J_K9 @ Linux

HOW TO: Begin Blogging

November 20, 2005 on 2:33 pm | In Linux, HOW TO |

Blogs have fast become one of the most popular methods of communication over the Internet, and it’s no wonder they’re now so popular: they’re easy to access, usually provide a wealth of information, and you never know what you’ll find on them. So, you may want to start blogging yourself - and here’s how.

Free Blogs

There are a couple of free blogging sites which are very easy to use, and with which you’ll be able to get started in no time. One of the most popular at the moment is Blogger, which many people use (possibly because it is owned and maintained by Google). If you just want a blog to post up your thoughts, latest pictures, or simply have a ramble or two, then this may be your best solution.

Flickr

Flickr is the “best online photo management and sharing application in the world” (as it itself claims), and I can’t help but agree. Uploading your photos to Flickr is a breeze with the downloadable desktop application they provide (available for Windows 98 and above, and Mac OS X), and you can create ‘Sets’ (like albums) to store those photographs. You can also add a description to each photo, which allows those viewing it to better understand what they’re looking at. It is quite irritating that the app isn’t out for Linux yet - and I am not sure if it will ever be.

The great thing about Flickr though is that many blogging platforms have plugins for it (eg. Wordpress, Textpattern, etc…), and that its simplicity is second to none. There is also the Wordpress Flickr Post Bar plugin, which adds a useful “Add image from Flickr” bar to the Wordpress ‘New Post’ form - and including images in a post has never been easier.

Attract more readers

The only readers you’ll get on your blog as soon as you start are probably going to be you, your family, and that’s it - possibly a friends or two if you’re lucky. But the only way you’re going to get more readers is by letting people know about your site. There are several good web rings which you should subscribe to once your blog is set up. These will help you get more traffic by offering snippets of your posts and attempting to attract users to your blog. Here are some of the ones I use:

• Technorati - Technorati displays what’s important in the blogosphere — which bloggers are commanding attention, what ideas are rising in prominence, and the speed at which these conversations are taking place
• blogtopsites - Directory of the best blog sites
• Blog Explosion - Explode your blog traffic

Richard Giles and Paul Stamatiou have written two good articles on how to further increase the amount of traffic you receive. Reading those two articles and following their hints will really benefit you in the long run!

Going Pro

If you’re serious about blogging, or the amount of traffic your blog’s getting is increasing significantly, then consider getting your own domain name - if you opt for a more radical experience then you may want to run your own server at home, but Bluehost does an excellent job of hosting this site for me. Their Control Panel is sleek, simple, and makes installing platforms like Wordpress as simple as it’ll ever get. For example: to install this blog, all I had to do was enter the cPanel, click on the Fantastico icon, and select Wordpress. From there, all I had to do was type in the username and password, specify whether I wanted to install it on a subdomain or not, and presto! I had a professional blog up and running.

As with a lot of blogging software, Wordpress requires a MySQL database in order to function - which may not be available if you’ve chosen another webhost which doesn’t allow them. Not to worry - you can still get a decent blog for your site with Simple PHP Blog.

Update: Wordpress are now hosting blogs for free, so pop over there if you would like one!

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