Chinese girl [Web Hosting Hong Kong]

Getting Started with Blogging

So, you want to start a blog…the question is where exactly do you start? I think the first thing to determine is what the blog will be about. If you are simply adding a blog to your existing site, figuring this out should be fairly easy, as it will naturally follow the industry or topic area of the main site. If, however, you’re going to start a blog from scratch and it’s not to be associated with any specific, pre-existing site, then you have some figuring to do. I generally would recommend writing about something that you know about, whether from a professional or personal standpoint - it really doesn’t matter, as long as you know the topic at hand. It also helps to be passionate about whatever topic you’re writing about, primarily because it makes the process of updating the blog an enjoyable activity rather than a chore.

If you’re starting a blog solely for purposes of earning income, then choosing a topic with mass appeal is a good idea. Visiting the front page of Digg will let you know, on a regular basis, what’s popular. After you’ve figurd out what you’re to be writing about, it will be a good idea to determine what blogging software or application you wish to use. To do so, you must first determine if you’ll require a hosted solution or if you’ll do the hosting yourself. My advice - if you CAN host it yourself, DO host it yourself. It gives you complete ownership and offers some search engine optimization (SEO) advantages as well.

Here are some of the top blogging applications out there:

* WordPress (Full Application Version) - this is the blogging software that we use, and that I’ve used for many blogs. If you have your own server or web hosting account, I *highly* recommend using WordPress. It’s free, easy to install, well-supported by a massive number of users and actively upated. In short, the best blogging software out there, in my opinion. WordPress runs on PHP/MySQL, so it helps to have a Linux/Unix server or hosting account.
* WordPress (Hosted Version) - if you don’t have a hosting account or web server, WordPress allows you to set up a blog on their servers and they make it easy to update.
* Movable Type - Movable Type is one of the originals in the blog space, and offers various paid versions and single personal license is free. They charge $49 per year for support, which is a vastly different approach than the “open-source style” of WordPress. Still, I’ve heard nothing but good things about Movable Type (though I’ve never used it).
* Typepad - Typepad is a hosted blogging application that has various levels (all paid). I’ve seen many blogs that use this, but have never used it myself.
* Blogger - The first blogging software I ever used, Blogger is a hosted application but gives the user the ability to place their blogger blog on their own web site or have it hosted on a blogger domain (www.yoursite.com/blog/ OR http://yourblog.blogspot.com). I prefer the former because I like my blogs to be on a domain that I own, but if you’re on a tiny budget, the blogspot domain will do just fine.

There are other blogging applications, and also some great content management systems (CMS) like Mambo, Drupal, etc. that offer blog modules as well. I’ve toyed with both Mambo and Drupal and found both to be powerful. For a complete list of CMS applications, I’d recommend CMS Matrix, which has just about every major CMS app. out there and gives an in-depth accounting of the features of each.

That’s it for now…go get blogging!