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Posts Tagged ‘Blogging Tools’

How to Build a Blog With WordPress

Tired of toying with the puny tools that cookie-cutter blog services provide? Follow the steps in this easy guide to install a WordPress blog on your own domain and personalize your Web presence.

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If blogging is all about self-expression, why do so many blogs look so blah?

Limitations of free blog sites; click for enlarged image. Most beginner “blahgs,” it seems, are generated using free services whose customization options are meager at best. But you can break the monotony and supercharge your Weblog by installing your own blogging software and customizing it as you like. You’ll control how your site looks and functions–and when you’re finished, you’ll have a distinctive-looking blog that you can easily update to keep it fresh and functional.

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Dozens of great blogging tools are available, and PC World has rated several of them. Among the most popular and versatile of these is WordPress. You can easily scale it to your needs, so it can handle a basic family blog or a professional blog or news site with equal aplomb. The latest version, WordPress 2.5, offers photo gallery support, powerful media management options, multiple file uploading, a new look, and more. And because it supports a host of plug-ins and widgets, you can quickly introduce additional features as needed.

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I’ll explain how to get started with the installation, how to customize your blog, and how to create posts. If you just want to dabble with a free, hosted WordPress site, visit WordPress.com; But if you want to take full control of WordPress’s powerful content management and site design features, including your own personal domain name, you’ll need the WordPress software (note that the free software is available at WordPress.org, not at WordPress.com) and a Web hosting account to install it on. Using the WordPress software, you’ll be able to adjust a multitude of settings to craft your own unique, easy-to-manage site.

What You’ll Need

To get started with your WordPress blog, you’ll need four or five basic things.

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A Web hosting account with PHP version 4.3 and MySQL version 4.0 or later enabled.

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A MySQL database to store your blog’s data in. You’ll create this during the WordPress installation process.

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A text editor, such as Notepad (on Windows) or Text Edit (on the Mac). A simple text editor produces better results than a full-blown word processor such as Microsoft Word.

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An FTP client, such as FileZilla for Windows or CyberDuck for Mac, to simplify and accelerate the process of uploading the WordPress installation files to your hosting service.

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An image editor, though optional, can be very helpful if you want to create your own custom themes. One good, free option is The GIMP (that is, the GNU Image Manipulation Program), which includes many features that rival Adobe Photoshop provides, minus the price tag.

Install WordPress

Rename ‘wp-config-sample.php’; click for enlarged image. WordPress requires PHP version 4.3 or higher, and MySQL version 4.0 or higher. These tools allow WordPress to execute scripts and manage databases that instantly propagate your Web page. Check with your Web host to confirm that it supports these pieces and that they are installed successfully; the vast majority of hosting companies offer these features as part of their standard services.

At the heart of every WordPress blog is a MySQL database that contains all of its posts and settings. It’s a good idea to set up this database on your host server before you start working with individual WordPress files. That way you can customize your configuration file before uploading it, which is a significant time saver.

To create the database, log into your hosting service’s control panel–cPanel, phpMyAdmin, Plesk, or whatever the interface may be. Somewhere in the main control panel, you should see a listing for MySQL databases. My host uses cPanel, so I clicked the MySQL Databases icon, typed in a name for my new database–’wordpress’–and clicked Create Database. I also typed in a new user–’blog’–and password, and then clicked Create User. You can choose whatever names you like for your database and user, but your process should be similar to mine.

If you haven’t already, you should download the free WordPress software to your computer and extract the files onto your desktop. All of them should be contained in a folder labeled ‘wordpress’. Within the wordpress folder, locate the file named ‘wp-config-sample.php’ and rename it wp-config.php. Then open this file in a plain-text editor (such as Notepad on Windows or TextEdit on a Mac), and replace ‘putyourdbnamehere’, ‘usernamehere’, and ‘yourpasswordhere’ in the file with your database name, your user name, and your password, respectively. Leave the other formatting–such as spaces and single quotes–intact.

Now upload the WordPress files–excluding the outer wordpress folder itself–to the root directory of your host account. You’ll probably want to use one of the FTP programs mentioned earlier under “What You’ll Need” to move everything swiftly, instead of pursuing the click-heavy method of doing everything within a browser-based control panel.

You see, we should be very thankful that we are born in this modern generation due to the existence of the Internet. With the Internet, all information (whether about educational blogging tools or any other such as create blogs, pr blog, free blog themes or even blogger com) can be found with ease on the Internet, with great articles like this.

The best ways to get started is head on over to Blogger com and build a blog. Now, don’t back away just yet, this is the easy part. You don’t have to know any technical hogwash to create your own blog; there are pre designed templates for you to choose from. Just pick one which suits your taste and in no time you are ready to start adding some meat to the bones of your blog via content.

Web logging is a relatively new term that has just begun to make its rounds through the Internet world. You may have asked yourself in the past “what is web logging and why everyone is talking about it?” And the answer is relatively simple. Web logging is nothing more than a website that is updated regularly with the newest entries being displayed at the top. A blog is pretty much an online journal where anybody can go and type their thoughts for the rest of the Internet world to read.

Long blog entries bore people. You should not be afraid to break up entries, you don’t have to post the whole story in one day. Also, make use of bullet points, numbered lists, and pictures.

Many people forget that they can get more information about any subject matter, be it educational blogging tools information or any other on any of the major search engines like Google. If you need more information about educational blogging tools, go to Google and be more informed.

In the sales model, you devote a blog to a single product, or range of products. When offline companies start blogs, their blogs are sales blogs – they’re using their blogs to sell their products. If you have products that you want to sell, a sales blog is an excellent business model. You could sell a product that you’ve created – an ebook, a DVD, or art work – or products that you buy from others, and resell.

After you create a blog that is interesting, now it is time to start making money. The second step of getting visitors is the most important, if you plan on making money. The third step is choosing how you will make money from your blog. You should try to keep your blog on the same topic on all your post, since you can have an unlimited number of blogs; you can have a blog for any and every topic you choose. Make sure to start a new blog if you are totally off the main subject of the blog that you are posting to.

Google Adsense is Google’s own advertising program. After signing up for a free account, you will be given a snippet of code. If you go to your blog account and open up the Source page, you can paste in the code in the relevant spot and Google adverts will start running on the page. Every time a visitor click on a Google advert, you will get paid a sum of money, based on what advertiser’s value the click to be worth.

For your knowledge, we found that lots of people that were searching for educational blogging tools also searched online for free blog backgrounds, phishing security, and even free blog script.

Blogging online requires tools aside from using social networking sites as venue for blogs. Blog tools can either be free or not; hosted or independent. Majority of blogs online are dependent on hosted tools and free blogging tools available on the net. It comprises almost three-fourths of the weblog available online. In order to determine which best blog tools you need to use, let us take a look at the five most popular blogging tools used by millions of bloggers in the internet.

Ecto (MAC)
Is the most popular desktop blog tool editor that can support wide range of blog system like Blogger, TypePad, and Wordpress. It a useful tool with powerful and rich features like spell checks, rich text editor, creating links, attachment, draft saving, etc. So even if your not online, you can create your blog entries. Ecto is created for easy and efficient blogging by its extended functionality in plugins that are way much richer than Windows Live Writer. It works well with Flickr and del.icio.us. It is not a free blog tool and you can buy the software online.

Windows Live Writer
It is a free desktop application tool that provides ease in publishing a blog with a rich content because equipped with a rich text editor, word count and spelling checker. It is one of the cleanest blog editors online because it provides users familiar features just like that of a Microsoft office. Users can add photos, music or any types of media into their blog easily. The best feature of Windows Live Writer is that you can add plugins that can easily integrate with wordpress, flickr and facebook in creating and editing blog posts. Its flatform can either be vista or windows.

Scribefire
It is a firefox extension desktop blog editor that allows you to blog on a specific webpage without leaving the browser. You can post to your blog easily and you can drag, move or drop formatted text or image from other browser and paste it to your blog. It is free and the platform can be Windows, Mac OS and Linux i686. 

Blogger
It is a free blog tool that allows simple, fast and convenient blogging on the web. It is owned by Google and is commonly used for types of blogs like personal blogs, education blogs, political blogs, etc.

TypePad
A hosted blogging service tool. It can host a number of blogs for blog owner’s other use and function. Best feature of TypePad is that it allows the user a complete control over their blog to be able to manage it easily. TypePad also allow easy and quick transfer of content, links and images.

After choosing the best web blog tools that meets your need as an online blogger, you can now start your blogging activity in the internet.

New Tools Help Take Your Blog to the Next Level

With WordPress blogging software and a compatible host, you can customize your blog pages and gain greater control.

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Send your questions and tips to nettips@spanbauer.com. We pay $50 for published items. Scott Spanbauer is a contributing editor for PC World.

Scott Spanbauer

Thu, 16 Nov 2006 09:00:00 UTC

If you’re a new blogger, Google’s free Blogger service will meet your needs. But if you’re a born-to-blog pundit like me, you want additional features, personalization, and control.

Blog-o-Matic

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Top-flight bloggers are increasingly moving to WordPress, Automattic Productions’ no-cost, open-source blogging software. Unlike the basic blogging tools found in Blogger, Microsoft’s Windows Live Spaces, and Yahoo 360, WordPress offers tons of plug-ins and widgets for customizing your blog. One of my favorite WordPress features is its spam filter, which weeds out spam posted as comments. You can also make your blog private, allowing only the people you specify to read and comment on your postings.

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But WordPress gives you more than a simple chronological Weblog: The program’s pages feature makes it a full-blown content-management system supporting complex Web sites. For example, WordPress templates let you keep your bio, contact info, or other static content easy for your blog visitors to access.

WordPress’s PHP script files require the MySQL database and PHP software running on the host server. After editing one of the scripts to include your MySQL and PHP user names and passwords, you upload the scripts to the server–and just like that, you have a blog.

If this seems like programming voodoo to you, relax. WordPress and most of its hosting partners provide point-and-click tools that have you blogging in minutes.

If you’re happy using a subdomain (such as scottspanbauer.wordpress.com) rather than your own domain (www.scottspanbauer.com, for example) and don’t mind an occasional text ad among your postings, you can create a free account on Automattic’s WordPress.com, a blog-hosting service much like Google’s BlogSpot. At the time of writing, free WordPress.com blogs were limited to 25MB of images, PDFs, and other files. The amount of text that you and your readers can post is unlimited, however. (Automattic plans to add commercial account options that increase storage.)

If you choose WordPress.com as your host, setup is a breeze. When you log in, a toolbar of configuration options appears at the top for creating posts and pages, changing themes, moderating comments, and adding links to a page’s sidebar (see FIGURE 1

FIGURE 1: Customize your WordPress blog by using the point-and-click options that are available on the service’s toolbar.

). You can receive e-mail support from WordPress’s creators, too.

For collaboration, create additional author and moderator accounts and set the blog to be invisible until it’s ready.

Try the Hosts With the Most

To use WordPress to publish a blog or site on your current Web host, your hosting service must support PHP and MySQL. Independent services such as Blue Host and Laughing Squid offer WordPress support and charge as little as $7 a month; go to wordpress.org/hosting to see a list of such services. A personal note: I adore my local mom-and-pop ISP for its high levels of customer service, technical savvy, and stability, but when I broached the subject of supporting WordPress blogging, the company wasn’t prepared. If I were to create a WordPress blog using my own domain name, I would probably select one of WordPress’s recommended host services.

Blogging for Dollars: Cash In With Google’s Adsense

If your blogging consists of posting pictures of the kids for Great-Aunt Millie to see, or detailed accounts of your bunion surgery, don’t expect to strike it rich as a pro blogger. But if what you say is interesting to even a modest audience, you could receive a check each month by placing ads on your blog. One of the easiest ways to test the Web-ad waters is with Google’s AdSense service, which context-matches Google text ads to your blog’s content and optionally places a Google search box on your site.

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While it may be alluring to add a visitor counter, a flashy background, an exciting new font, and a bunch of peculiar animated gifs to your blog, this kind of plan can easily backfire.

There are many free blogging tools on the market, but loading up your blog with all of the free accessories that you can find isn’t essentially a good idea.

The key to getting the most from free blog tools is being selective. It is a great idea to learn about all of the kinds of free blogging tools that are available so that you can make an informed decision about what to add to your blog but try to remember that just because you can have something doesn’t mean that you need it. Practice command and only choose the options that you think will really be useful. If you can find out how many visitors are reading your blog by checking your traffic statistics, for more details visit to www.your-own-blog.com a visitor counter is likely to add needless litter to your page.

If your blog is text-based, a flashy background can be more of a disruption than a benefit. Be practical about assessing what kinds of blog accessories will help you realize your vision and modify your site.

Remember that even a blog tool that doesn’t cost you any cash may not be an asset in the long run blogging for Business Owners. If you run a small company, you may find that the world of blogging for business owners is a world that you want to be a part of.

Blogging is a great way to get the word out to consumers about your product or service, and it can even be useful for inspiring employee reliability and helping you keep your workers at peak spirits. If you are looking for a way to take your business to the next level, consider what starting a blog might be able to do for you.

Blogging for business owners has a lot in common with all other types of blogging, but it has its own unique pitfalls and strengths. The key to having a successful blog as a business owner is keeping your goals clear and concrete at every step of your blogging adventure. It can be all to easy to get sidetracked, for more details visit to www.your-own-blog.com especially if you are just learning about the thrilling possibilities of blogging technology, but if you want your blog to succeed you need to stay focused.

Write up a plan for how often you will update, how you will promote your blog and retain readers, whether you will feature photographs or video, and other aspects of your blog, and then stick to it with the same kind of determination that you used when you built your company.

How to pick the best blog software platform for your business blog? Scott Fox discusses Wordpress, Typepad and Blogger and explains how to choose the blogging tools best for you. This is a clip from www.ScottFoxShow.com. More “plain english” e-business blogging advice and web site vendor recommendations available at http today.

helpmetoblog.com and http How do you add Google calendar to your wordpress blog. Basically video shows you how to do it. On my ilocals.info site you can create a free blog and I add and find all the nice wordpress plugins. This helps you not to worry about the technical stuff. Through my http site I teach you how to blog and how to use a blog to market your services or products. To date I have focused on real estate agents but anyone is welcome. Now how do you add a Google calendar? 1) Watch the video. 2) Activate the plugin in your ilocals.info site or download and install it code.google.com 3) Create a Google calendar www.google.com 4) Get your Google API gd.google.com 5) Enter this string on your wordpress page where you want to add the Google Calendar show-wpng-calendar (watch the video for more details). If you need more blogging tools and advice on how to blog subscribe to helpmetoblog.com Thanks for watching Johan