Hey there fellow blog fan. I see you've decided to join the dark side of perky. Yes, blogging is inexplicable perky, even when it's depressing or icky or emo. People like to make fun of blogs and bloggers, I suppose because blog is a funny word. It sounds to much like "blah". And it's only natural to think that a blogger does nothing all day but "blah, blah, blah."
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"With Word Press, you host the database application on your server. You monitor it, control design and traffic completely and otherwise own what you blog. " |
Well the people who think that are toads and fools. Users, surfers, almost anyone with an Internet connection goes to blogs. That's the beauty of them. There's a blog for just about any interest a person could have, including dirty, bad sex. That's where wonderful, sensational Word Press comes in. Word Press is Open Source blog software. It does everything a blogger needs and you can configure it to do more. Sadly, most online blog applications will let you build a free blog but you have to sacrifice control over hosting, design, traffic and most of them don't want porn sites to begin with. With Word Press, you host the database application on your server. You monitor it, control design and traffic completely and otherwise own what you blog. There's other free and/or Open Source blog clients but Word Press is the easiest, most popular, most reliable of them all.
So, let's assume you are completely new to Word Press. You have some questions. I will attempt to answer the ones that are most common:
Q: "Why blog software? Can't I just write something in HTML that looks like a blog?"
A: Blog software is database-driven. This results in more than just a dynamic page. Blogs auto-archive entries, categorize keywords and tags, generates xml, pings rss syndicates, monitors for comments and spam and a host of other labors that simply can't be re-created in basic HTML. You have to add a database on your server and enable Word Press from there. I suppose it's possible to construct and reconstruct all the webpages and doodads necessary to mimic a blog, but why on Earth should you? One you've installed Word Press on your server and set it up, you'll be performing a good twenty tasks with the click of the PUBLISH button.
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Q: "Is Word Press Hard?"
A: Not so much hard as tedious. You're going to be messing with a lot of CSS pages and PHP code. Setting it up as a database on your server is fairly simple as long as you make sure your host allows for MYSQL. All you have to do is unzip the downloaded Word Press file to a folder. Create a database on your server for Word Press and then upload the WP folder to your host account via ftp. If you did it right, you go online to your Word Press login and the software walks you through the rest of the install. After that, it's a matter of working from your online Dashboard. From there you'll be able to tweak your layout, set up your preferences and add plugins. There will be a few things you'll do from your home machine like graphics but for the most part, once you've got WordPress uploaded and operating on your host, you're going to be adding to your blog from your own, personal cloud.
Q: "Will I need extra software aside from Word Press?"
A: Think of Word Press like you think of a computer Operating System. Word Press is the engine. You can do quite a bit with what Word Press provides but there's always room for improvement. When you think of Word Press, don't think software - think Plugins and Widgets. Plugins and Widgets do those extra tricks like email forms, mini-rotating-galleries and almost anything you can think of. If you need it, odds are good there's a Plugin or Widget for it. If not, go exploring for some Open Source scripts and build your own. Word Press come with some seriously configurable stuff bundled in but you'll have no trouble adding to your blogging arsenal.
Q: "And then what?"
A: Good Question. Then you figure out what sort of blog you're going to run. Remember, you're hosting this thing on your own space with your own free copy of Word Press. If you want to build the hardcorest of hardcore blogs, nothing's stopping you but the limits of the law. It's a good time to tell you that blogging is all about commitment and text. Add pics all you want but write something and do it often. The more you update your entries, the better your chances that you'll acquire a regular audience.
Naturally those aren't all the questions you have. I'll get back to Word Press in future articles. For now, the very best place you can go is the Word Press website where you'll find the software, plugins, free themes and loads of tutorials.