Do I Need a WordPress Blog -- and What Is It? Our Napa Tech Guy Explains

BY DAVID MERCER

So you want to have a blog!

I get asked about this a good bit. The first question to ask yourself, is why do you want one?

To promote your business?

To expound upon your political views?

To help others with a skill or interest common to yours?

The next question to ask yourself is, will you actually spend the time to actually write on a regular basis? A blog of some kind is great, but not keeping up with it is, in some respects, worse than not having it (I’m not great on this myself, in fact).

OK, so assuming the answer to the first one is something clear to you, and the answer to the second is “yes,” let's get going.

You have a number of choices when it comes to having a place for your blog, each with its own pros and cons. They break down into two basic categories: a hosted blog via a blogging platform; or hosting it yourself on your own server.

A blogging platform has some real advantages -- it’s free or very inexpensive, there are less security issues, and it’s generally quite easy to get started.

On the other hand, it offers less control and customization -- and you’re at the company's mercy if they decide to cancel or change the service on you (case in point: Posterous).

Some great choices include:

WordPress (http://wordpress.com)

Blogger (http://blogger.com)

Tumblr (http://tumblr.com)

All have free blog options.

Each platform has its own set of pros and cons. I recommend you check each out to see what would be best for you.

A do-it-yourself blog, while it is more involved to set up, is entirely under your control.  You can customize and tweak it to your heart's content, and not worry about the metaphorical rug being yanked out from under you.

You’ll need to have someone help you with it if you're not technically inclined, but many hosting companies (including my own) make it fairly easy to set up initially, doing some of the initial tricky stuff for you.

Probably the number one platform for doing your own hosted blog, is using the same system WordPress.com uses -- you can find instructions and downloads at http://wordpress.org (note the .org at the end instead of .com).

There are many others, including Joomla (http://joomla.org), but WordPress is king of the jungle in this regard.

There are more templates (affecting the look of your site) and add-ons (that add functionality to your site or modify Wordpress in some way) than you could want: most free, and the rest low-cost.

You do have to be more vigilant for security issues when hosting yourself -- both on the system itself, and with any add-ons that you’ve installed. Many a blog has been hacked by folks to serve malware or worse.

If you already have a company website, adding a blog -- either thru a link to a hosted platform, or by adding WordPress to your site’s install -- is another option, if your interest is primarily business in nature.

A growing number of home and small business companies use the blog as their main website, due to its ease in editing, customizability, and the ability to add shopping cart functionality to it.

WordPress and other platforms can even be modified enough so that they look like standard sites with standard pages, not even using a blog in the traditional sense. 

I’ve set up a number of these recently, as they are a quick way to get up and running quickly without much expense, and allow editing of your site via your own web browser, rather than specialized software or expensive hosted editors.

If you have any favorite platforms I’ve not mentioned here, feel free to list them in the comments section.

If you have any feedback for me, good or bad, please leave comments for that as well.