M and L Adventures » Blogging http://www.mandladventures.com Leading you on the technical adventure Thu, 28 Jul 2011 21:45:14 +0000 en hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.3.1 Starting a blog (pt9) http://www.mandladventures.com/2006/09/12/starting-a-blog-pt9/ http://www.mandladventures.com/2006/09/12/starting-a-blog-pt9/#comments Tue, 12 Sep 2006 10:29:30 +0000 Matt http://www.mandladventures.com/?p=147 Related Posts:]]> Keeping track of visitors

In case you’ve missed the beginning on the series, feel free to check out parts 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, and 8.

Now that you’ve spent a ton of time building your site, writing quality content, and spreading the word you can’t wait to see how your site is doing, but you don’t know how. Well, that is what the post is all about. There are about as many web site stats solutions as there are Content Management Systems. So, how do you know which one to select? The decision isn’t that hard. It all boils down to what you want to know and how you want it presented.

There are so many different solutions for statistics that there is no way that I could know them all or even describe all the ones I know about. So, being the lazy blogger that I am I narrowed the list down to some of the more popular ones that I already know a little bit about.

First, there is Google Analytics which is what I currently use at MandLAdventures. Google Analytics is based off of Urchin and is a free service. One of its unique features its is ability to integrate adWords. This feature doesn’t mean that much to me because I don’t advertise, but it sounds like it could be useful for those of you who do. Analytics offers a ton of other stats and demographic information. It uses JavaScript to capture info rather than reading log files. One of the main drawbacks I’ve notices is the inability to track outbound links. Actually, it isn’t an inability because Analytics can do it and even has instructions on how to implement it. However, I haven’t been able to get it to work and it requires manually changing outbound links. Not cool. Other than that, I am pleased with the service and will probably continue to use it in the future, but who knows.

StatCounter is the second one. I’m not sure it is extremely popular, but I have used and know at least one other blogger who does. It too is free, the your limited to viewing the last 100 log entries with the free version. Not a problem, if you have limited traffic and regularly read your stats. StatCounter offers some nice features, many of them similar to Analytics. The main difference comes in presentation. The presentation of StatCounter is much more basic. Not so many nifty graphs and Web 2.0 AJAX effects, but the data is useful and pretty easy to read. Like Analytics, it requires a little JavaScript to be inserted into every page.

Mint is another wildly popular stat tracker. Unfortunately, this one is not free. It’s not that expensive either…only $30. I might pay $30 for it if i could use it on more than one site, but I can’t. I haven’t used Mint for my own site, but I have looked at the demo on the mint site and Sonspring.com’s publicly viewable stats. At first I didn’t like how everything was presented, but after looking at all the info it provides and seeing all the different ways it can be sorted it started growing on me and I kind of wish I wasn’t so cheap and would shell at the $30 bucks. Plus Mint provides more info than many of the other solutions, even Analytics. For example, you can see who is on your site right now and easily track downloads. Unlike many of the other solutions, Mint is self hosted and it is extendable through what is known as peppers (get it pepper mint lol). Peppers are features that are written by oter programmers. A drawback to mint is that it only supports PHP sites, not .NET.

W3Counter is like a free Mint wannabe. It offers a lot of the same info that Mint does. The presentation isn’t quite as nice, judging from the demo, but you must remember that it is free. I have considered using it for a little while to see if I would like it better than Analytics, but I just haven’t wanted to take the time to change my code. Remember, I’m a lazy blogger sometimes ;)

MeasureMap is another solution. It looks cool, but I haven’t been able to test it. MeasureMap is now part of Google and they are not taking any new users at this time. I believe that are working on some improvements and migrating it to Google’s system. From what I can tell and based on some reviews I’ve read, MeasureMap more of a blog friendly version of Analytics (which is more of a business focused tracker).

AWStats is an open source solution that is a bit unique. For one, it is open source. For two, it reads your log files, and for three it is self hosted. Of course, some of the above ones have some of those features, but this one has a unique combination. This one isn’t quite as easy to read and use in my opinion, but it does offer a ton of info. Because AWStats does read the log files rather than use JavaScript, page load times should not be effected which is a benefit for people who what to totally optimize their web page load times.

If you would like to do some additional reading about the stats I’ve described above checkout the following links for some good reviews: Google Analytics, StatCounter, Mint, MeasureMap, and AWStats. I couldn’t find a good review for W3Counter quickly, so I recommend checking out the demo.
A quick search of Google will reveal many more potential solutions.

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]]> http://www.mandladventures.com/2006/09/12/starting-a-blog-pt9/feed/ 1 Starting a blog (pt8) http://www.mandladventures.com/2006/08/26/starting-a-blog-pt7-2/ http://www.mandladventures.com/2006/08/26/starting-a-blog-pt7-2/#comments Sat, 26 Aug 2006 19:44:56 +0000 Matt http://www.mandladventures.com/?p=138 Related Posts:]]> Monetizing Your Site

In case you’ve missed the beginning on the series, feel free to check out parts 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, and 7

Now that you’ve got the word out about your new blog, you’re ready to start making some money from it. Aren’t we all? Of course. Unfortunately, making any kind of decent money from a blog is next to impossible. Sorry, to burst your bubble. I know I haven’t made much of anything. Oh well, that’s not why I blog. So, needless to say I am not the best person to be writing a tutorial about monetizing your site. Nonetheless, I will do my best to provide you with a few resources to hopefully make some money.

The most obvious is to run some kind of ads on your site. Google Adsense and Yahoo’s Publisher program are popular choices. Other alternatives with slightly different twist are text link ads and adbrite. The success of these really depends on the amount of traffic you have on your site and your ability to display the ads in a way that will attract clicks…neither of which I’m good at. :(

Other money making choices include writing reviews for money and affiliate ads. Writing reviews for money has some ethical issues…if you are paid to write a review, how can you truly be unbiased. So, my recommendation, if you do decide to do this, is to disclose that you are getting paid. This disclosure is not a law as far as I know, but please do the Internet community a service by letting us know that you’re getting paid and also be honest about what you review. If you can’t wouldn’t consider buying what ever it is you are reviewing, then don’t write a review about it. Therefore, your positive reviews won’t be a lie even if you are getting paid for it.

Affiliate ads can be from a variety of sources. Amazon will allow you to display products on your site and will pay you if someone clicks through to their site and buys the product. Lots of hosting companies also will pay you to refer visitors to them. Dreamhost does this. They allow you to make up to $97 on 1 year basic hosting plan referral. To make the service more appealing and affordable to your readers, Dreamhost allows you to create promotional codes. These promotional codes can be used to offer a discount of your discretion…up to $97 (I think). Of course, the more you discount the less you make. So determining what the least amount of discount you can offer and still make money is an art form. If you’re looking for a good host, use my promo code “MandL” to receive a good discount and support my site at the same time.

One last option I can think of is selling a service or product of your own on your site. This requires a lot more work, but has much more potential to make some serious money. Actually, I can think of another… come up with a great idea and hope an established firm will buy your site out (this works for domain names as well). Google and Yahoo both have paid a ton of cash to some pretty small, innovative companies.

I’m sure there are other ways to make some money from blogging, but I’m out of ideas. If you know of any, feel free to share in the comments below. Best of luck to you.

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]]> http://www.mandladventures.com/2006/08/26/starting-a-blog-pt7-2/feed/ 0 Starting a blog (pt7) http://www.mandladventures.com/2006/08/13/starting-a-blog-pt7/ http://www.mandladventures.com/2006/08/13/starting-a-blog-pt7/#comments Sun, 13 Aug 2006 11:00:10 +0000 Matt http://www.mandladventures.com/?p=132 Related Posts:]]> Promoting Your Site

It has been a while since I posted part 6 of the starting a blog series, so I thought I better get on with writing part 7 and start to wind down this series; only a couple more to go. In case you’ve missed the beginning on the series, feel free to check out parts 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, and 6

Promoting your site is one of the most important things you can do. You can have the best site in the world but if no one can knows about it then it doesn’t matter. Also, just because people know about your site doesn’t matter. Also, just because people know about your site doesn’t mean they can find it (i.e., it’s not listed on Google). I’m probably not the best person to write this tutorial because I don’t have near as much traffic and comment interaction as I would like. Though I do manage to get a steady stream of traffic each day and have been #1 on Google before. I just wish I could increase my feed subscribers. So, if you aren’t subscribed to my feed, now is the chance. Ok, I admit that was a shameless plug.

Promoting a website requires a variety of tactics. For example, networking with other bloggers though commenting and forums, writing quality content, swapping links, SEO tactics, advertising, and using popular website services. Good design is another important factor often forgotten about. A nicely designed site may not bring traffic to your site (though it can) but a poorly designed site can sure drive traffic away. If a site looks really bad, I have a hard time getting into the content. Something about it just doesn’t make the site credible.

Networking with other bloggers through commenting and forum posts is one of the best ways to spread the word about your site. This is also one of the most time consuming. I read lots of blogs (see my blogroll for a few of them) and try to comment on anything I find interesting or know something about. Leaving quality comments (aka not useless, thoughtless ones) is important. By showing off sharing your knowledge and making interesting statements other commenters are likely to be curious about you and check out your site. The same holds true for forums. I am a regular participant in the Godbit forum and have met and learned from so many great web designers and bloggers. Godbit is my favorite forum and practically the only one I write on. I recommend finding and participating in a forum that interests you and that is related to your site topic so that the forum readers will check out your website (just be sure to include it in your profile or your signature). In the end, taking the time to interact with lots of people from around the world does not only have the potential to boost your site’s traffic, it is rewarding and fun.

Writing quality content regularly is the probably the most important promotional method you can employ. Let’s face it, if you only right about how cute your cat is than your probably not going to have many readers. You must right about things people care about. Actually, caring is not enough…they must want to read about it. I care about a lot of stuff, but don’t necessarily want to read about it all. When you pick your subject don’t just copy what all the big blogs and websites are talking about–if you do, it will be old news to a lot of your readers and they will skip your post. Be sure to take a new perspective on your subject as well. Once you’ve decided on a quality subject to write about, it is time to write with quality. This means using decent grammar and spelling. I’m bad about this one because I’m always too lazy to proof read what I right. :0 Writing with quality also means writing a way that connects with your audience. In most cases, being informal and adding personal touches is a good idea. It makes you readers feel like they know you.

Swapping links is a free form of advertising and a great way to increase your Google page rank. This one makes me reminisce of the webrings of olden web days. The basic idea of link swapping to find related blogs you like and see if the author is willing to swap links with you. You put their link on your site and they put yours on their site. If you’re having trouble finding people to sway, explain how this helps both of you. A cautionary note: be sure not to over do this one or your blogroll will get out of control.

I don’t know much about Search Engine Optimization (SEO) so I’m not going to spend a lot of time on this one. It is still an important consideration. I will provide a brief definition from wikipedia, “Search engine optimization (SEO) is a set of methods aimed at improving the ranking of a website in search engine listings, and could be considered a subset of search engine marketing…SEO is primarily concerned with advancing the goals of a website by improving the number and position of its organic search results for a wide variety of relevant keywords. SEO strategies may increase both the number and quality of visitors. ” What all that boils down to is coding your site in a standards compliant way, writing useful content, choosing words carefully, and making sure your site is listed on all the major search engines (Google, Yahoo, and MSN are probably the most important ones).

How do you go about getting your site submitted to the search engines? It is pretty simple. Usually, you just look for a page to submit your site. To save you the time and trouble of searching, I dug up the submission pages for Google, MSN, and Yahoo. There are some services on the web that will submit your site to a bunch of different search engines at once. Some of these are better than others and some of them cost money (I don’t recommend paying to do this when you can do it yourself for free). My former web host offered a service like this for free. It worked pretty well too, so be sure to check with your host.

Google just renamed their sitemaps page to Google Webmaster Tools. This is a good place to learn about your Google rank and keyword popularity. I highly recommend submitting a sitemap. I personally feel this will increase your ranking. If you’re using WordPress, there is a super easy way to do this. Just download and install the Google Sitemap Generator plugin. This handy tool will generate a Google Sitemaps compliant sitemap of your WordPress blog and ping Google every time your blog is updated. If you don’t use Google, XML Sitemaps is a good place to go. All you have to do is provide your URL, download the code provided, then upload it to Google.

Advertising is another way to spread the word about your site. Not really sure how much this one works because I’m too cheap to purchase any ads. Plus, I don’t sell anything on my site so what’s the point in paying to spread the word. If you can justify the cost, as many entrepreneur’s can because they are selling something, then and check out Text Link Ads.

Popular web services can provide variety to your blogs as well as giving your blog additional exposure.

Some Examples

Feedburner Just about every CMS supports RSS. Feedburner allows you to manage your feed(s). It offers a nicely formatted page in case someone tries to read your feed in their web browser. It also provides some basic instructions for people unfamiliar with RSS. Feedburner has many extra features. You can publish your flickr photo stream, are you del.icio.us bookmarks, and do many other useful things. Checkout WordPress Feedburner Plugin to make redirecting your WordPress feed to feedburner easier.

Flickr a photo sharing service. You can use feedburner to publish the photos in your site feed. I also use the popular FlickrRSS plugin to put some photos in my sidebar.

del.icio.us allows you to store bookmarks online. You can also share with friends and see who else is bookmarking the same site. ma.gnolia and furl are simliar alternatives.

9rules only allows the best blogs in. Getting in this one will take time, but if you do…your traffic will spike! There are many other blogging communities devoted to specific subjects (ex., MindPetals -Young Entrepreneur’s official Network). Try to find one that you’ll fit in and go for it. Note to self: find a network for myself.

Digg is a user driven news site. No longer is it only for tech related subjects. If you have some good posts you can provide a digg this link. If you are shameless, you can sumbit your own site. As more and more people digg it, your site will work it’s way to the top. The traffic this can bring is so tremendous it even has its own name: the digg effect. The digg effect has been known to bring many a good sites down because of the traffic load.

Technorati…don’t really know how to describe this one. It allows you to track other blogs and see how popular (or not in my case) your blog is.

A bonus trick is to write about Google every once and a while. You know the Google bot isn’t going to skip over something about itself. Do you think my Google Maps API tutorial’s high rank on Google is a coincidence?

If you know of any more promotional methods please share in the comments section.

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]]> http://www.mandladventures.com/2006/08/13/starting-a-blog-pt7/feed/ 1 Starting a blog (pt6) http://www.mandladventures.com/2006/07/28/starting-a-blog-pt6/ http://www.mandladventures.com/2006/07/28/starting-a-blog-pt6/#comments Sat, 29 Jul 2006 02:43:53 +0000 Matt http://www.mandladventures.com/?p=126 Related Posts:]]> Installation and setup

New to the series? Then checkout parts 1, 2, 3, 4, and 5

Before you can really do any kind of blogging, you must install and setup the Content Management System you picked from part 3 of this series. Due to the broad scope of this topic, I’m only going to provide links to existing tuturials (which is harder than it sounds. Some of these sites practically hide the installation instructions). Plus, l don’t see a need to reinvent the wheel. So, I apologize for not writing a more inclusive post but even if I tried you would not learn everything you needed from me because my knowledge of all the CMSs provided in part 3 is limited. However, just because I haven’t written a tutorial per se, you may still ask me how to do something. I may not know, but I’ll try anyway. FYI: I know WordPress the best.

Here goes nothing:

WordPress

Text Pattern

Radiant

Joomla

Mambo

Blogger

Expression Engine Core

Typo3

Drupal

Movable Type

Type Pad

MediaWiki

I hope these links help you get your new blog installed. If you know of any other great resources let me know. Thanks!

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]]> http://www.mandladventures.com/2006/07/28/starting-a-blog-pt6/feed/ 1 Starting a blog (pt5) http://www.mandladventures.com/2006/07/22/starting-a-blog-pt5/ http://www.mandladventures.com/2006/07/22/starting-a-blog-pt5/#comments Sat, 22 Jul 2006 12:32:46 +0000 Matt http://www.mandladventures.com/?p=122 Related Posts:]]> Where To Get Help

New to the series? Then checkout parts 1, 2, 3, and 4

Regardless of how brilliant we all are, there are going to be times when we’ll need technical help starting our blog. Hopefully, my other post in this series will reduce the amount of help you need, but I’m not so naive to think that I’ve provided all the answers. That’s crazy. My series has only scratched the surface of the blogosphere. Thus the goal of this post is to tell you where to go to get additional help. This part of the series isn’t much of a tutorial or advice. So, I plan on keeping it short and sweet.

General Help
Godbit Forum: My personal favorite. Godbit is an excellent website run by some of the best designers in the industry. The forum is extremely active and probably has an expert on any web related question you might have. Godbit is the place to go if you need a good, quick answer to a question you are having trouble finding the answer to in online documentation. As a bonus, they’re good at reviewing sites if your looking for suggestions.

Google Groups: This is just a general forum that you can find a group on just about anything. The quality of answers and responses varies greatly, but it is a good general resource.

W3Schools: This site is full of tutorials on just about every web language available. It is an excellent resource to learn the basics about any kind of web programming. I use it as a quick reference when I can’t remember what the exact command I need is. They also provide some code validors.

Wikipedia: the free encyclopedia that anyone can edit. This is a good place to get an overview of any subject, not just blogging. One of the more useful features to me is “further reading” section because it provides a list of sites where you can learn more.

listible: Listible is a new way to get relevant resources quickly. By using Web 2.0 features such as AJAX, folksonomy (tagging), social elements such as voting/commenting and the listible’s listonomy (listing), resources can be sorted in a way that will be digestible.

Programming
Learn to Program: is a great little online book that explains the basics of programming. The book uses Ruby as the language, but the concepts apply to all programming. One thing you will notice when you start to program is that the basic ideas and features remain the same of most languages remain the same, while it is the syntax that changes.

CMS Help
The best place to go for help on a particular CMS is the CMS’s homepage. I don’t see the need to try and list all the different CMS sites here because the list would get long and cumbersome. For a quick reference to the popular CMSs go to my
One CMS to rule them all? post.

Share any great resources you know of in the comments below.

Footing the Bill

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]]> http://www.mandladventures.com/2006/07/22/starting-a-blog-pt5/feed/ 2 Starting a blog (pt4) http://www.mandladventures.com/2006/07/15/starting-a-blog-pt4/ http://www.mandladventures.com/2006/07/15/starting-a-blog-pt4/#comments Sat, 15 Jul 2006 15:58:20 +0000 Matt http://www.mandladventures.com/?p=119 Related Posts:]]> Tools of the Trade

New to the series? Then checkout parts 1, 2, and 3.

If you’re going to build a blog/website then you must be equipped with the proper tools. Makes sense, right? But how do you kind of tools to use and which ones? Well, that’s what this post is for. Enjoy!

Web Browsers & Extensions
Mozilla Firefox: First things first, you’ve got to have a good web broswer to do you work in. Firefox is the best, plus its free and extendable. I recommend installing web developer extensions to make it even better.

First, download the web developer toolbar. This toolbar is indespensible to a serious web developer. It allows you to easily view the page source, css, images. It has links to validation services, allows you to resize your browswer to see what your page would like like in 800×600 and other custom sizes, allows you to manipulate forms, outline tables, and many other wonderful features.

Next, get Colorzilla. If you ever wondered what color someone was using, then use this handy tool to find out. Colorzilla provides an advanced eyedropper, colorPicker, page zoomer and other colorful goodies.

Third, install MeasureIt. Draw out a ruler to get the pixel width and height of any elements on a webpage. Very useful if you’re trying to determine the width of a Div or image.

Fourth, download IEView. Unfortunately, we live in a web where not everyone knows the joy of using FireFox. So, as designers and coders we must make sure our pages look like there supposed to in Internet Explorer (which doesn’t always render code correctly). This plugin adds a handy right-click shortcut to “Open link target in IE”.

HTML Validator is another useful tool. This one isn’t essential, but it does allow you to get a quickly see the of any errors when looking at the HTML source code.

Session Saver 2 isn’t really a developer tool, but I find it extreemly useful. It restores your browser -exactly- as you left it, every startup, every time. Not even a crash will phase it. Windows, tabs, even things you were typing — they’re all saved. So, if you have to shut down your computer, but don’t want to lose all the items you have opened in tabs, this is for you.

Even though you are web savvy and use the great Firefox browser, not everyone is. So, I recommend having at least 2 other popular browsers intalled just to check and see if your web page look correct in them. Remember, not every browser renders code the same. So, most importantly get Internet Explorer 6. Notice, I said 6 because it is the most used. IE7 beta is out (and a big improvement over IE6 in terms of usefulness and rendering), but few people use it yet. At this time you can’t easily have both IE6 and IE7 on the same machine. Opera is the other semi-popular browser. I actually like Opera’s design, except for its code rendering abilities.

Now that you’ve got the basic browswer tools, it’s time to move on to some more technical stuff.

File Transfers
FTP is the best way to upload files to your web server. Filezilla is my FTP client of choice. FileZilla is a fast FTP and SFTP client for Windows with a lot of features. It makes transfers as easy as drag and drop.

Code Editors
A good “code friendly” text editor is also needed. You could get by with Notepad, but why not use a tool provides syntax highlighting? Trust me, it makes programming easier. There are a few popular editors available.

Notepad ++: is a fairly popular code editor. It is a free source code editor (and Notepad replacement), which supports several programming languages, running under the MS Windows environment.

Firstpage 2006: is a pretty nifty tool. It highlights code, has tabs, provides a quick preview of your site. Also, it contains lots a list of freqently used tags. Firstpage 2000, I don’t use 2006, is my choice for an HTML editor. It provides all the functionality I need and more.

RadRails: is an IDE for the Ruby on Rails framework. The goal of RadRails is to provide Rails developers with everything they need to develop, manage, test and deploy their applications. Features include source control, debugging, WEBrick servers, generator wizards, syntax highlighting, data tools and much much more.

Nvu: is a WYSIWYG HTML editor. It is similar to Dreamweaver and Frontpage. I do not recommend using a WYSIWYG editor, but thought you should know about the option anyway.

Eclipse: is an open source community whose projects are focused on providing a vendor-neutral open development platform and application frameworks for building software. This one is pretty powerful, not really a simple Notepad like tool. It probably isn’t what you need unless you plan on writing some serious code.

Visual Web Developer 2005 Express Edition: Another powerful application development tool for ASP.Net. In an effort to compete with powerful open source technologies Microsoft has created a free version of Visual Studio called Visual Web Developer 2005 Express Edition.

Textmate: is an option for Mac OS X. I believe it is the popular choice for Ruby on Rails programmers. However, this one isn’t free.

CSS Edit: is exactly what it sounds like. Again, for Mac OS X and not free.

5ThirtyOne has a list of the Top 10 OSX apps to supplement blogging.

Note: I listed a few Mac tools above. I don’t do any web development on my Mac. Strangely enough, I prefer Windows. Probably because I don’t know what tools to use. Please let me know if you know of some good ones.

Image Management
GIMP: GIMP is an acronym for GNU Image Manipulation Program. It is a freely distributed program for such tasks as photo retouching, image composition and image authoring. It can be used as a simple paint program, an expert quality photo retouching program, an online batch processing system, a mass production image render, an image format converter, etc. GIMP is expandable and extensible. It is designed to be augmented with plug-ins and extensions to do just about anything. Think of it is an open source Photo Shop.

Picasa is a nice, easy to use image organizer. In includes some basic image manipulation features as well. Think of it is iPhoto for Windows.

Email
Gmail: The default choice for all my email needs. Gmail provides over 2.5 gigs of storage, brillant search funcanilty, auto filters, conversations, and chat all built in. Plus, it integrates with Google Calendar.

Thunderbird: prefer something a little more tradiional than web mail? Thunderbird is the way to go. It is from Mozilla (the same people who brought you FireFox) and it competes with Microsoft Outlook. You can even check your Gmail accout with it. Learn how here.

Bonus
As a bonus, check out Google Pack for some other free and useful tools.

Share the tools you use in the comments below.

Footing the Bill

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]]> http://www.mandladventures.com/2006/07/15/starting-a-blog-pt4/feed/ 4 Starting a blog (pt3) http://www.mandladventures.com/2006/07/05/starting-a-blog-pt3/ http://www.mandladventures.com/2006/07/05/starting-a-blog-pt3/#comments Wed, 05 Jul 2006 06:03:29 +0000 Matt http://www.mandladventures.com/?p=112 Related Posts:]]> One CMS to rule them all?

New to the series? Then checkout parts 1 and 2.

When I was deciding what topics to cover in my Starting a Blog series, Artjomp suggested I cover different CMSs. It sounded like a good idea, but my knowledge of the broad range of CMS choices is limited. Therefore, this post will serve as a synopsis of the different options available. I will conclude this post by providing links to where you can get additional information.

To begin with I need to define what a Content Management Systems (CMS) is. A CMS is a nifty piece of web based software the makes managing a web site easy. It provides an interface to write post, manage links, presentation, plugins, categories, etc. A CMS is much easier to use than hand coding all your pages. Once the software is setup up, maintaining your site/blog is a piece of cake. Most CMSs don’t require you to write any code…but to harness the complete power of a CMS you will need to do a little bit of coding (at least during the initial setup).

WordPress: is a state-of-the-art semantic personal publishing platform with a focus on aesthetics, web standards, and usability. It is both free and priceless at the same time. As most of you already know, my site is driven by WordPress (along with K2). WordPress is very easy to use and has endless choices of plugins to increase its features. WordPress comes in two flavors. One is the full powered host and install yourself version and the second is a pre-installed hosted solution similar to blogger. The hosted solution lacks the wide range of flexibility the WordPress is famous for, but is nice for the occasional blogger.

Text Pattern: Many of my friends from Godbit use and love Text Pattern (TXP) and a lot of them are professional web designers. I am contemplating on learning it myself. I did test TXP out several months ago, but it didn’t make sense right away. However, everyone says that once you overcome the short learning curve it is a great and easy to use system. One thing that WordPress offers that TXP doesn”t have an automatic theme switcher, which isn”t a big deal if you are not planning on changing your site design a often. Natilie Jost has an excellent article comparing TextPattern to WordPress

Radiant: This one is a relative new comer. AKA version .5 was just released. Radiant utilizes the increasing popular Ruby on Rails rather than PHP. Radiant features an elegant user interface; flexible templating with layouts, snippets, page parts, and a custom tagging language; special page-oriented plugins called behaviors; and a simple user management/rights system It looks like it is shaping up to be a nice CMS, so I’m going to keep my eye on this one. My web friend Robert Evans is about to test it out, so maybe he’ll publish a review for us on his site.

Joomla: is one of the most powerful Open Source Content Management Systems on the planet. It is used all over the world for everything from simple websites to complex corporate applications (at least that is what they claim on their website). Joomla! is easy to install, simple to manage, and reliable. I used Joomla briefly. It was a powerful and pretty easy to use CMS. However, it wasn”t very standards compliant. If you don”t know why standards are important then check out Five Reasons to design with standards.

Mambo: Essentially the same as Joomla. The core of Joomla came from Mambo’s code. I think there was some kind of dispute between the developers of Mambo and since it was open source some of the coders took the existing Mambo code and started there own system (joomla).

Blogger: is a Google service. Since it is a hosted service, the features are limited. It is a good beginners blog. A lot of people (myself, Adnan, Natalie Host) started off blogging by using blogger than migrated to something like WordPress or Text Pattern after they decide they like blogging and/or want more power. Adnan has a nice article titled Battle of The Blogs: Blogger vs. WordPress.

Expression Engine Core: is a nice feature-rich web publishing system by PMachine. The core version is free for personal, non-commercial use. I”ve tried it out before, and it seemed to be a very nice CMS. However, I preferred an Open Source solution because I have full control and can use it for whatever I want without paying anything. Express Engine has the ability to go beyond a standard blogging platform, but so do WordPress, Text Pattern, and others.

Here is a list of some other popular CMSs. I didn’t provide a summary of these because I have no experience with them.

Note: Some of systems listed above are more of a blog platform than a traditional CMS. Blog platforms have a lot of the same functionality as a CMS (so much so that most of the time they are grouped under the same umbrella CMS heading), but are geared more toward blogging (which is what we are concerned with). Technically, a CMS is more robust than most blog platforms. However, blog platforms like WordPress are so scalable through the use of plugins that the power difference becomes quite limited.

Additional Resources: Want to take a quick test drive of some of the different CMSs before without downloading and installing them? Then check out www.opensourcecms.com/. This site was helpful to me when I first started learning about CMSs.

www.cmsmatrix.org/ lets you select up to 10 different CMSs from a huge list and then generates a comparison matrix. Wikipedia. provides a quick overview and history of CMSs.

Know of any more CMSs or have experiences with the ones listed? Share your knowledge in the comments below.

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]]> http://www.mandladventures.com/2006/07/05/starting-a-blog-pt3/feed/ 3 Starting a blog (pt2) http://www.mandladventures.com/2006/06/28/starting-a-blog-pt2/ http://www.mandladventures.com/2006/06/28/starting-a-blog-pt2/#comments Thu, 29 Jun 2006 02:19:46 +0000 Matt http://www.mandladventures.com/?p=107 Related Posts:]]> Find Hosting and Getting a Domain Name

So you want to start your own blog, but you’re lost in a sea of web hosting choices. Luckily for you, I’ve already spent a lot of time researching and have decided to share my knowledge and experience to save you some time and trouble.

Picking a web host is one of the first decisions (and most expensive) you will have to make when starting your own site. Since hosting isn’t easy to change once it is setup and it is typically the most expensive aspect of starting a blog, it is scary choice to make–one that requires knowledge and deliberation.

Hosting essentially has two aspects. One, of course, is what company to go with. The second is technical specifications. In reality, the technical side is just as important as the cost side of the equation. Without the correct technology your site will be setup for failure before you even begin building it.

When you are shopping around for a host you need to have a basic understanding of some technical terms and concepts before you will be able to decide on what company and hosting package to go with. If you pick the wrong type of web hosting package, your server might not support the software you need to run the type of blog you desire. Also, if you are deciding on a web host by price alone you may get what looks like a great deal, but in reality isn’t. Therefore, an understanding of the following terms and concepts is essential.

Servers come in two basic breeds: Windows and Unix (Linux is a subset of Unix). Windows Servers typically run IIS, ASP.Net, and SQL Server. Unix on the other hand typically utilizes Apache, PHP, and MySQL. Of course, there are other server configurations, but these are the most common.

Web Server: A computer program that resides on a server that is responsible for accepting HTTP requests from clients, which are known as Web browsers, and serving them Web pages, which are usually HTML documents and linked objects (images, etc.).

  • Apache: Apache is an open source HTTP web server that can run on just about any operating system. Typically, Apache runs on Linux servers. Apache is notable for playing a key role in the initial growth of the World Wide Web, and continues to be the most popular web server in use, serving as the reference platform against which other web servers are designed and judged. More than 60% of sites on the Internet use Apache (M and L Adventures included)

  • IIS (Internet Information Services): Microsoft’s Web server. IIS runs on Windows based servers. It is the second most popular web server (behind Apache). The only reason (at least for most bloggers) to go with IIS over Apache is because IIS supports ASP.Net. IIS web host are more expensive because IIS is not free like Apache

Web Programming Languages: Programming languages that are utilized to write web sites. Traditionally web sites were written in HTML. Over the years sites have become more dynamic and more heavily utilize server side languages. Each language has its own set of pros and cons, but most can accomplish the same tasks.

  • PHP: is an open source programming language. Originally designed as a high-level tool for producing dynamic web content, PHP is used mainly in server-side applications. PHP is very powerful and has a large community of supporters. A bunch of other open source web software is written in PHP and almost all Apache servers are configured to support it. So if you looking for the cheap and powerful solution PHP may be for you. This site relies heavily on PHP.

  • ASP.Net: is a set of web development technologies marketed by Microsoft. Programmers can use it to build dynamic web sites, web applications and XML web services. It is part of Microsoft’s .NET platform and is the successor to Microsoft’s Active Server Pages (ASP) technology. Programmers can write ASP.NET code using any of the different programming languages supported by the .NET Framework, usually C#, Visual Basic.NET, or JScript .NET, but also including open-source languages such as Perl and Python. ASP.Net is typically written in an integrated Development Environment (IDE) such as Visual Studio 2005. In an effort to compete with powerful open source technologies Microsoft has created a free version of Visual Studio called Visual Web Developer 2005 Express Edition. ASP.Net requires an IIS server and the hosting is usually more expensive.

  • RoR: Ruby on Rails is what many of the savvy Web 2.0 developers seem to love. Ruby is a the programming language and Rails is the web application framework. It strives for simplicity and allowing real-world applications to be developed in less code than other frameworks and with a minimum of configuration. The Ruby programming language allows for extensive metaprogramming, which Rails makes much use of. This results in a syntax that many of its users find to be very readable. The main con is that not every web host supports it yet. RoR is free and it can be downloaded from http://www.rubyonrails.org/.

Database: Technically a DBMS. It is the backbone of most web applications. The database stores information that can be accessed via a web language or through SQL. The DBMS is the software that manages the database.

  • MySQL: MySQL is a free database that is popular for web applications such as MediaWiki or WordPress and acts as the database component of the LAMP and WAMP platforms, and for open-source bug tracking tools like Bugzilla. Its popularity as a web application is closely tied to the popularity of PHP, which is often combined with MySQL and nicknamed the Dynamic Duo. It is easy to find many references that combine the two in websites and books. My site utilizes MySQL

  • PostgreSQL: is a free object-relational database server (DBMS), released under a flexible BSD-style license. It offers an alternative to other open-source database systems as well as to proprietary systems. Godbit has a nice article that explains some of the difference between PostgreSQL and MySQL.

  • SQL Server: Microsoft SQL Server is a relational database management system (RDBMS) produced by Microsoft. SQL Server is commonly used by businesses for small- to medium-sized databases, but the past five years have seen greater adoption of the product for larger enterprise databases. It is very powerful and a bit pricey. For smaller sites and in an effort to compete with MySQL Microsoft has developed SQL Server 2005 Express Edition which can be downloaded for free. SQL Server requires a Windows Server (so you will also need IIS)

  • Microsoft Access: A smaller, less powerful DBMS. It is great for personal/small application use, but not ideal for web sites because of limited multi-user support and not being designed for a client-server environment..

Storage, etc.

  • Disk Storage: Exactly what it sounds like. It is just like hard drive space. The more storage you have, the more stuff you can put on your site. In reality, websites don’t require a ton of storage space, but I do recommend getting at least 1 GB (1000 MB) so that your site has plenty of room to grow.

  • Bandwidth: is the amount of information downloadable from the web server over a prescribed period of time. In essence, it is the rate [data/time], but the time in this case is not seconds but rather a month or a week. So this rate is not like 56K or broadband, etc., which are also bandwidth but are measured per seconds. Web hosting companies often quote a monthly bandwidth limit for a website, for example 2GB/month. If visitors to the website download a total greater than 2GB in one month, the bandwidth limit will have been exceeded. All you need to know that more Bandwidth is better. However, unless you are expecting tons of traffic are will be providing large file downloads there isn’t really any reason to be concerned with Bandwidth because most web servers provide plenty to support normal web site usage.

  • Email Accounts: This allows you to use your domain name in an email account. For example yourname@yoursite.com. Most hosts allow you to create several email accounts and also provide some form of web mail access. I don’t like using a host’s web mail access so I just set up my accounts so that my email auto forwards to my gmail account. I have gmail configured to send email from those accounts. Zymic Forums has a nice tutorial on how to set this up. Gmail Hosted is another option for users who need to manage several email accounts.

  • Domains: Simply the .com, .org, etc.

  • Sub domains: like having a site within a site. For example, tutorials.mandladventures.com.

  • Secure Sockets Layer (SSL): This is only needed for sites that need added security. An example use would be credit card transactions.

  • Control Panel: A Control panel in web hosting refers to the interface provided by the hosting company for the maintenance and monitoring of the hosted website. Many are host specific, but two common examples are cPanel and VDeck.

    • FTP: The File Transfer Protocol provides a way to upload files to the server. Once connected, the client (your PC)can do a number of file manipulation operations such as uploading files to the server, download files from the server, rename or delete files on the server and so on. Every good host provides FTP access to your web server.

    Shell: If you don’t already know what this is then you most likely don’t need it. If you do know what this is you probably don’t need to be reading my basic tutorial. Just in case your are wondering a Shell is a piece of software that essentially provides a kind of interface for end-users. Typically, the term refers to an operating system shell which provides access to the services of a kernel. Shell access may or may not be provided by a web host. Only power users, those who need to directly modify server settings, will ever need Shell access.

Domain Names Getting a .com is the easy part. The only hard part about it is determining what name to go with (I’ll leave that up to you. My only recommendations are to make it easy to spell, easy to remember, and unique). Most web hosting plans come with one free domain name registration. So, if you don’t already own a .com than I recommend using your host to register the domain name because it is free and requires the least amount of work.

If the host you decided to go with doesn’t offer the service, than I would considered finding a different web host. If you already own a domain name you have two options: 1. Transfer the registration to your host or 2. just transfer domain to your hosting (leaving the registration with the place you purchased it from). Check your hosting company and registrar for detailed instructions on how to do this. F.Y.I. iPowerWeb appears to have a cheap (as in $2.95 a year) domain name registration service for those of you who need to purchase additional domains.
What does all that means for you? In reality, the main choice boils down to Windows with IIS and ASP.Net or Linux with Apache and PHP. Trendier hosts also support the newer Ruby on Rails which is good if you want to learn a cool language and be in the Web 2.0 crowd.

Certain Content Management Systems (CMS) and blog platforms (to be covered later in the series) are based on certain web language and database combinations. For the software to work correctly, you will need a web server that supports the combination you are looking for.

In addition, you need to ensure that the hosting plan has adequate disk storage and bandwidth. Most web applications require a database so I recommend choosing a host that will allow you to run at least 3 databases (ideally each application will use a separate database). Dreamhost has unlimited MySQL database support. Another recommendation is to pick a host that will let you host as many .coms as you want on a single plan (once again Dreamhost offers this). Also, be sure that the host offers enough email address.

Now that you are armed with some basic knowledge go pick a host. Here are some lists to help you do additional research.

Popular Web Host

Free Hosting Options If you are unsure how much you are going to blog or if you don’t care about the professionalism of having your .com, there are some free options available. Most free hosting is advertiser supported, so be prepared for banners on your site.

Additional References

My Recommendation:

  • Dreamhost (best value and feature combination)

The first person to say “I want dreamhost” in the comments below will be eligible to get a “very good” discount on the price of hosting. I’ll contact you through email for more details. Everyone else can use the promo code “MandL” to waive the $50 first time setup fee.

Disclaimer: Though I have done my best to ensure the accuracy of this information, it is still provided As-Is. Furthermore, this is a very generalized overview of web hosting. With so many different server setups available, not all heuristics will hold true. Also, since I have not had experience with each of those hosts I can not assume liability for a bad referral. Before submitting payment to any site always research the trustworthiness of the business. Leave any questions, comments, complaints, and/or suggestions in the comments below.

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]]> http://www.mandladventures.com/2006/06/28/starting-a-blog-pt2/feed/ 7 Starting a blog (pt1) http://www.mandladventures.com/2006/06/26/starting-a-blog-pt1/ http://www.mandladventures.com/2006/06/26/starting-a-blog-pt1/#comments Mon, 26 Jun 2006 07:58:27 +0000 Matt http://www.mandladventures.com/?p=105 Related Posts:]]> Update: The series is now complete. For your convenience, I’ve updated the outline below to include a link to all of the posts.

It seems like there is plenty of information floating around the blogosphere about how to make your blog more successful, but not enough on how to build one from scratch. This post is the official start of my new series, “Starting a blog.” The goal of this series is to help non-techies and those unfamiliar with launching a web site learn how to start there very own blog. This series will be geared to newbies, but many of the resources that I plan to provide will be useful to veteran web developers.

Below I’ve provided a tentative outline of the series.

If you have any thing else you would like to see let me know and I’ll do my best to include it add it to the series.

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