December 11, 2007

The two ways to have a blog.

There are two basic ways to have a blog. One way is to have a blog on your own website with your own web host, and the other way is to have a blog that's not on your website, but is already hosted, set up, and ready.

You can also have a blog as your entire website. You can either set it up on your own hosting service, or use a blogging service that's already hosted, set up and ready.

There are advantages and disadvantages to each of these options.

The downside of using a blog service that’s already hosted and set up.

There are a few downsides to starting with a blog that’s already set up:

The major downside is your limitations on separate HTML pages that exist on your site, such as thank you pages, download pages, etc. You wouldn’t want those pages to show up in the navigation of your blog, because those are pages exclusive to only a few users. Blog Harbor allows this, but the pages all have the same look as your home page. Typepad doesn’t have this functionality at all, last time I checked. The only way around this that I am aware of in Typepad is to password-protect a particular page.

Another downside is that without a web designer’s assistance, your design choices will be limited to the templates the blogging service offers. There is a blank template available for webmasters to put their designs on, but if you’re trying to avoid using a webmaster, you’ll have to use one of the 30-50 templates a given service offers.

The blog doesn't really belong to you. You can give it your domain name, but ultimately, that blog belongs to Typepad or Blog Harbor. This isn’t a big problem as long as you back up your blog.

And of course, if you have your regular site already, you wouldn’t want to put your blog on one of these services, because it would defeat much of the purpose of having a blog, which is not only to continue the conversation with your clients, but to also get search engine advantages.

If your website is hosted under one domain name and you do a blog on a separate service such as this, then your domain names won’t match. If the domain names don’t match, you don’t get search engine credit on your original website for all the writing you now do on your blog. And forget trying to use the same content on both sites, because one of the sites will eventually get penalized by Google for running duplicate content, even though it’s your content.

If you’re using your own server:

If you’re using your own server, it takes about 5-10 minutes to set up your blog initially, but you’ll probably need a webmaster or your hosting service to help you. To put a blog on your server, you’ll need Wordpress or Moveable Type software.

Wordpress is probably the best long-term choice for your blogging software.

Why? Because Wordpress is open source, it’s quickly surpassing other blog platforms in development, and there are many

different functionality options that you can add to your blog. www.wordpress.org .

Wordpress itself is free, and has thousands of design templates available, called “themes”. Some themes are free, and some are not. I recommend the Semiologic Pro Wordpress theme, which is optimized for online businesses and search engines. Semiologic costs about $300. www.semiologic.com . They will install the Semiologic Pro theme on one site for free, as a bonus for purchasing. This entire site (Coach Marketing Success) is a Semiologic Pro site, by the way.

A great resource for learning how to use both Wordpress and Semiologic is Sherman Hu’s site: wordpresstutorials.com.

The downside of Wordpress

You won’t find many support options for Wordpress, because it’s open source software. “Open source” means that anyone can write upgrades and new functions for it. There’s no central control base for Wordpress—therefore, no support center either.

After you install Wordpress and upload whatever theme you choose, you have to look for and add whatever plugins you want to add to your theme. This is where it gets hairy. A plug-in is something that gives your blog a new ability, like a calendar, newsletter sign up, or comment spam deletions. There are hundreds of plug-ins available, and it can be daunting to decide which plugins you want. This is where you’ll definitely need someone to help you to set up your theme the way you want, or you can wind up in the loony bin.

Additionally, some of the “plug-ins” may work better with some themes than others, depending on who designed that particular theme.

Enter the Semiologic Pro theme

One of the advantages to the Semiologic Pro theme is that the designer included the needed plug-ins for web marketers in the theme. You don’t need to look for plug-ins, because they’re already installed. For instance, you can make static HTML pages, such as a static HTML home page and any other pages you want with this theme, in addition to having a blog.

The downside of Semiologic Pro

For the Semiologic Pro theme, there is no free technical support available.

Semiologic has fee-based support available- people who can assist with the Semiologic theme. There's a free support forum bulletin board also.

I’ve enlisted the help of Beth Lyons, the Techie Coach, to help me with aspects of how to use the Semiologic theme, and she’s been a great assist. So has Kevin Brown of iinstallscripts.com .

The second downside of using semiologic or any wordpress theme is that you are more limited in your design options. If this doesn't bother you, there's no problem, and of course, you can use one of the web designers that Semiologic recommends to make changes to the templates and themes, colors, etc. But it's not like you're starting from scratch with a completely blank webpage. You will definitely have some design restrictions.

Other blogging options

Moveable Type is Typepad’s software to use on your own server. It’s a good platform, but Wordpress is surpassing it quickly in available options. http://www.movabletype.com

Avoid Blogger and Blogspot. It’s free, but it’s very limited and has lost a lot of credibility. You can host a Blogger blog on your server, but since Google owns Blogger, your blog doesn’t really belong to you. In my opinion, ultimately it’s much cleaner to use your own software on your own system.

Bottom line- if you're doing your blog on your own site or AS your whole site on your own server, use wordpress or moveable type. If you're using wordpress, consider the semiologic pro theme. If you want your whole site to be a blog AND you want it already set up and hosted for you, use typepad or blog harbor. If you need hidden webpages away from the blog navigation, use blog harbor.

Sandra Sinclair

www.coachmarketingsuccess.com

Filed under Blog by Sandra Sinclair