Kind of figured I should return the favour…… You see, I tried to put a lot of thought into this blog, did a lot of reading (others blogs), and spent considerable time working out the features I wanted on my blog.
The way I figured is, if I was gonna do this seriously, I needed to host it myself (which wasn’t a problem as I have hosting anyway) rather than the blogs that are given away free. Next up was the hostname, being witty and creative certainly wasn’t me that day and as benbishop.co.uk is some geezer selling insurance and the .com wasn’t available I figured .me.uk would suit me fine.
Now possibly the most important part to setting up your blog is the blogging software or package as briefly mentioned above. There are two roads you can go down and both with advantages and disadvantages. Keeping it brief you’ve got the sign-up and go versions, like Blogger and Live Journal which are quick, easy and require virtually no technical know-how required. They are relatively customisable but if you really want to get your hands dirty and have some previous web design experience or coding experience ( the more the better) then there are other options….
As I had decided I wanted the flexibility of hosting this myself and ability to make it behave just how I liked it then the only real choice for me was between Wordpress and Moveable Type. The deciding factor, as both are highly rated, really came down to the backend of it. Not knowing a thing about Perl, and having my other sites using PHP (both open source server side programming languages which was a factor with cost), Wordpress came out on top. Please note that this is a consideration so please check with you hosting provider to see whats included and what the extra cost may be involved. The fact that my choice of hosting package had PHP and MySQL included made this an obvious choice.
So far I have got to say I am really happy with the results. The documentation and instructions are second to none, with the installation going really smoothly. Simply a case of entering in a few details regarding the database and ftp passwords which if you’ve ever uploaded something using ftp or done any form of webdesign should be a walk in the park.
The basic template which is included, ‘Kubrick’, is a really good clean basic design design, CSS based and web standards compliant.
Ok part 2 is gonna come soon, when I go through some of the plugins, custmisations and templates available.
By the way Wordpress are releasing a free, hosted blog that is available by invite only at the moment. Users of Flock, a hot new browser that is availabe as a developer preview, are able to sign up without an invite!
I will be writing further about my initial impressions of Flock soon but just quickly if you are serious about getting started with your blog it has blogging integrated into it along with a host of other cool features. Firefox (which it is based on) had better watch out!
