Setting up a blog for your website
Friday, June 18th, 2010
Setting up a blog for your web site, in my humble opinion, is not for the faint of heart. I have written blogs before, and I have used the free services of “Blogger” (Google) and “Windows Live” (Microsoft). Setting up a blog on one’s website is a whole different kettle of fish. First, the services just mentioned are meant to be on the blog provider’s sites and not on your own. They are really quite easy to set up. Decide to create one, and you can be an author in a very short time, maybe minutes. Not so with putting a blog on your own site.
I read that putting a blog on our website increases our visibility on the web with the search engines, which helps SEO, or Search Engine Optimization. Blogs not on our website also help by making links back to our website, but I would think not as much as a home-grown weblog could. Blogs are text-rich, and the search engine crawl bots like that.
First, I searched the web for how-to-do-it pages. Then I decided to check with my host provider, as they seem to be up on everything, and I found that you need something to make it work, called an SQL database. I happened to know that my provider had such a weapon in their arsenal and were willing and able for me to use it. I wrote them and they recommended WordPress as the program of choice. They told me how to access this in my control panel for our website.
Let me be clear about this: Don’t attempt this at home! Unless you are comfortable with html and web stuff, this is best left to professionals.
I have written some websites on and off for many years, and felt that if someone who did not make a living creating websites could attempt this, it would be me.
I went into the control panel and downloaded the program (and blog) to the root directory of the website. In the documentation one usually sees after an installation, it stated that I might want to put the program and blog in a separate subfolder, as the files can look pretty messy in the root folder. I then attempted to do that in the configuration file, saved the changes, exited the program and was now unable to reenter. I got that feeling that one gets after accidentally deleting something very important and can’t get it back. I called tech support with my tale of woe. The tech said he would advise me to uninstall the program (I hadn’t written anything at that point) and reinstall it in a new folder off the bat.
I reinstalled the program and proceeded to set it up. One of the configurations was to be able to put in “pretty” URLs for when people wanted to bookmark a post. This would make it easier for them to identify the post without having to rename it. More on this later.
I opted to use one of the free templates to lay out our blog. I chose one, and set up an install. It wouldn’t install. I called the tech at the ISP host. He decided to do it for me. It took him a while, but he finally got it. If it stumped him (and he said he was familiar with WordPress), I probably would have gone crazy. I thanked him profusely, hung up, and advanced to the next step.
I had worked with templates before, and wanted to rid the sidebar of this blog of unneeded links put in by the authors, as it would be confusing for you, the viewer, to figure out why you needed so much documentation on WordPress instead of photography. Try as I might, I could make changes to the template, but when I closed it, it would heal itself and come back. It was like the Hydra – every time you removed a link, I swear it grew back with more. I realized that I had no way to save or update the file. I then got back on the phone with the tech guy. I was amazed. I made 3 calls to that point, and I got a different local guy (US) each time. I think he was a bit confused by my blathering on, but he was patient and had to put in permissions for me to make changes to everything in the sidebar. One at a time. Really. In the end, I was on my way again.
This blog was starting to shape up. I wanted to put in blurb somewhere telling what this blog was about. I finally found the “about” page. I went into the config screen and typed in my text and put our logo in it. I clicked “preview.” A Google page came up, saying the link was broken and it couldn’t find the about page. I spent many hours trying to figure out why it wouldn’t work. I knew the path didn’t look right for this file, but the only part of it I could change had the word “about” in it. Dejected, I shut down my computer and called it quits to sleep on it. I thought I had the idea early in the morning and ran to the computer to try it out. I didn’t see that the page had an htm ending on the file name. I was wrong. It still didn’t work. And then it dawned on me. The file name was all wrong. Remember making “pretty URLs?” I went back to the configuration page and unchecked “pretty” and rechecked the default. Worked like a charm. Now, hopefully, everything will work right and We Shoot has a real on-site blog. It took 3 days, but it was worth it.
– Gary Silverstein
