Blog Recommendation

[dct]

Hi all,

I think it's finally time that I start my own blog. I've often had thoughts and experiences that I've wanted to share so feel a blog is the ideal media.

So I'd love to hear other peoples thoughts and recommendations on which of the many packages to use. I haven't the time or inclination to write my own CMS (why reinvent the wheel) so I'm looking for an off the shelf solution that allows some customisation.

Thanks

Al

[SEbasic]

WordPress or MovableType.

WordPress is free, highly customisable and generally looks like it kicks arse.

I currently Use Blogger, but I think It's crap, so will be moving over to WordPress as soon as I sort out a new server to host the site on.

[dazzlindonna]

WordPress. It rocks.

[TwisterMc]

SEbasic... what about all your posts? Will you save them or what happens to them when you move?

Also, what's wrong with blogger?

[digitalpoint]

I like Blogger... for a basic blog it's nice. But if I want fancy stuff (which I don't) like categorizing my entries and stuff, WordPress or Moveable Type is what you need.

[dct]

I do like the idea of starting off with a simple platform, like Blogger, then moving to a more advanced solution if the need arises.

I am asumming it is relatively easy to move posts from one platform to another, please correct me if I'm wrong.

[SEbasic]

SEbasic... what about all your posts? Will you save them or what happens to them when you move?WordPress has a very handy import facility - THe 301's may be a bit of an issue (There will be a lot to have to do), but I'll cross that bridge when I come to it.Also, what's wrong with blogger?Shawn mentioned the main things - It isn't fancy enough for what I want to do with it. I also hate the fact I have to rely on the uber-slow Blogger servers every time I want to make a change to the site or create a new post. :)

[Foxy]

WordPress has a very handy import facility - THe 301's may be a bit of an issue (There will be a lot to have to do), but I'll cross that bridge when I come to it.Shawn mentioned the main things - It isn't fancy enough for what I want to do with it. I also hate the fact I have to rely on the uber-slow Blogger servers every time I want to make a change to the site or create a new post. :)

If you have a domain I can give you some space for free for a blog [Word Press] or anything else for that matter - just donate $10 to the fund - and that goes for anybody else too. :)

[SEbasic]

If you have a domain I can give you some space for free for a blog [Word Press] or anything else for that matter - just donate $10 to the fund - and that goes for anybody else too. Cheers for the offer Foxy. Unfortunatley, space isn't the issue - Time is ;)

I will be making a donation to the servers soon either way (A small one from me, a bigger one from the company I work for).

[Foxy]

Cheers for the offer Foxy. Unfortunatley, space isn't the issue - Time is ;)

I will be making a donation to the servers soon either way (A small one from me, a bigger one from the company I work for).

Thats cool - the offer still stands - anytime

[dct]

Cheers for the advice folks.
I think I'll give blogger a go for now but maybe change to Wordpress if needs must.
Foxy, if the offer of free blog hosting is open in the future I certainly may take you up on it. In fact I'll give my donation now any way.

Al

[Foxy]

Thank you dcteam for the donation and yes you may take it up any time.

[TwisterMc]

With Blogger down, again, I may move to wordpress. ;)

[SEbasic]

That's what I am talking about.

The seraphim page is still working, but my actual blog just won't work. It's driving me nuts...

[darksat]

Any reason not to use mambo for a blog?

[SEbasic]

I don't really know to be honest with you. WP really does look like it pi$$es all over the competition which is why I would go for that.

[Foxy]

Any reason not to use mambo for a blog?

Don't even bother - a heavyweight answer to a lightweight question.

I have WordPress,b2,b2evoution,Movable Type and I have tried countless others

As SEbasic "honestly" puts it it pi$$es all over the competition

Heheheheh lol

[TwisterMc]

SEbasic - Keep me informed on how the move from blogger to WP goes. I may be doing it too.

[SEbasic]

I'll let you know - It may take a while before I get it done though.

It all depends how complicated the process is and how much work I have on my plate for clients.

[TwisterMc]

They make it sound so easy. I may give it a go if I feel like a challenge tomorrow. I just don't want to loose everything.

[SEbasic]

You won't.

You will still have the site on the .blogspot domain won't you.

[TwisterMc]

From what I understand, when you tell it to go to FTP it clears out the blogspot area and put the domain back up for grabs. Could be wrong though.

[SEbasic]

Right...

I thought you meant that you were moving over to WP atthe same time too.

Moving from blogspot over to your own server will be a sinch.

I can't imagine you having any problems at all. :)

[TwisterMc]

If i move to my servers I'll move to WP probably too. Still worried. :eek:

Hey I have a WP question, doe sit allow rich text editing with Firefox?

[SEbasic]

Good question.

I don't know. It's something I'll have to look into too.

It would be a HUGE pain in the arse to have to change browsers when I want to make a post.
I'll have a look around and see if I can find any info.

[TwisterMc]

I did it! I couldn't wonder any longer and tried it last night. I moved everything from blogger to wordpress. So far so good and I still have everything up on my blogspot too. Comments didn't make it though. So if you'd kindly re-comment SEbasic on the snowman in the new blog that'd be great. ;)

New Blog (http://www.twistermc.com/blog/) (under construction)

[SEbasic]

I'll recomment with pleasure :)

This may help in the mean time though ;)

http://wordpress.org/support/3/12777

[TwisterMc]

Yours was the only real one.... ever. ;) Now I just have to figure out how to get around the duplicate content, and some sort of re-direct, since the new and old blogs still exist.

[SEbasic]

How did you do the import?

I thought that you had to basically tell blogger to publish via FTP, thus removing the .blogspot site...

Or does the blogspot site remain where it is? (Well yours has) :rolleyes:

Hmmmm - Meta redirect (Not great - really need something better than that)

Or you could just change the blogger template so that the only thing output is something like THIS BLOG HAS MOVED (Or whatever).

[TwisterMc]

How did I import? Just like the wordpress instructions said. Then, when that was done, I re-published everything back to blogspot just in case. And yes, I'll edit the template with a message like that sometime.

Oh and I found a Rich Text Editor for WordPress!!!!!! Haven't installed it yet though. I'm scared of the word hack. http://mudbomb.com/archives/2004/05/29/wysiwyg-hack-for-wordpress/

[SEbasic]

Hey that looks cool...

I found a whole bunch of really cool looking plugins today.

I also liked the URL writing (In as much as you can pretty much have the URL looking like anything you like.
I think you find it under >>Options>>Permalink

Really excelent looking.

I even found a whole bunch of plugins that will basically enable you to use WP as a pretty advanced CMS (One that doesn't look like a blog, but like an actual site).

[darksat]

Then Post the URL will you, and PM me as well, just to be sure.

[SEbasic]

Of the Plugins?

[darksat]

Please, it would be appreciated.

[SEbasic]

Here are a few of the plugins that I thought would be most useful...

Sticky Posts
http://www.asymptomatic.net/wp-hacks
http://wordpress.org/support/10/7128

URL rewriting
http://stevarino.com/wp/faked-folders/

Meta Tag additions
http://www.uberdose.com/journal/archives/2004/10/02/keywords-and-description-meta-tags-for-wordpress-xfish_meta/

RSS Aggregator
http://soderlind.no/archives/2004/11/08/aggrss-an-rss-aggregator/

Wiki Plugin
http://wiki.wordpress.org/?pagename=Wiki%20Plugin

Markup Validation
http://www.jamietalbot.com/wp-hacks/

Related Links
http://www.w-a-s-a-b-i.com/archives/2004/05/26/wordpress-related-entries-plugin/

Stylesheet chooser
http://www.jfoucher.marinetechs.com/2004/09/02/stylesheet-chooser/

[darksat]

Thanks for the links, your a star.

[SEbasic]

It's no problem at all...

You can find a whole bunch of plugins here (http://wiki.wordpress.org/Plugin) too :)

[TwisterMc]

Sweet. Plug-ins!! Someone will have to write up a 'how to optimize wordpress' ;) I already updated the permalinks!

Guess what? Not even up for 24 hours and I've got spam comments. :mad: However it does show that it must be getting out there somehow.

[SEbasic]

How did you get spam already?!?

I think I have only ever got 2 or 3 spam posts on my blog EVER, yet you got some within a matter of hours.

Damnit! Where am I going wrong?!?

[TwisterMc]

Some casino person came in and started posting comments. I think a total of 25 comments all with links to his casino site. I learned about the spam control quickly and that helped as I ended up moderating them before they got posted.

Also, does anyone know of a good stats plugin for WordPress?

[SEbasic]

http://wiki.wordpress.org/?pagename=Plugin#stats :D

[TwisterMc]

Well that was to easy. Why couldn't I find that.

[SEbasic]

I've scanned that page a couple of times now so I knew they were there.

Also I did this... Ctrl+F... then typed "stat" :D

[TwisterMc]

apple+f ;)

[SEbasic]

This Looks particularly good...

http://randypeterman.com/StatTraq/index.php

Infact it looks really good (Considering it's free and is in fact a WP plugin afterall).
http://www.randypeterman.com/StatTraq/wp-stattraq/index.php?view=search_engine_stats&time_frame=10&year=2004&month=12&day=2&hour=14&limitNumber=20
http://www.randypeterman.com/StatTraq/wp-stattraq/index.php?view=referrer&time_frame=10&year=2004&month=12&day=2&hour=14&limitNumber=1000

I'm going to install that one for sure.

[TwisterMc]

I was going to install that but it made me nervous when the read me talked about deleting my posts. So i went with the generic extreme tracker thing for now. If you install it let me know!

[SEbasic]

Will do.

I've taken Foxy up on his offer of hosting so that I can set up a WP testing ground.

I found a style switcher plugin for WP, so It may well turn into a CSSZenGarden type thing too.

I've got quite a few ideas floating around at the moment, but firstly I need a logo for the site so that I can start knocking some design concepts together.
The domain (DNS not updated yet) is softalien.com

I'm going to have a lot of fun with WP in the next few weeks/months ;)

[TwisterMc]

Keep me updated. I'd like to see what you do. I've got a good start on mine and am happy so far.

[SEbasic]

You need to update the RSS feed to DP.

It's still going to blogspot...

Also, I just found this Wordpress Plugin (http://www.unknowngenius.com/wp-plugins/) Databese...

[SEbasic]

Twister, I installed that bit of stat software for WordPress...

Let me know if you want to take a look, and I'll email you the login details etc...

Really a very easy to install and comprehensive plugin.

[TwisterMc]

I should just install it. I just read the 'read me' and it said to back everything up and it wasn't responsible for loss. :rolleyes: However I'll take a peek. Email me at my user name at gmail.

[SEbasic]

email sent... :)

[webvivre]

WordPress gets my vote - easy to setup and use.

[ephricon]

I too vote for WordPress, although it was not that easy for me to get going, but seemed to be more than some of the others. Overall I think its solid. Could be a bit more intuitive...

One thing I found out after setting it up - you need have Apache running the server to use the mod_rewrite that will translate your dynamic blog URLs in to nice static, SE-friendly URLs. I think this is probably a basic thing most people that know anything about servers already know, but since I don't know about servers I overlooked this. There is some alternative software out there too, but really for the total of about 4 hours I was willing to spend getting it up and running I couldn't find anything quick and easy.

There is alot of support out there though for WordPress. Also alot of nice CSS styles available for free. Check out my Blog (in my sig) for a sample of one of them.

[TwisterMc]

I just uploaded mine to my web server and it was up and running in minutes. That's a perk of not being your own host.

[dct]

I had great intentions of getting my blog started this week, but work and time seem to have got the better of me. After reading the responses in this thread I thing I'll be giving WordPress a whirl.

[claypage]

Hi All! I'm still new here, though I've been reading these forums for a while. I suppose I'm a bit late on this thread as well, so I apologize for that.

In regards to blogging, I started out with livejournal, but then I got my own space and domain. I use bBlog (http://www.bblog.com) for my blogs at both my own site, Matt's Random Thoughts (http://www.mattbrent.net/blog) and my Kiwanis Club's Blog (http://www.kilncreekkiwanis.org/blog).

When I really started blogging, I joined BlogExplosion (http://www.blogexplosion.com/index.php?ref=claypage) to gain access to thousands of other blogs. I browse through them and check out layouts and content. It's given me a bit of ideas, and some of them have nice templates that they share.

Blogging is quite fun. I'm glad I got into it. My girlfriend says I'm addicted though, so that could be a bad thing! :) :) :)

[SEbasic]

What do you think of bBlog?
It's very SEO orientated isn't it.

There was a discussion about it over at threadwatch a while ago which caught my eye.
You're an actual user, so I'd love to hear your opinion on it.

[claypage]

I love it! I haven't found any problems with it yet. And I'm not sure what SEO is... Is that Search Engine Optimized? If that's the case, I'd have to say yes. I did a post on how bad my apartment complex is, and now when you search "Featherstone Apartments Kiln Creek" on google, my blog post comes up. I find this hilarious!

bBlog is great in my opinion. It's met all of my expectations. The only downside I see is that it only currently supports one user. However, from what I've read, they're working on this. It supports a lot of plugins though, and the templates are nice. There's a lot of other stuff that goes into it, but I really don't understand it all. It was a welcome change over livejournal.

Matt

[mnemtsas]

bblog is pretty nice, I like the way it uses plug ins and so on. SEO wise it's pretty good straight out of the box with all URL's rewritten to spider friendly links. If you're interested I have written a small plug in that allows you to display the Coop ads on a bblog pretty easily.

Mark

[TwisterMc]

You know I installed WordPress a little while ago and it got into Google but only the URLs no title tags or descriptions. Maybe I just need to be more patient.

[oziii]

Definately Word Press or MT. WP is free and is a lot easier to use than MT so I'm gradually moving all my blogs over to it now.

[onestop]

Great thread. I've read through it and decided to try word press. thank you all for sharing your experiences and suggestions.

[TwisterMc]

Great! Keep us up to date on how it goes. ;)

[dct]

Thanks everyone for the recommendations, I've also gone with Wordpress. It also means I finally found a use for my street name domain sagecroft/ (http://www.sagecroft.co.uk/)

[TwisterMc]

WordPress has been GREAT for me. Good luck, have fun.