Our First Taste of Blogging

16 Jan, 2008 Initial Posts, Our Progress

I’ll be honest, our first attempt at creating and implementing a blog was pretty pathetic. Now, I know what you’re thinking, “What is so difficult about making a blog? People do it all the time…” I’ll be the first to tell you, Mike and I ran into more than our share of problems (many self-inflicted but, some were out of our hands). In this post are tips that may help you plan and execute your blog efficiently by avoiding some of the problems we encountered.

Find a hosting plan that works for you

First, you must choose a hosting service. We decided to try our luck with GoDaddy.com when purchasing our first domain solely because they were a recognizable name in domain hosting. A quick tip: when you’re choosing options that will be included on your hosting plan, make sure you know what want on your site beforehand. Starting the whole process over again from scratch because you forgot to include an option you wanted is no fun, I promise. Next, finding an available domain name can be a time-consuming task in and of itself. GoDaddy makes this process a lot easier by checking all available domains (including .com, .org, .net, etc.) along with your desired domain name. Mike and I got relatively lucky in that a few of our first-choice names had desirable domains (like .com or .net). Here’s the kicker, with GoDaddy we couldn’t automatically install WordPress onto our site because we use a Windows OS. We read later that the Linux OS is required to automatically install WordPress on a GoDaddy domain. This is just another reason why being smart and knowing what your domain is actually capable of is crucial to your success (and your sanity). It’s also another example of why we’re not smart.

The second time around, we decided to find out what hosting services are compatible with or, better yet, recommended by WordPress. Here’s another useful strategy when putting together your site: Start by picking a hosting service that is recommended by your blog publishing software. WordPress recommends a few like Bluehost.com, AN Hosting, and Host-I-Can, which is what we use. Host-I-Can boasts a bunch of features, like free domain names and a ton of Bandwidth. With our new hosting service chosen we began the entire process again from the beginning. Our past experience, while teaching us a great deal about what not to do when starting a blog, ended up coming back to haunt us. The domain we had previously purchased was now being held by GoDaddy.com. Apparently any domain purchased through GoDaddy is subject to freezing for the amount of time the domain was purchased for (in our case, 1 year), during which no transaction of any kind is permitted (as stated in the GoDaddy Domain Ownership Protection Service Agreement). Obviously we had to choose a new domain name, which I happen to like better anyhow.

Finally, the fun part

Designing and customizing your Blog can be very rewarding, both for your creative desire and for business in general. Once you land on your blog’s homepage, it can seem like a pretty daunting task lies ahead. I know that we were pretty overwhelmed, anyway. We just kind of looked at it like, “Uhh, what do we do now?” Luckily, WordPress makes it VERY easy for someone who has no idea how to design a website to customize it to their personal preferences. As long as you have an idea of what you want your blog to look like and what you want it to be able to do, you’ve done most of the work already. As far as the look, WordPress has thousands of templates that they call Themes that you can upload onto your site. They also give you detailed directions on how to upload the Themes onto your blog. As far as what you want it to do, there are thousands of Plugins that other users have made that you can use to make your blog more functional. There is a Plugin for just about anything that you can possibly think of, then about a thousand more that you couldn’t think of. So, if you ever say, “Man, I really wish I could just (Fill in the blank) with this blog,” check the Plugins.