Is there some kind of software or some kind of code that I can install on a website I'm trying to build that can act as a blog? I see so many websites with their own blogs yet haven't the slightest clue how to install one. Neither does my web-guy. Any help would be appreciated. Thanks.
Wordpress is what I use, excellent product and free. You can visit http://wordpress.com/ to learn more. Many hosting companies have Wordpress as an installable application to incorporate into your website.
If you are on a Mac, MacJournal is an excellent product to post to your blog.
Feel free to contact me offline if you wish to discuss the above software as it applies to your site.
Sent (I think). Thanks for your help.Originally Posted by Claude Sapp
Find a WordPress junkie to set things up for you, it is the most popular and versatile blog software these days. Contact me if you want to hire the freelancer I've used.
While I second Wordpress (especially for the amount of different interesting skins that allow you to go from a simple blog all the way to a magazine style website), I am a little surprised that *you* ask this question. Aren't you behind the famous "Focus Magazine"? Shouldn't you - or someone who takes care about the magazine website - know how to install a blog?
Anyways, if you need help with finding interesting "skins" for specific purposes, feel free to contact me, maybe I can help you?
FG
Wordpress or Movable Type are both fairly similar. Both are free but will require knowledgable help to install and fine tune them. Anyone familiar with Unix should have little trouble with the initial installation. Fine tuning it to get the "look and feel" that you want can be an exercise in endless frustration. Both use "skins" for the interface, but neither has a design tool for the skins. You either stick with the defaults, pay someone to make a custom one or dive into the code to modify one of the defaults.
Quite frankly they are typical of the breed, designed by nerds for other nerds to use. As a recovering nerd it took me a couple of hours to get Movable Type installed and running and then another week of incremental tinkering and lots of swearing to get things looking the way I wanted.
In a way this is the downside of free software. With a number of good competitors in the market there is no way that I can see that a commercial blogging program would ever get off the ground. So you don't get a choice of whether to pay for a full featured professional product or choose the freebie version. Sort of like if GIMP had appeared before Photoshop, so GIMP was all you got.
I have to totally disagree with Paul...
Open source does have some minor disadvantages but it also has the incredible advantage that many good programmers have laid their fingers on the main code base, helping out perfecting it to a level that would be absolutely impossible if produced by a software house.
Installing Wordpress requires very little knowledge of UNIX. Unzip a file into a folder and change some settings in the config file... Wordpress has very simple to follow instructions on how to do this. Some hosting servers have "Fantastico" installed already, a utility that allows installing Wordpress with three mouse clicks.
Installing a "skin" takes again few seconds... you guessed it, another file to unzip in the correct folder... tweaking them might be a little bit more of a tech task but with the hundreds of free skins available and the dozens of fairly inexpensive skins (< $50) I have found, with a little search you can easily find what you need.
Feel free to contact me if you need some help choosing what you need :-)
Francesco
There are many, many people behind Focus Magazine. I just take care of some of the day-to-day work. The real talent comes in the form of the writers and editors. Anyway, I digress. I asked the people who take care of the magazine website if they could help me. They could not. Local web designers, charge outrageous fees for a basic flash intro. In fact, the flash on focuspublishing.net they quoted me would cost $15,000 to design and setup the entire website. I got it done for 10% of that, but I'm really not happy with it. Unfrotunately, he is limited in his knowledge. What I went to do is setup a branding design that matches on every single website that's part of the Focus universe, www.focusmag.info, www.focuspublishing.net, www.photoboookconnoisseur.net, www.photoconnoisseur.net and www.nyfocusonline.com. Right now the only two that match the same branding are the focus website and the photobook website. I'm trying to create an online community where photographers, galleries and collectors can all have one meeting point. A blog is the first step. My designer is competent to do the designing, but as far as programming a blog, he hasn't a clue.
David,
You have people talking about two different things here - a blog on your own site, or one on a third party site. If you want one on your site, then you will be limited by the webserver your site uses - Microsoft IIS or a Unix flavor. If you want one hosted elsewhere, you have a lot of options.
I have to leave for work now, but if you PM me over on my site, or start a thread about this on my site, I'll be glad to answer once I get to the office (I monitor the site all day).
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