Getting a blogging job is the latest post on my WordPress blog that is all about understanding what blogging actually is. This is particularly important if you want to work as a blogger either promoting your own business or working for someone else who needs help maintaining their blog portfolio.
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There are a number of free Blogging platforms that you can use to publish your blog, two of the most popular are Google’s Blogger and WordPress which is an open source product.
Photo used in line with the license terms which you can find here
Blogger
blogger.com and blogspot.com are both operated by Google and are now effectively the same platform. Very easy to set up and use so for anyone new to blogging and perhaps looking to publish their first blog, this may be a great place for you to start. Only you know where you ultimately want to go with blogging so only you can decide if this is the right choice for you.
There is an option to post to your own domain or you can just publish on Googles free site, this means that whatever name you give your blog (as long as it is available, not always the case) it will be suffixed by .blogspot.com e.g. ‘http://www.urdomain.blogspot.com’.
You will need to register with Google to create an account but after that, if you use this option, life could not really be simpler for setting up and publishing your first blog.
WordPress
Probably more popular and considered to be the industry standard by many people is the WordPress blogging platform. Again there are 2 options, you can either use WordPress.com to configure and publish your blog on their free domain, there is less flexibility for configuring your blog with this option, or you can use WordPress.org to publish your blog to your own domain.
There are a number of advantages to publishing to your own registered domain, often it is considered to present a more professional image particularly if you are operating your blog as a business initiative, you are also much less limited as to the type of content you can include and the adverts you can place on your blog also the work and effort you put into your blog is for a product you own or own the rights to.
There are many web hosting sites that will allow you to download the WordPress format to your domain site via a CPanel interface and once downloaded you can select a theme and publish your blog. So although it can be a little daunting if you are not familiar with the process, it is actually relatively easy to do and much of the advice supplied in previous postings with respect to domain name selection and registration, plus hosting options stand true as much for blogging as it does for website hosting.
Two of the best and most affordable web hosts that provide this facility are:
I personally use Hostgator and have found it to be an excellent package, the starter package is $4.95 per month for a single domain.
So why is WordPress considered to be an industry standard by many, that’s a good question and reasonably easily answered.
There are loads more reasons as well but these are the main ones and most important.
Joomla.com is a 3rd and very popular blog platform, but for your average Joe with no coding experience, it can be a bit tricky to set up. For that reason it is unlikely to be as popular as Blogger and WordPress, but for those who are capable it does provide a very flexible and capable format.
There are of course any number of social bookmarking sites that provide blogging options these include Xanga, LiveJournal, MySpace,Facebook and Vox, these are all great for blogging for friends and family primarily although there are efforts from some of these guys to break into ecommerce markets.
Finally if you want to pay for your blogging experience you can take a look at Typepad or MovableType
For more information on the whole concept and process of blogging (in a WordPress format) visit A good time is BlogTime
Banner Design Service & Prices
Using advertising banners which can be posted on websites or attached to email is a proven and effective way of advertising your business, you only have to read the literature and documentation that comes from major website presences such as ‘Amazon’ or ‘Google’ to realise that they actively promote the use of images and text by their affiliates to optimize the chance of getting a click through to their products. It is pretty clear that people like graphics and prefer to see a ‘text/graphic’ combination rather than a straight ‘text link’.
Moulin Website Design offers a banner design service, simply select the size(s) you want and get in touch to discuss your requirements for an affordable and eye catching design.
The examples shown here are 250×250 and 468×60 pixels, there are many other standard sizes available but you can also opt for your own size to meet your design requirements, at the end of the day these recommendations are a guide and are not mandatory.
If you place your mouse pointer over either of the banners above you will find that you can click on the banner to open a new page or tab (depends on how your browser is set up), this is because the Use target ‘_blank’ has been used to tell the browser what to do when the link is activated, but there are other options available: –
Use target ‘_top’
this causes the new page to load in the full body of the window, which is handy when using frames and you want to break out of the frameset you have created and go to a frameless page.
Use target=’_parent’
this is similar to target ‘_top’ but will reference the immediate parent of a frame. There might be several nested frames in more advanced frame nesting and this allows more control over which ones are specified, it’s not an option that is used very often.
Use target=’_self’
loads the page within the same frame as the link tag.
For most peoples purposes the selection would be to either use ‘_blank’ (sometimes called ‘_new’) or ‘_self’. In other words open a new page leaving the current page active and still open or loading the new page to replace the current page, effectively closing the source page for the link..
For an indication of recommended banner sizes please click on Standard Banner Sizes where you will find a complete list of the sizes generally in use.
Note: to facilitate a live link may in some instances require the image to be published on the internet to provide a reference location.
My latest project for a total re-vamp of the France Financial website that offers independent financial advice in English for Expats living or moving to France has been released today.
The website has been constructed utilising ‘nested divs’ in conjunction with external CSS to manage all layout and style configuration providing a uniform and consistent layout throughout the entire site in line with the customer’s specification and requirements.
To further enhance the functionality of the website and to provide additional support for the business, a France Financial blog has been created and included in the main menu so that it can be accessed from each page visited, there are also dynamic currency news updates which have been provided through the use of a .php RSS feed that can be read and registered as new content by the search engines.
An advertisment banner (shown above) has been designed and implemented so that a graphical representation of the business can be included on third party websites or attached to emails to provide an easy to use link back to France Financial.
With SEO in mind the pages have been designed to contain all necessary meta tags, including relevant keywords and a Sitemap has been produced in line with search engine protocols for submission to Google.
This website will now to be included as a completed project that can be added to the growing list of projects that make up my portfolio of work.
If you like the look and feel of this project and would like to discuss any potential projects that you need to initiate then please don’t hesitate to get in touch.
I think you will find that I can provide a very cost effective high quality development to suit most small businesses and sole traders.
Choosing the right web hosting service is an important decision for anyone entering into the arena of the internet.
A poor choice will leave you with limitations on how you can develop your internet presence and what functionality your website can deliver.
So choose with care and make sure you have the options you need available
There are 4 main types of hosting available: –
There are a number of free web hosting services out there, some are better than others and there may actually be one or two that satisfy your requirements depending of course on what those requirements are.
Generally I would say if you are advertising your business on the internet, even if it is in a simple way such as using the website as a company brochure, then normally it would be better if you take the time to register your own domain name, see registering a domain name, and then pay for your hosting service with a reputable company that suits your current and future needs.
My reasoning behind this statement comes from the basis that you don’t really get anything for free, a “free” web hosting service almost invariably will require that you allow advertising on your site, it is likely to be very busy which may limit access to your web pages and the URL address will likely contain the name of the free hosting service before your name which could be a little confusing for your visitors.
You might also find that the technical support is a little lacking and that there is very little, if any, flexibility in what you can do should your requirements change. Email facilities are likely to suffer the same problems with potentially long and convoluted email addresses that are hard to remember and very often have to include numbers to keep them unique.
I am prepared to be proved wrong on this and if you are happy with what a free web hosting service provides then let the wind be behind you and the best of luck.
There are a number of what I call collaborative website hosting services, one of the better known and best ones is HubPages.
How these work is that they provide you with templates from which you can construct your website, the modules range from simple text modules, to modules for graphics, video, RSS feeds, advertising modules and more.
Because they maintain a significant presence on the internet they get the attention of the search engines and, providing you take the necessary steps to promote your websites (you have to do some work as well), you can establish a fairly high site ranking and search engine position relatively quickly. Still depends on producing unique content on subjects of interest however.
Again there is no such thing as a free ride and these types of website are no exception, they do take a percentage of the advertising revenue your site raises, this comes mostly from the Google adsense adverts that are placed strategically around the site but may also come from the affiliate adverts you place on your site, assuming you do, because that is an optional choice.
I use these services quite extensively myself with the main reasoning being that I can promote my own personal websites (or blogs)by linking to and from them and I also find them useful for providing supplementary information that relates to my core business activities.
There really is no limit to the subjects you can broach with these services however, providing you do not break their terms and conditions (which you should read carefully to stop yourself getting into trouble), so if you are feeling adventurous you can actually publish a website on pretty much any subject you like and potentially you can start to generate an income from your work.
Blogging sort of fits into this category as well, there are a number of organisations that provide the facilities for writing and generating blogs out there with more scope for getting your own look and feel particularly if you opt for something like the ‘WordPress’ facility which is particularly flexible.
This the cheapest option for hosting your dedicated domain name, you will not have exclusive access to your own server, you will be sharing a server with other domains but in terms of the look and feel of the domain the address will be simple and refer only to your website URL. This also applies to the email if you select the right host. You will of course have to design your own website for this option, although many of the hosting companies do offer templates and site building software to supplement their service to you and many people find this a perfectly acceptable alternative to using an independent design service, particularly if you are reasonably computer savvy.
This is the most expensive option and is really only required if you have a heavy data-driven, multimedia site or possibly a comprehensive e-commerce site. You get your own server with this choice, hence the reason it is the most expensive, and of course all the same facilities of the shared server without other domains sharing access to your server.
So what are the questions you need answered in order to make the right choice: –
Clearly storage space is important, as a guide for a properly constructed website 25MB should be enough to store around 500 normal web pages with text and images. When you start to add flash, video and other multimedia data then the storage space will of course be used up more quickly.
Bandwidth equates to the number of people who visit your site each month, for normal web pages of text and images then 1GB would provide the facility for around 100,000 hits per month. But again start to put additional multimedia on the site and that number comes down because more bandwidth is used on these functions.
Operating systems are important if you are maintaining a database on your site, different databases are compatible with different operating systems for example you would need Windows servers for say a Microsoft Access database.
Upgrading is something that should be considered at the outset because you never know where the website may need to go or do as your business builds. One approach is to take a cheap option at the early stages as long as there is an upgrade path available should you need it.
For example, not all hosts support .php scripting but this is not necessarily a problem if you don’t want for instance a feedback form that works through the host server or you don’t care if RSS feeds are not search engine identifiable. On the other hand if you do require these feature then you will need some form of scripting facility and if you want to generate traffic through the search engines the script needs to be in a format that the search engines can read (this doesn’t apply to feed back forms).
Email, most web hosting comes with free email addresses, having POP3 (Post Office Protocol)or IMAP functionality allows mail clients such as Outlook to retrieve mail from the server. Likewise SMTP (simple mail transfer protocol) allows you to send email via the server using your mail client. Not all hosts provide these facilities as part of their basic package, but they may offer it as part of an upgrade path. You need to decide if you want this capability from the outset and whether you are prepared to pay a little more in order to have it.
Surprising how much is involved in selecting a host but from a website perspective the choice is up there amongst some of the most important decisions you need to make when creating and publishing your website. Hope you found this helpful.
Hosts I have used:-
I have found that Hostgator provide really good value for money, you can start with a basic package, host unlimited domains or if you are really serious you can take a re-seller option.
It’s worth noting that .php and email including SMTP come as standard with HostGator but as with most hosting companies the cost is related to a minimum contract period, if you ask for a shorter period the price per month increases.
For the bloggers out there a real benefit of HostGator is that it comes with CPanel and there is a facility within CPanal that allows you to very easily create and set up a WordPress blog, worth its weight in gold for serious bloggers.
123-reg can help you in identifying what domain names are available and registering the domain name. You can also purchase a basic web hosting which is very affordable but does have some limitations. For instance for scripting you will not have .php available and will need to use .cgi (perl) they also do not provide an SMTP option with their email which means you have to configure email to be sent by an alternative email service. However if you are not concerned by these limitations then this is a very cost effective option. Remember as well that the email comes with the hosting so you do not have to buy it separately unless you decide not to host your website initially and still want to use the domain name for your email address.
