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Clear Blogging: How People Blogging Are Changing the World and How You Can Join Them

The Everything Blogging Book: Publish Your Ideas, Get Feedback, and Create Your Own Worldwide Network

Previous:
How to Use a Blogging Service

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Create Content for Your Blog

How to Create Your Own Blog

If you don’t want to use a blogging service, you can get software that allows you to create your own blog from scratch. Making your own blog has a number of advantages:

Creative control: You won’t need to conform to preset themes and design templates. If you have an existing website, you can design your blog to match it.
Minimal cost: Creating your own blog is inexpensive—it costs no more than maintaining a personal website, which you can do for a nominal annual fee.
User-friendly software: Many blogging software platforms require only a bit more technical know-how than the web-based blogging software offered by prepackaged blogging services. Several of these programs are also free.
Custom advertising: Blog services force you to use their advertising programs. With your own blog, though, you can pursue and feature advertising programs of your own choosing. Plus, you’ll always get to keep 100% of the revenue you earn.

Domain Names and Hosting for Your Blog

In order to build your own blog, you first need to buy a domain name and sign up for a web-hosting service:

Domain name: This unique name, usually ending in .com, .org, or .net, identifies your site’s address on the web. For example: www.quamut.com.
Web hosting: This remote server space on which your blog’s files reside is leased by web-hosting companies.

How to Register a Domain Name for Your Blog

You register, or buy, domain names through a domain name registrar. Registration is usually effective for a year at a time and costs about $10 annually. You can choose any name you like that has not yet been registered by someone else. Three of the most popular domain registrars are:

Register.com®: www.register.com
GoDaddy®: www.godaddy.com
Network Solutions®: www.networksolutions.com

How to Buy a Web Hosting Plan for Your Blog

A web host is a business that rents out server space. It’s best to choose a web host backed by a reliable corporation with a good reputation for customer service. Before you sign up with a host, figure out what you need and do some comparison shopping based on these main features:

Cost: Don’t pay more than $10 per month.
Disk space: Buy a plan with 3 gigabytes (GB) or more.
Bandwidth: Look for at least 100GB per month.

For more guidance on domain names and web hosting, see the Quamut guide to Building a Website in Barnes & Noble bookstores and online at www.quamut.com.

Do-It-Yourself Blogging Software

Once you have a domain name and a web-hosting plan, you need to decide which do-it-yourself blogging software to use. The two most popular software options are Movable Type® and WordPress®. Note that in addition to the blogging software package you choose, you also need FTP software, which allows you to upload and download files to and from your server. Several FTP programs, such as Smart FTP® (www.smartftp.com), are available for free.

Movable Type

Movable Type (www.movabletype.com) debuted in October 2001 and has been the most popular blogging software ever since. Its most celebrated strengths include:

Easy integration: It’s simple to add a blog to an existing site.
Robust administration features: Managing multiple users, blogs, or large amounts of content are all a snap.
Customization: You can customize every aspect of the Movable Type interface to make your blog unique.

Movable Type offers licenses for commercial or personal use, which ranges from a basic free version to a paid edition that includes premium features and customer support.

How to Install Movable Type

Download the latest version of Movable Type directly from the Movable Type website. Along with the software, you should download the Movable Type installation guide at www.sixapart.com/movabletype/docs and follow its instructions to install the program. The installation process can be tricky, though. If you have difficulty, search the Movable Type knowledge base (www.sixapart.com/movable type/kb), a vast resource of questions and answers about installing and using Movable Type.

WordPress

WordPress (www.wordpress.org) began in 2001 as an open source project, meaning that it was built by a community of users around the world. Though its design flexibility doesn’t quite match that of Movable Type, WordPress does include customizable design templates. Dozens of templates customized by existing WordPress users are also available for free online. WordPress’s main advantages over Movable Type are its fast and easy installation process and its price: all versions are free.

How to Install WordPress

Download the latest version of WordPress at www.word press.org/download. WordPress includes a simple five- minute installation process. Detailed instructions on installing WordPress are available at codex.wordpress.org.

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