager very easy to use and configure plugins with.  For those not familiar with the term, a plugin is basically an additional software tool or feature that is “tacked on” to a main software package that provides some kind of enhancement.  As an example, one of the most popular plugins available is “Akismet”, which checks any written responses (comments) readers submit to your posts to determine if they look like spam or not. 

There’s a strong community of developers writing free plugins for WordPress that allow you to add on all kinds of neat features or tools to your blog.  An index of most of these plugins is maintained on the official WordPress website. The great thing about plugins is that they can also be “plugged-out”.  In other words, if you want to remove a feature, it’s as simple as disabling it.  This means that you don’t have to manually edit any code and then try and remember where you made the changes if you want to revert back to how things originally were.

Summing It All Up

Overall, my first impressions of the WordPress software have been very positive.  It provides a fantastic toolset and extendibility that allow users to start creating professional looking content in next to no time.  At the time of writing, Blog Building Experiment is what you might call the “vanilla” flavour of WordPress blogs.  Currently there’s been very little done in the way of customisation, so it may appear to look like many other start-up blogs that have been created using WordPress.  To put the extendibility and customisation possibilities of WordPress in perspective though, take a look at TechCrunch, created using WordPress and one of the top 5 most popular blogs on the Internet at time of writing.  As you’ll see, it looks nothing whatsoever like this “vanilla” flavoured blog.   

As I’ve been alluding to in this article, you may well come across one or two minor hitches getting your WordPress blog up and running.  Looking at it in perspective however, I’m very grateful that such a good tool exists that didn’t cost me a cent to purchase and has been predominately hassle free thus far.  WordPress is one of few pieces of open-source, free software that is actually quite easy to use and won’t leave you with a headache.  I’m somewhat of a WordPress neophyte who is still finding out about many of the features and plugins available. This article however has tried to portray WordPress through the eyes of a beginner.  As my knowledge of WordPress expands, I’ll continue to report back on my findings here on Blog Building Experiment.

This article aims to explain how you go about transferring content or files from your computer to your webhost’s server where it can be made publicly accessible on the World Wide Web. 

How a webhost distinguishes your home page from every other page

Before we get into the details of uploading your website to your hosting space, it’s worth giving a bit of a background on how a home page gets found among every other page on your site.  As has been mentioned previously in other articles, a blog can be considered a form of website, so the two terms have been used here interchangeably.  When a request is sent to a website, and the user hasn’t specified the exact page of the site they wish to see, the website will look for some default home page file to process or display.  This name of the default page is usually something like “index.html”, “index.asp”, “index.php”, “home.html”, “home.php” or something similar.  The default page name(s) a webserver will go looking for may vary slightly between different web hosts.  For example, web hosting provider “FutureQuest” looks for the following default file names: “index.shtml”, “index.shtm”, “index.html”, “index.htm”, “index.php”, “index.php4″, “index.php5″, “index.php3″, “index.cgi”.   The term “index” with some file extension (e.g. “.asp”, “.php”, “.html” etcetera) is perhaps the most commonly used default amongst web hosts.

 To demonstrate what’s just been said, let’s give a concrete example.  If Barry comes along and types in http://www.madeupsite.com/, the server on which the site is hosted will probably look for a file named “index.x”, where “.x” represents one of the web host’s valid file extensions.  This is because Barry has only specified the website he wishes to go to, but not the specific page on that site.  If one of the default file possibilities is found; “index.html” for example, the page will be displayed.  If none of the default file names that your web host is configured to search for are found, an error page is likely to be displayed.  The second scenario is that Barry types in not only the domain name, but also qualifies it with a specific page name, for example, www.madeupsite.com/some_page.html.  In this instance, the web server looks directly for the file “some_page.html” rather than the default “index.x” file name.  If it finds “some_page.html”, it will display the page.  If it doesn’t find it, you’ll see an error message, regardless of whether an “index.x” page exists on the web host or not.  This is because in this instance Barry has explicitly specified that he wishes to view “some_page.html”, not just the default home page.

So what’s this all mean?  It means the file name of whatever page you plan on using as your home page must conform to the home page naming standards of your web host.  If you’re going to be using third party blogging software such as WordPress, you’re not going to have to worry about creating this file.  This is because the blogging software file package should already contain a home page file.  For WordPress users, this will be the file “index.php”.   

FTP and what you need to know about it

The most commonly used method for uploading files to your webhost is to use what’s known as an “FTP Client”.  When you purchased your web hosting space, you should have received an email from your hosting provider containing the FTP details which you’ll need in order to upload your files.  This will include an FTP host name, username, password and possibly a port number if your web host does not use the default FTP port. If you haven’t received these details, consult your web host’s support centre.  An example set of FTP details might be:

FTP Hostname: ftp://ftp.uberhost.com/
Username: jimbo
Password: purplemonkeydishwasher

FTP stands for “File Transfer Protocol”, which in simple terms is a communications standard that allows files to be sent to and retrieved from a webserver.  There are a number of both free and paid FTP client software options available.  One of the most popular free FTP software packages is FileZilla.  Using an FTP client to upload files to your web host is essentially just copying files from one folder on your computer to another folder on your web host’s computers.  Programs like FileZilla even provide a familiar looking graphic file and folder directory, so you can see exactly what files are folders are on your computer and what files and folders are on your webhost’s computer.

Important: once you’ve connected to your webhost’s directory, you may see files and folders stored on the web host that you did not create.  Often these directories contain important supporting files that are required for your site to operate.  If for some reason you feel compelled to delete any of these files, consult your web host first to establish which files are critical to supporting your hosting package.  As a standard, web hosts will often have already created a “www\” directory for you on the webserver.  This is usually the directory that all your website files should be uploaded to.

Uploading your site using WordPress as an example

The best way to get an idea of what’s involved in uploading your website to the Internet is using an example.  I’ve chosen WordPress as the example, simply because it’s the most widely used blogging software tools available and it’s free.  Rather than write an entirely new tutorial, I’ve found what I consider to be a very good video demonstrating the uploading process which can be found here.  Even if you don’t intend on using WordPress, this video still demonstrates the process of uploading your website files and the sort of installation steps you can expect to encounter using blogging software packages.  WordPress also maintains comprehensive documentation in regards to installation and troubleshooting and has strong user community forums in the event that you run into any problems.

You may notice that this video contains an additional step that hasn’t been discussed in any detail, which is creating a new MySQL database on your web hosting space.  All of the content you write for your blog using your blogging software package of choice and any configuration options must be stored in a database internally.  How you go about creating a new database will differ between web hosts.  Usually your web host will provide you with some form of control panel that allows you to administer database tasks such as creation and deletion of databases.  With most web hosts, creating a new database should be a relatively simple process.  Once you’ve created the database, you need not be concerned with how it is written to or read from, this is all handled through the blogging software package internally.  All you’ll need to do is provide your blogging software with the name of the database, which can be seen in the demonstration video mentioned above.  The blogging software then takes care of creating all the necessary database tables and internal structures so you don’t have to think about it.

If you’re using database driven blogging software like WordPress, having to upload files to your web host will be a one off event.  When you want to write a new post, it’s done online through the blogging software’s administration panel, so you don’t have to concern yourself with manually uploading any more files or content to your web host.  The only exception is in the event that a newer version of your blogging software gets released and you wish to upgrade to it.  In this instance, you will most likely have to upload at least some specific files or folders to your webhost’s server again.  The next article to come will discuss my “first impressions” of WordPress after using it as the blogging software tool of choice for this site.

This article assumes you’ve already purchased a domain name as well as some web hosting space.    Being as a blog is essentially a type of website, the term “website” has been used throughout this article to broadly encompass both a blog and any other non-blog related content you may be looking at publishing. 

Once you’ve purchased a domain name and web hosting space, you’re not able to simply type the domain name into your Internet browser’s address bar and be directed to your website.  The exception to this may be if you purchased your domain name and web hosting space through the same company, in which case the configuration may have been handled for you.  This article however, assumes that you purchased your domain name through one company and your web hosting package through another.

The “Low Down” on Domain Name Servers
In previous articles on this site, you’ve been told that there might be a few things that need to be configured for your domain name and web hosting space at some point.  This is that point.  This article focuses particularly on what is perhaps the most important of these configuration options - the “Domain Name Servers”.  To get your domain name pointing to your website, the domain name registrar (the company you purchased your domain name through) needs to know the names of the servers that handle your website.  The name of these servers should be attained from your web hosting provider.  You may also hear a domain name server referred to simply as a “Name Server”.  The two terms are interchangeable.  A domain name registrar will always require the name of at least two name servers (this doesn’t mean you need two web hosting packages).  This allows for redundancy; in the event one name server isn’t available, another name server can handle the request.  The following is an example of two domain name server addresses:

ns1.imaginarywebhost.net

ns2.imaginarywebhost.net

Once you’ve obtained the name server details from your web host, you can register these with your domain name registrar.  Most domain name registrars have a configuration option that will allow you to do this yourself online.  Note that your domain name registrar may have set some default domain name servers for your domain name, which probably point at the registrars own domain name servers.  In the event that you purchased your web hosting space and domain name through the same company, there’s a good chance these default addresses are actually correct and you don’t need to make any changes.

So there you have it, having now registered the domain name server details with your domain name registrar, your domain name should now point to the server on which your website will reside.  This means that when someone types your domain name into their Internet browser, when your domain name registrar receives the request for your domain, it knows the name server that the request should be directed to.  This is a very basic explanation of what’s going on behind the scenes.  A detailed explanation is beyond the scope of this article and is not something you need to be familiar with in order to get your site up and running.  If you are however interested, trying doing a Google search on the term “Domain Name System”.

Testing Out Your Domain Name
So you’ve configured the domain name servers, but now what?  Try typing your domain name into your Internet browser’s address bar.  Assuming you haven’t yet uploaded any of your website to your hosting space, this will likely produce one of two things:

An “Under Construction” style page or similar, which is like a placeholder on your site until you upload your own content.  This might contain the name of your site, a short description, the name of your hosting provider, or something similar.

An error page.

If you get the “under construction” style page, then you know it’s worked.  Many web hosts will give you a default home page before you upload any of your own content to your website, which is what you would be seeing.  If you get an error page, it’s probably for one of the following reasons:

Your web hosting provider hasn’t given you a default placeholder home page.

The changes you made to your domain name server details haven’t yet been processed.

The changes you made to your domain name server details were incorrect.

The webserver hosting your site is currently down.

Some web hosts may not give you any default home page at all.  This means that even though your Internet browser has gone looking in the right place for your website, because you currently have no home page file stored there, it returns an error message.

What’s next?
Regardless of whether you were lucky enough to get an “under construction” page or unfortunate enough to not, the next logical step is to now get your site’s content uploaded to your hosting space. If you plan on using a third party blogging software tool such as WordPress then don’t worry, you’re not expected to have created any of your own content for your site at this point. Instead, you’ll be uploading a series of files that have already been created for you as a part of the software package.  Once you’ve done this, providing things have gone to plan, you’ll have something meaningful to look at when you type in your domain name. Instead of just a placeholder construction page or error page, you’ll have your very own home page. In the event that you’re still not seeing your own home page after completing this next step, you’ll be in a better position to diagnose the exact problem than before.  A basic description of how to go about getting your site’s content uploaded to your web hosting space will be the topic of the next article to appear on Blog Building Experiment in the near future.

To get your blog up and running on the net, you’ll need some space on the web where you can park all your content.  If you haven’t yet purchased a domain name and you’re not sure what’s involved, you should refer to the article “Purchasing a Domain Name” before reading on.  Most of the content covered within this article is applicable to other facets of online content publishing.  So for anybody looking at starting a non-blog related website or online service, this article should still come in handy.

The number of companies who offer web hosting services to consumers today is just about infinite.  This generates great market competition, ultimately benefiting the consumer.  The cost of web hosting can still vary greatly, depending on who you go with and the services you require.  Site’s that are just starting out can often get away with paying as little as $10USD a month for adequate hosting, while very large blogs can sometimes cost in excess of $100USD per month to host.  Needless to say, the amount of money spent hosting a successful blog is usually an extremely small fraction of that which can be made back through various advertising and sponsorship schemes. There are a number of variables to consider when choosing a web hosting provider that’ll help you get a package tailored to your needs.  These variables tend to fall into the following broad categories:

1. Disk Space, Bandwidth and Speed
2. Server Technologies
3. Customer Service and Knowledge Base
4. Reliability
5. Miscellaneous Additional Services

Following is a discussion of each.

1. Disk Space, Bandwidth and Speed

The amount of disk space made available to you determines how much content you can store on your site.  Text on a page takes up very little disk space and is generally not a cause for concern, even on a blog containing many long articles.  “Rich content” such as audio, video and larger high quality images on the other hand can use up large amount of disk space very quickly.  To illustrate this fact, a page on Blog Building Experiment that contains over 2,300 words takes up 24 KB of space.  A reasonable quality compressed MP3 audio file that runs for 2 minutes could easily take up 1 MB or more, or 42 times as much space as the 2,300 words of text.  A 2 minute video could easily take up ten times as much space again, or 420 times as much spaced as the 2,300 words of text.  That’s approximately the equivalent of 1 million words of text, all for a 2 minute video.  For a basic blog that is primarily text based and does not contain any audio, video or other rich content, 100MB of disk space will generally more than suffice.  If rich content is to be added, it may be worth considering a hosting plan that provides more disk space.

The amount of bandwidth you have allocated to your hosting account determines the amount of data that can be sent and received from your website.  Every time a user visits a webpage, information is downloaded from the server where the page is hosted, to the user’s computer.  This consumes bandwidth.  The amount of bandwidth used correlates to the size of the files that need to be downloaded in order to display a webpage or web content.  A user that views 200 pages containing 1KB of data each would use the same amount of bandwidth as another user that viewed a single page containing 200KB of data just the once.  As you can imagine, larger files like audio and video would not only have a tendency to take up more disk space than text, but also require significantly more bandwidth. 

A small, primarily text based blog with several hundred visitors per month may use under 100MB of bandwidth or so each month.  Some of the most popular blogs on the Internet which contain large quantities of audio and video content can use in excess of 100GB of bandwidth each month.  Often it’ll be difficult to have an accurate estimate of exactly how much bandwidth and disk space you’ll use until you have your blog up and running.  Almost all web hosting providers will provide you with the necessary tools to monitor your disk and bandwidth usage among other things.  Be wary of web hosting providers that state that you’ll receive unlimited bandwidth as a part of your hosting package.  Bandwidth is only part of the picture, the other aspect is speed.

The biggest problem with choosing a hosting provider that states “unlimited bandwidth” is that you often sacrifice speed as a result.  In reality, your bandwidth will be limited by the speed of the equipment the hosting company has your content hosted on.  All the bandwidth in the world is not unlimited.  Most web hosting packages run on “shared servers” meaning that other peoples hosting packages will also be run on the same machine at the hosting company.  This in turn means the total available bandwidth of the server is divided between multiple hosting packages.  Many of the cheaper hosting companies tend to use inferior connections and host a larger number of users’ websites on a single machine.  This will result in less bandwidth being allocated to each site, resulting in slower loading times for the site’s users.

A final note on the disk space/bandwidth/speed aspect of web hosting.  It’s often useful to look for a hosting provider that allows you to seamlessly upgrade to a bigger and better hosting package with them as your blog expands.  This way, you’re only paying for what you need at any given point in time.  When the point in time comes that your blog starts to outgrow its existing hosting package, you simply move up to a more accommodating package with your existing provider. This means you don’t have to worry about relocating your site to the servers of a completely new host which is likely to be problematic, in one way or another.

2. Server Technologies

Many of the most successful blogs found on the Internet today have actually been built using some sort of third party blogging software.  Third party blogging software allows you to concentrate your energy on writing content and not code.  All the nitty gritty code implementation details that convert the articles you write into HTML code that an internet browser is capable of displaying are handled for you by the software.  Ultimately, you may never need to write or script a single line of computer code for your blog.  If you’re not familiar with blogging software packages, you may wish to read “Choosing the Right Tools for the Blog”.

One thing to keep in mind about using third party blogging software tools is that most of them rely on using a database internally to store your information.  Utilising databases allows your blog to run very efficiently and makes applying changes to the overall layout or structure very simple for the maintainer of the blog.  However, using databases requires that the server your site is hosted on supports the required server technologies. 

There are a couple of different server technologies in existence, and you’ll need to make sure that your web host supports the one that your blogging software requires.  Perhaps the most popular server technology among blogging software packages is the combination of PHP scripting with MySQL databases.  This particular combination is popular as it is not only a high quality product, but also free, meaning web hosting providers don’t have to pay any licensing fees to use it.  When web hosts start having to pay fees to license software, the overhead is usually reflected in the price you pay for your web hosting account.  One such example of this is the ASP server technology used in conjunction with SQL Server databases.  These are both Microsoft products which require that web hosts need to pay licensing fees in order to support them.  Nonetheless, certain blogging software packages do use ASP rather than PHP.  

From the perspective of someone creating a blog, it’s generally not necessary to know all the intricate details and distinctions between these different server technologies.  The important thing is to ensure that the web hosting package you purchase supports whatever server technologies are required by the blogging software you intend on using, if any.  Almost all paid web hosting providers support at least one set of server technologies and this information is usually easy to obtain through the hosting company’s website.

3. Customer Service and Knowledge Base

In the relentless pursuit for the lowest price, this is perhaps the aspect most overlooked by people when searching for the right web hosting provider.  Before committing to a hosting package, have a look at who’ll be there to help in the event that you can’t get something working.  It’s almost inevitable that at one point or another you’ll run into a problem, and when you do, you’re going to want some help solving it.  Most good web hosts will have information on their site in regards to their customer service policies.  If you find one that doesn’t, it might be a bad sign.

A knowledge base is a term used to broadly describe all of the reference material available to help you resolve issues or find out information when you need it.  A knowledge base might consist of user forums, FAQs, formal documentation and other relevant reference material.  The broader the knowledge base, usually the better.  Just be careful, as quantity does not always equal quality.

4. Reliability

Another important aspect that often goes overlooked in the pursuit for a bargain is the reliability of a web host.  You should look for a host with a guaranteed uptime of at least 99%.  This means that you’re guaranteed that your site will be online and accessible to users at least 99% of the time.  This may sound very high, but in the world of web hosting, anything below this figure tends to be considered unreliable.  Even at 99%, that’s still the equivalent of 7.2 hours downtime each month – something you don’t want to be encountering.  Also make sure to check what the company’s policy is on redeeming any compensation in the event that they fail to meet the guaranteed uptime.  Some less scrupulous web hosts will require that you provide proof that the uptime guarantee hasn’t been met, prior to receiving any compensation.  Others may even deny your claim altogether.  The best of web hosts will compensate you for not meeting their uptime guarantees, even in the event that you hadn’t realised it.

5. Miscellaneous Additional Services

Web hosts often provide additional services to users that complement their chosen hosting package.  These might include free email accounts, preinstalled scripts to perform common tasks or email virus filtering software to name just a few.  Whether or not any of these additional services are required will depend on the specific circumstances, but it’s something to consider.

Once you’re done purchasing hosting space, you’ll want to move on to  Getting Your Domain Name to Point to Your Website or Blog.

A note about this site’s hosting

After reviewing a number of potential web hosts, I ended up settling on FutureQuest.  It met all the relevant criteria and yet still turned out to be very affordable.  As this site is just getting started, I’ve chosen a basic package that gives me more than enough disk space and bandwidth and all of their packages support PHP and MySQL technologies.  I’ve found they’ve got excellent customer support in place as well as an elaborate knowledge base to work with. 

The other thing I really liked is that they have a guaranteed 99.5% uptime.  The best bit though, is that if they don’t meet this guarantee and there’d been no posted advisory of scheduled downtime, they’ll automatically credit my account for 24 hours of free hosting for every half hour of downtime over.  This means I don’t have to bother making any formal submission or submitting any proof of downtime, it’s just done.

FutureQuest also met my final criteria, in that I’m able to easily transition to a bigger hosting package once the site begins to outgrow the basic package.  No doubt there’s other great hosts out there, but I believe FutureQuest would certainly be one of the better hosts available, and one that I can verify so through my own experiences.

Purchasing a domain name is the first step towards getting a blog up and running on the Internet.  A domain name is simply the address a user types into their Internet browser’s address bar when they wish to visit your page on the Internet.  A domain name is one example of a “URL”, which may be more familiar terminology.  Examples of familiar domain names include http://www.blogbuildingexperiment.com and http://www.google.com.  Domain names can also end in “.net”, “.org” and “.us” to name just a few, although “.com” is considered the most popular.

Once you’ve decided on a domain name, the easiest way to register it is usually online through a “domain name registrar”.  A domain name registrar is simply a company who has the proper authorisation to register Internet domain names on the behalf of customers.  The cost associated with registering a domain name can range from around $7.00USD per year up to around $30.00USD per year, depending on who you go through.  This site’s domain name; http://www.blogbuildingexperiment.com was registered through MyDOMAIN for $8.95 USD.  Other popular domain registrars include Go Daddy and Moniker.  You can check the availability of any domain name online for free through a domain name registrar to see whether or not a specific name has already been taken. 

It’s generally not advisable to purchase a domain name through the very cheapest domain name registrar you can find.  The simple reason for this is that you’re more likely to run into problems with getting a poor set of domain configuration tools and subpar support by going with a rock-bottom priced registrar.  Also, if you decide to change your mind later on and transfer your domain name to another registrar, you’ll likely run into more issues with the transfer if the domain was initially registered on the cheap.   I’ve had no problems thus far using MyDOMAIN as my registrar, although I’ve also heard good things about Go Daddy and Moniker among others.  While it’s important not to penny pinch too much when purchasing a domain name, I’m yet to see much benefit in spending $20.00USD or more on registering a domain name.

It’s often considered good practice to choose a domain name that matches the name of your website.  This way users will have an easier time identifying your domain name as being associated with the name of your site and will make your site more recognisable to users in search engine results.  Some good guidelines for choosing the right domain name can be found here.  This blog’s domain name breaks some of these guidelines like the small length rule, in favour of having a more descriptive name.

Once you’ve purchased a domain name, you’ll probably find there’s a few options to configure.  For the time being, most of these can be left at their defaults until you’ve performed the next step in getting your blog online - Purchasing Web Hosting.

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.

Hello and welcome to the new site blogbuildingexperiment.com.  Blog Building Experiment is a site targeted at researching and refining exactly what it takes to build a successful blog property on the web.  The site will focus primarily on blogs, however, it is expected that many of the topic principles discussed within will render themselves applicable across other facets of web publishing.

Looking into the foreseeable future, it is anticipated that this site will become host to a valuable repository of articles based around not only how to get a blog off the ground, but also ensuring it maintains steady growth.  These articles will dismantle and discussing a broad array of topics, both technical and non-technical in nature.  Whether it be setting up a domain or simply not upsetting your users, if it’s relevant, it’ll make its way here, so stay tuned.  The site will also investigate what it takes to effectively monetize a blog so that you can get something back for all that you put in.

Before going any further, let’s define what constitutes a “successful blog” in the context of the Blog Building Experiment website.  In the context of this site, “successful” refers to a blog that possesses the following qualities:

1. Provides content that site visitors consider valuable
2. Draws a consistently high number of visitors
3. Rewards the owner for their work, financially or otherwise

Once a blog meets all three of the conditions outlined above, then by the Blog Building Experiment definition, it has become successful.  The definition of a successful blog will vary between individuals, but this is the Blog Building Experiment definition and is the archetype around which this site’s content is to be based.

You might be asking where the term “experiment” fits into the whole equation.  The answer would be “left, right, front and centre”.  At the time of this statement’s writing, few of the topics and titles of the articles scheduled to be published are known.  Why?  Because the research is yet to be done.  This site is not being launched, built or backed by a professional blogger or web publisher who’s “done it all before”.  This site is an experiment aimed at determining what’s involved in building a successful blog by actually starting one and reporting back on progress as the blog evolves.

Many people, at some point in their lifetime, have or will learn how to ride a bike.  It’s a skill that once learned becomes innate and can be performed on a subconscious level.  But how many people that know how to ride a bike, could accurately describe what’s involved in learning to ride a bike?  It is a strange phenomenon that applies to many scenarios in life, where an individual is quite capable of doing something; they just don’t know how they do it.  Using this idea, Blog Building Experiment aims to capture the crucial information before it manifests into a fully acquired skill that is difficult to describe.  Building this blog under an experimental model allows the process to be chronicled in a series of articles as new information about the process is obtained.  Essentially, it is hoped that the experimental nature of this blog will allow any knowledge acquired to be conveyed more effectively to the target audience.

If it so happens that this blog fails in its endeavours to become successful, nothing has been lost.  There will be nothing lost in establishing that an idea doesn’t work.  As Thomas Edison once described, he didn’t fail 1000 times at inventing the light bulb, he discovered 1000 ways that did not work, and there was no need to try them again.  After all, this blog is an experiment and experiments are all about trying something new and seeing what will happen.  The hypothesis is that providing quality articles describing the process of starting, building, growing and maintaining a successful blog, will in turn provide an opportunity for a successful blog in itself to manifest.  The Results… We shall wait and see.