They all have the same base features- you can insert links, images, format your text and do everything else you would expect. And they will do it in a WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) format, or xhtml format you you can generate the html yourself. Personally I’m learning enough and and using WYSIWYG so your are creating your post in the same sort of way as you would in word or something else.

A blog writer is a piece of software that allows you to compose your post locally on a computer that does not have to be connected to the internet. You can then post it to your blog when you are ready. There are three blog writers that I have spent a bit of time with, Windows Live Writer, Zoundry Raven and Scribefire. I’ll go through them another time, but as you look for writers, check the most recent update dates on them, some haven’t been touched for a while.

As well as a heading and the content of your post to can add a few more pieces of information to manage and highlight what you are talking about.

You can control the data your post is posted. This means you can upload a post, but not have it appear until a date and time that you nominate. This will help you have a post come live to coincide with an event, while you are off doing something else. This also lets you backdate a post if you need to to make the chronology more logical. I did this for a friend recently when we were converting some old emails about her travels to posts on a new blog I set up for her.

You can categorise your posts too. If there are a few different themes you talk about, you can create categories and sub categories for these. This will allow you or a reader to search and go through just posts on a specific category or subcategory and help add a sense of structure to your blog.

Adding tags to your post lets you make a list of the points you touch on in your post. These do not form a structure in the same way that categories do, but  can be more specific to a certain thing you are talking about or a specific point you make in that post. These tend to be more free form too, applying to what you do at a given time, where your categories are permanent themes running through your blog.

Whatever method you use to post, the categories, tags and dates are easy to find and update. They form the core of your post with the title and content.

There are a few things that will get you set up and making your site a bit more personalised:

• Change the URL to your top level domain
• Check the user posts as nickname
• Set your Permalink Structure
• General Settings
• Choose Your Theme

Change the URL to your top level domain

The first thing to do is to change the URL to your top domain. When we installed WordPress we installed it into its own folder. That is a good idea, but we need to move the home of your blog back to the main domain you set up for this. It is pretty easily done.

1. Log in to your WordPress admin and click on settings (on the left hand menu). This will bring up your General Settings.
2. Change your blog address to your top level domain (remove the /wordpress). DOo not change your WordPress address (that is pointing to your WordPress files)
3. Click update options
4. Log into your control panel on your web host
5. Go to the file manager
6. Find the index.php and .htaccesss files in your WordPress folder and copy them into your root directory (so they are at the same level as your WordPress folder, as well as in it- this is in public_html in my setup)
7. Open the index.php file that is in the root directory in a text editor (in my webhost I can select the file and click on code editor) and change the line that says “require(‘./wp-blog-header.php’)” to “require(‘./wordpress/wp-blog-header.php’)” (i.e. tell it where your WordPress files are). Save your changes
8. Go to the web address and check that your blog is appearing there.

Check the user posts as nickname

When we installed WordPress we created a nickname for Admin to display as. I did this after I installed so it is a good idea to make sure this is set up OK.

1. Log in to your WordPress admin panel
2. Click on Users, then the user
3. Check that the Display name publicly as is set to what you want
4. If it isn’t, select the nickname from the dropdown and click update profile

Set your Permalink Structure

Permalinks set the web address for your post. Your most recent posts are shown on your main page, but the permalink will always link to that post. You can structure it using dates, a counter, or plenty of other formats.

From your WordPress Control Panel go to Settings then permalinks. There are some optional settings or you can set your own tag structure using the WordPress Permalink Tags

General Settings

Have a look at the other General settings while you are setting things up. You can set your Time zone, Date Format, Time Format etc. They are all small things, but if you don’t do it now you probably never will, and things like setting your time zone might save you some confusion as you are getting used to how everything works.

Choose Your Theme

This is the big step to making the blog your own (if maybe not completely unique). Until now your blog has had the default blue WordPress ‘Kubrick’ theme. There are plenty of themes out there. It is just a matter of finding what you want, downloading it, uploading it and selecting it.

1. There are themes all over the place. Have a google obviously, and look at WordPress’s themes
2. When you have found a theme download the files to your computer. They will usually be contained in a zip file. Save them to a location you can access them, because you are about to post them to your webhost.
3. Upload the files using an ftp client. I use the FireFTP Firefox plugin and Filezilla is a popular free one. You will upload the unzipped theme folder to your WordPress/wp-content/themes folder.
4. Select your theme in WordPress. Log into your WordPress dashboard and select Appearance, then themes. The themes you have available will be listed. Click on one and it will be previewed, showing your content. If you like it, click on Activate in the top right corner.

Have a look around

It is a good idea to do a bit of exploration. Have a look at the different options in the dashboard, there are explanations on the WordPress site. Also look around the documentation at WordPress. Everything you’ll want to do is there.

Go to your web page (there will be a page put there by your web host) and login using your webhost username and password. My webhost didn’t send me my email and password when I signed up so I had to use the email username and password to get them.

When you log in you will be presented with your control panel. One of the icons will be the WordPress logo- it is under Popular Choices in mine. Click on this and the first WordPress installation page will be displayed.

Click on New Installation, This will bring up the setup page

The install on domain will have only one option if you have only one domain under that login.

I installed WordPress in a /wordpress (or /wp or whatever suits you) location- just enter the folder name, not the slash or the domain or anything else. This means that all your WordPress files are contained in a folder which should make finding your files a bit easier later on- you wouldn’t expect to be spending a lot of time managing this.  This will make your address yourdomain.com/wordpress, but we will fix that in a minute.

Set a username and password for the user that will log in to the WordPress admin area (this is different to the webhosting control panes). Make sure there are no typos- you only enter your password once.

Your admin nickname is what you will will be displayed as. I have this set to Ian so the posts are not posted by admin (I changed to this afterward, so check this is the case when you are setting up WordPress).

The admin email address is what your notifications are sent to. I use a hotmail address so I am not dependant on the webhost if trouble arises (and I don’t have an email domain set up yet).

The sitename is what you are calling your blog, and the description will appear under the name on a lot of the themes. I haven’t used one because I couldn’t think of anything I liked. I’ll add one later. Maybe.

Click on Install WordPress when you have checked all your details.

The next step is the details of the database that WordPress will be created with. I just noted the details but haven’t changed or used them. Make sure you know them should you need them though.

Click on Finish Installation. A confirmation page will appear with the option to email the details of the installation. Enter your email address and click send email.

You now have WordPress installed.

• One click install of WordPress (plenty do, so there was no point making it harder for myself)
• Able to handle multiple domains
• Unlimited space and bandwidth
• Able to handle multiple email domains, addresses and accounts
• Provided domain registration (at a price I could locate before I sign up)
• Price

I was also looking at trying to make the both the web and email hosting services upgradable- it wasn’t a big deal because it all seems pretty transportable, but if one looks like it has better, or better priced higher level features I’d take that into account. My host doesn’t seem to offer Exchange email hosting, which I could end up deciding I want, but I don’t at the moment so it wasn’t a big deal.

I’m not convinced that unlimited space and bandwidth really is that- there are always exceptions (mine says that I’ll be cut off if I use moire than 10% of the server’s CPU or memory. I have no idea what that means in a practical sense, but I can always revisit it if this site somehow gets busy. In the meantime they all seem to day they will handle a sudden spike of traffic if you site gets referenced somewhere else, and I can only believe them.

Price can make quite a difference. I have ended up paying $2.95 per month, plus any additional domain will cost me $15 (when I work out what I want my personal mail to be, or maybe if I want a personal one for photos etc (although Facebook is perfectly good for that). I paid $70.80 for 2 years and now don’t really have to think about it. a a couple of dollars per month adds up that way.

Before you sign up make sure you leave the site- a lot of them with throw discounts at you as you leave the site. Mine was quoted at $4.95 (a special, normally 6.95 per month, they claim). When I left the site a window popped up offering me a discount to $3.95. I got halfway through the sign-up and left again for some reason, and they offered me $2.95.

When you do sign up, use a hotmail or other email address separate from the domain the is hosted by the provider you are signing up for. If you forget a password, or there are service issues, you will ne a contact address you can get to without being dependant on the provider.

They all seem to be pretty much the same, especially for my needs. There are plenty of comparison sites out there, so use a couple of them to see what is available. But make sure you don’t get too hung up on features you won’t actually use. I really don’t think this is the the biggest decision to make when you are getting set up.

Apparently the last 2 are considered Content Management Systems, but the make it into a lot of the conversations. This is what I looked at.The overwhelming favourites appeared to be WordPress and Typepad, although you don’t need to look hard to find plenty of references for the others.

WordPress seemed to be the best supported in terms of the Wiki it provided, its availability on webhosts without the need to upload and install it yourself and the number of sites out there with hints, tips and templates etc.

Movable Type seems pretty well supported too, but there is a fair bit of confusion around the licensing, what is free and what is not. I think that it is now free for all uses and you pay for the commercial support, but I’m not sure and there are responses to old support suggesting that this or that is in the paid version.

What is did look into was the amount of support there is for switching an existing blog from one platform to another. There is plenty. So for me it was a decision between WordPress and Movable Type. I looked at the features for both and they both seemed to have everything I could imagine using. Every webhost provider I loked at had one click installation of wordpress (more on that later), and the WordPress support is comprehensive- there is everything I could imagine wanting at wordpress.org. So I went with it.

The first decision was whether to use a blogging platform or to get it hosted. I have gone for a hosted option. This is because

1. I have control over the domain

2. I want to run other domains (for email especially)

3. It is cheap anyway

4. I’ll probably want to do more with it over time

5. It’s not that hard

Control over the domain

Having control over the domain means that I can continue to use TryHud.com anywhere I want, and I’m not dependant on a platform to support it, and I can choose to use the best of whatever applications and tools that I want. I didn’t do a lot of analysis over what options existed around Blogger, WordPress.com Windows Live Spaces or whatever else because I pretty quickly decided that I didn’t want to find out limitations and be stuck.

If I find a limitation with everything under my control I can move or adjust my setup as I require.

Ability to run other domains

My personal email address is a hotmail address. There isn’t much wrong with that (It doesn’t look very professional, but that is not the end of the world, and Windows Live Mail is a pretty good application so I have as control as I want for now), but it means that I am dependant on Microsoft’s ongoing support and that is not necessarily a great position to be in. I am now able to add another domain name, hook up an email account and access it from whatever application I choose. I can also set up different addresses for different purposes to manage spam etc, I’ll expand on that another day when I get around to it. I have to think of another domain name first.

It’s Cheap Anyway

One of the big advantages of the blogging providers is that they are free. There are plenty of hosting providers out there for sub $10 per month (plenty sub $5 per month too, I’ll get to that in a post or two later ion this series). I can afford this reasonably comfortably so being free is not a huge benefit compared to a low price. If things were more expensive it may have been different.

I’ll probably want to do more with it over time

At the moment I’m just writing a bit, I’ll start playing with templates and layouts soon and it is an interest. I don’t expect it to turn into any sort of income, but if things happen I want to be able to take advantage of any opportunity that may come up. If there are going to be ads and affiliate links on the site, I’d rather the money to come my way than somewhere else. As I say, I don’t think that it will.

It’s not that hard

This stuff is designed to be pretty easy to do, so getting started is easy and you can add layers as you go along. You don’t need a complete solution as you find your feet, the next level up is still pretty simple.

So having a self-hosted solution will give me the flexibility to do what I want doesn’t cost me much, and I’m in control. Done.