Don’t Program your Own Blog Software, Use Wordpress
I’m going to save you a lot of pain and money. When businesses are new to blogging they often want to set up their own blogging software or platform. Don’t do it. Use Wordpress. It’s customizeable, has many plugins, and it’s free (be sure to host it on your own server, with your own domain name, the free software download is available at www.wordpress.org).
When you join Wordpress you take advantage of all of the innovation. You belong to a community of people who use Wordpress. It will have the features your readers expect and know how to use.
I’m getting into creating small business web sites built on Wordpress. It has a CMS to manage the site and it also has a blog. This is perfect for driving traffic to your new site. Blogs are made to be rapidly updated and they ping search engines every time you write. It’s also inexpensive (around $300-$500) and quick.
When I write a blog post it is in the search engines within an hour - usually within ten minutes (I know because I set up Google alerts). Through regular updates I’ve gotten search engines to index my blog very quickly. You can too.
You Might Also Like:
6 Responses to “Don’t Program your Own Blog Software, Use Wordpress”
Leave a Reply
January 18th, 2008 at 1:27 am
Hi Janet. Long time to hear. From me anyway
Just thought I would add my 2 cents on this topic. Wordpress is fine if you don’t mind being locked into..well Wordpress. It does have some cool stuff, but it also has some severe limitations which we discovered early on, hence the choice to code and design our own site and CMS from scratch. But then we are web developers so the decision to do this was trivial for us.
As for Wordpress pricing, it’s free. It’s an open source product and anyone selling it to you is violating the GPL (http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/gpl.html). That’s illegal and there are huge penalties for doing doing so.
You can download Wordpress here: http://wordpress.org/download/
…and then get your self a domain and hosting package (I have seen some for less than $50). Install Wordpress (it has an easy to follow setup process) and you are gold. The entire process takes minutes.
So yes be wary of anyone trying to sell you Wordpress. The only time you should be charged when Wordpress is involved is if you are paying a web developer to set it up for you, which is just paying for his time.
But as mentioned I can do the entire process - including domain registration, hosting setup and Wordpress installation in about 15 - 20 minutes.
I advise anyone who has paid hundreds of dollars for a Wordpress based site to find out exactly where your money went.
Regards,
Mike.
January 18th, 2008 at 7:54 am
Hi Mike,
Good to hear from you.
Yes, it’s pretty easy to set up a Wordpress site yourself. Still, there are people who would rather pay someone to do it - most of the time they are small business owners. When you start to customize and add the plugins it’s more challenging. In fact, the going rate is around $1000.
I always give people the option to set up their own blog. I’m a fan of Bluehost for blog hosting because they have an easy install. I know that’s not unique but what I always use their 24/7 phone support (esp. at 1am).
Who do you recommend for hosting and for blog design?
Best
Janet
January 18th, 2008 at 2:19 pm
Hi Janet & Mike -
We do custom WordPress installations at WebFadds.com, and I write a lot about the program for WebHelperMagazine.com (http://webhelpermagazine.com/category/wordpress-cms/).
There is actually an “enterprise edition” of WordPress offered by a company called Know Now. I have not dealt with them, but their solution is for larger companies, and I imagine they charge accordingly.
Of course, we have seen companies of some size (30 - 100 employees and larger) do fine with the free version of WordPress, so I agree with you that it is a great way to go.
Thanks for your post -
Scott
Scott A. Frangos
January 18th, 2008 at 4:19 pm
Hi Janet,
Hosting is hard to recommend because no matter how good someone will always take issue at some stage LOL. But if I my arm was forced I would suggest Jumba (jumba.com.au) only because they have both US and Australian based plans and are extremely competitively priced. I have been hosting Rusty Lime on it for a few years and we also host several of our clients with them.
As for blog design, and design company with a god portfolio and understands your needs as opposed to just designing to satisfy their own will do.
I can understand being charged for customisation for a wordpress site but plugins take 5 seconds to install. As mentioned I advise people to get a breakdown of exactly what they are getting for thier money and then shop it around.
January 24th, 2008 at 2:48 pm
i dont think so,
with your own blog system installed on your own hosting account you are able to do much more.
plus
there are other cool blog provider (eg. http://blogono.com) which offer the same as wordpress but with more plugins, themes and personality.
January 30th, 2008 at 10:48 pm
Hi Janet!
Long time no talk. So I’m working on a major overhaul of my portfolio website at http://www.bradmccall.com and I was considering managing my portfolio by using a Wordpress blog. I thought I could set up categories like “Logo” or “Brand” and let Wordpress do the work for me. I could also enter dates of completion by category so someone could see the most recent stuff, and then I could enter it as I complete it all through the easy-to-use Wordpress interface. (Thanks for turning me on to it by the way). But what I have a question on - which I wondered if you could answer - is can I have two Wordpress blogs on the same URL? I already have a Wordpress blog set up on bradmccall.com/blog, but this one would be totally different like bradmccall.com/mywork. Let me know if you have any recommendations for making this happen. I don’t want to screw up the blog I’ve been adding to.
Hope all is well for you! Thanks!
Brad