A Beginners Guide to Blogging - Blogging Platform

October 8, 2008 – 10:15 am


I wanted to get back to writing the beginners guide to blogging. It has been a little while since I wrote on this guide and it can be difficult if not impossible to write a definitive guide for beginners to start blogging. While reading and choosing a topic are part of starting your blog, choosing a blogging platform moves the process of starting a blog into a more technical area. If you do not have a technical background then this step can be one of the more challenging.

Now that you have been reading and you have chosen your blogging topic you can look at what blogging platform you will use to power your blog. There are a number of blogging platforms available and each has its advantages and disadvantages. The first decision you need to make is whether you want to have a hosted blog or a self hosted blog. What is the difference? A hosted blog is one where the content of your blog is hosted on the blogging services servers. Examples of a hosted blogging service include Blogger.com, WordPress.com and TypePad. There are many other hosted blogging services and Wikipedia has a good list of available hosted blogging services.

While some people will tell you that you should never use a hosted blogging solution for your blog there are some very good reasons to use a hosted blogging service. If you do not have a very technical background a hosted blogging service can get you up and blogging faster with less headaches. You don’t have to worry about software upgrades, security is less of a concern just make sure you have a good username and password to keep your account secure. Each service has its differences and I would encourage a beginning blogger to test and experiment with each service to decide if they want to use that service. Personally, I find the Blogger.com service very easy for beginning bloggers to use. The number of settings do not seem to be as over whelming to the beginner and they have made a number of enhancements over the last few years including allowing you to have your own domain name and scheduled posts that make the service more attractive.

The biggest disadvantage to using a hosted blogging service is you do not own your content. There are many stories of blogs being closed down for any number of reasons and your content can simply vanish overnight. It is for this reason alone I like to host my own blogs on my own web hosting. Wikipedia again has a nice list of many of the open source self hosted blogging platforms that are available. If you dislike free and open source software you can also look at the proprietary weblog software that you can install and use.

If you have never blogged before and you are just starting installing blogging software on your own web hosting space I would recommend looking at WordPress as your blogging platform (no surprise there eh). There are many good reasons to use WordPress as your self hosted blogging platform. For beginners there will be a learning curve to using any blogging platform, but the self hosted WordPress is perhaps the easiest to learn from the many options that are available. Many web hosts also offer an easy to use install service called Fantastico or another similar system that will install WordPress for you quickly and easily. Dreamhost, the web host Epiblogger is now hosted with, offers a one-click installer. This takes some of the harder work out of installing WordPress. Once you have WordPress installed you can also use the easy installers to upgrade the software when new upgrades are released. While some blogging consultants recommend you don’t use the easy installers for your initial install or upgrading and there are reasons to not use it, for beginners they are useful tools. You should at some point learn how to upgrade your WordPress installation without the easy installers.

The best reason to use WordPress as your self hosted blogging platform is because of the great community of WordPress users. They are a great resource for helping bloggers of all levels from beginners to expert. Many solutions can be found for any problems you might encounter in the WordPress support forums. If there is a problem you can’t find a solution for in the WordPress support forum the widespread use of WordPress makes it easy to find a WordPress guru to pay to help solve your problem.

Your choice of blogging platform can make a large difference in your blogging. You want to make the most of your time and when you are just starting out the learning curve can be kind of steep no matter what blogging platform you chose. In my experience of working on the web and working with many different blogging platforms over the years I do find Blogger.com and WordPress, either hosted or self hosted, to be the platforms that are the easiest to use. It is also possible to move your blog at a later time to another platform if you feel you want to change. Some platforms don’t give you any options to move afterward and you will then either have to abandon your blog and start over, or find another way of moving your data, such as copying and pasting.

Your turn, every blogger has an opinion about what platform people should use. What blogging platform would you recommend to a beginner blogger?

Photo by whiteafrican

By Lee Robertson Posted in Blogging Comments (1)

The Reality of Comments

September 30, 2008 – 12:57 pm

This is the true story… of millions of strangers… living online… communicating together… find out what happens… when people stop being polite… and start getting real.

Looking at the last 10 months of Epiblogger, it occurs to me that I have been entirely too clever. There really isn’t a lot of diversity in what I have said. I have found new ways of saying the same thing over and over again—which continues to tell me that I am bound for a life in radio, but that’s beside the point. I have been beating the idea of Organic Blogging to a green-mash. But everyone needs a bit more fibre. Keeps us regular. So, I am going to do my darnedest to be a bit more practical and try to keep my head out of the clouds.

The reason for this shift in thought? Well because I am changing and two weeks go I was laid off which forced me to completely deconstruct my thinking. Last week, I read one of my favourite bloggers was removing comments and I am disappointed.

After I was laid off and feeling like the world had just failed me (or vice versa), I watched the Band of Brothers mini-series to complete my feeling of utter disappointment and to validate the thought that the world is a bad place. Alright, so I had an ice cream and Julia Roberts day. Except it was nachos and explosions and the utter depravity of humanity captured for my viewing pleasure. One of the great things I understood from watching the series is the nature of leadership. The best leaders, the best teachers, the best bloggers are those that are in shoulder-to-shoulder in the muck.

There’s a problem with that analogy. It’s not completely true. Obviously, if we follow through with the military analogy, the Generals aren’t getting their feet-wet. However, if they are the best leaders, then they will realize where they came from. If I started a blog where I lectured you on topics A, B and C and had no comments from the start, that would be fine. However, if I started a blog, building a community and reputation through comments and communication, then I pulled a Caesar on you—it feels disappointing.

I didn’t start this blog at the top. I started shoulder-to-shoulder with people in similar stations. And if Lee and I ever get to the top, I hope we never consider removing the community’s—who’s been so gracious as to spend their time with us—voice.

I get that some people are assholes. Some have bad advice. Some just like to give you a bunch of useless knowledge interwoven with a new practical spirit *cough*. Some people want attention. And some genuinely want to discuss and converse about the nature of the topic at hand. When it comes to community and comments, you can’t shut out the same people who support you and you have to deal with all types of people.

In retrospect, now that I have my friends and family helping me find employment—even though I lost my faith in humanity momentarily—I have seen the bad side, but I have seen the best side from people that I don’t even know. People who want to help in anyway they can. I promise that as long as I believe in humanity, I will believe in conversations.

Ultimately, there are bad people out there, but I believe that more-or-less most people just want to help. It would be prudent for yourself to accept that help. I know that Lee and I are not going to go anywhere without you.

You take the good and take the bad… and I think we all know where this is heading:

Photo by Sammis Co

By Rhett Soveran Posted in Blogging Comments (0)

Comment Spam Be Gone

September 8, 2008 – 8:00 am

Horse dung - how often can you use a photo of shit on a blog. Found at: http://www.sxc.hu/photo/1060896I have talked about how to keep the comment bots from leaving a ton of spam comments on your WordPress blog before. That method works but it is a little clumsy because you need to edit core WordPress files and if you forget to do it again when you upgrade your blog your comments can break or you will be flooded once again with comment spam. I always wanted to take that method and create a plugin out of it, but it looks like I have been beaten to it with the creation of WP-SpamFree.

I personally was using the method I described in my previous post on my webmaster blog, and it worked great. The biggest problem was the need to redo it after every upgade. Granted the time spent redoing it is nothing compared to dealing with the hundreds of robots leaving comment spam. After the last upgrade I did not have time to complete my spam fix due to other time pressures and commitments. It did not take long for the comment bots to start taking advantage of the opening. In a few short days I had hundreds of automated comment spam piling and stinking up my blog like the giant a pile of horse shit that it is. Thank goodness for Akismet that kept it off my blog so I did not have to sort through the comments and delete them.

That is when I found WP-SpamFree. WP-SpamFree uses a combination of Javascript and Cookies to prevent automated comment spam from being left. While it works on a different principle than the method I described in my method, it relies on the fact that many automated comment bots cannot handle Javascript and cookies. It is an effective combination. I have been running it on my webmaster blog for just over two weeks and the number of comment spam that I have received has dropped to nearly zero. Looking at the web server log files I can tell that the comment spam I have received has been from actual people visiting the site and leaving it, not from automated comment bots.

Installation is as easy as any other WordPress plugin. Simply download the plugin and unzip it. You will need to upload it to your WordPress blog into the plugins folder. Once it has been uploaded simply activate it in your WordPress administration section by clicking Activate on the plugins page. Once it is activated you will see a WP-SpamFree menu available on the Plugins section. Here you can configure the plugin and set some additional settings to deal with trackback and pingback spam as well as some contact form settings.

If your WordPress blog is swimming in automated comment spam give the WP-SpamFree plugin a try. It might make a world of difference in the amount of comment spam you have to sort through.

By Lee Robertson Posted in WordPress Comments (7)

Make Your Blog a Home

August 27, 2008 – 8:00 am

House to a homeThere have been a number of transitions in my life lately. Most notably we packed up our house in Rosthern, Saskatchewan and moved to Regina, Saskatchewan so my wife could take a new position in the city. It has meant a great deal of change for all of us in the house. Rhett has also moved to his new house and you have probably noticed our posts here at Epiblogger have been some what sporadic.

As I was watching the movers pack up our house into the truck in Rosthern and then later that day spending the night at our new house in Regina it struck me how both these places were just houses. They had no personality, they were just empty shells waiting to be filled with our lives, our memories and our stories.

Since then my children have made new friends who are routinely coming and playing in our house and backyard. The neighbours have welcomed us to the block with some baking, and certificates to eat out while we were getting settled and this new house in Regina has slowly started to feel like our home as more and more of us comes out in how we care for the place, how we decorate the rooms and as our stories start to be told here.

Blogs are likes houses, they are nothing but empty shells waiting to be filled with our stories that will make the blog our online home of our lives. It is not easy to risk and expose ourselves on our blogs. It is like welcoming strangers into your home, but for those that we connect with our lives will become richer with the new relationships we have created on our digital home. Do we welcome people to our blogs like they are coming to our home or are they merely strangers that we want to make leave as quickly as possible?

By Lee Robertson Posted in Blogging Comments (0)

The Problem With (Blog) Intimacy

August 14, 2008 – 12:15 pm

Intimacy - EpibloggerYesterday, like any other good and self-respecting metrosexual, I got my eyebrows waxed (and threaded). My eyebrows have potentially great lines, but unfortunately my monkey attributes take over and tiny little hairs start popping out all over the place until I look like a furry, unibrow caveman. So, every month or so, I take care of myself, spend $15 and have the nice lady pour scalding wax on my face and then tear the hairs from the skin.

I read an interesting post yesterday of how to save thousands of hours by not writing as much (”My ‘content is king’ belief was directly responsible for the loss of hundreds and maybe thousands of hours of my time”). The premise of the post makes sense. Write only quality stuff, less frequency and use the rest of the time to market or do jumping-jacks or picking your nose. But what about creating intimacy?

You know what I could have done to save 10, at least 20 dollars and probably 25 minutes of my life?! I could have gone straight home yesterday and had my wife pluck my eyebrows. Rhett, what the hell is wrong with you? Think of those savings! Well, let me tell you about the problem with intimacy—you are too intimate. Brilliant, I know. Please, don’t applaud.

My wife knows me and I am a total wuss. Frankly, I would (and have) whined and cried and scream and yelled if she tried to come at me with tweezers. Leah and I know each other too well and are too comfortable around each other. However, when I go to the scalding-wax lady social etiquette says that I can’t whine/cry/scream/yell at her. I have to be tough. I am not allowed to give into my inner wuss. It’s time to man-up and get my eyebrows groomed.

The problem with intimacy is that you can’t fake it. Maybe a small tear slipped out during the waxing yesterday, but I maintain that was just because she was pulling out hairs near my eyes and so… it… made a tear… come out. It hurts, a lot. Okay? Lay off. But I am beautiful for it.

The problem with creating intimacy on your blog is that people are going to know when you aren’t really engaged or when you are dreaming about other, younger blogs. No one is crying out Problogger anymore. It’s all Oh Ittybiz or Mmm MenWithPens.

Wow, that was a real tangent. Plus, if there ever was an analogy in this post I totally destroyed it. But you don’t need analogies, you aren’t four years old. You don’t need stories about Buzz Lightyear, no matter how dreamy you are. Okay maybe sometimes we need analogies. Lord have mercy, get on topic Rhett.

Maybe Mr. Save-Thousands-of-Hours was right in saying that creating content for the sake of content doesn’t and has never made sense. You will never save time, but you can use the time you have to offer insightful information and connect with the community around you. Create intimacy where it makes sense, like on your blog.

Creating quality content will always be a hit. Creating quality content with a sense of intimacy and sharing will be a knock-out. (Do you ever get a sense when you write closing lines like that one that you are a huge cornball? Me neither.)

Photo by Cia de Foto (You should check out this persons photos, they are fantastic)

By Rhett Soveran Posted in Writing Comments (10)
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