Many of you may be wondering about the technology used to write this blog. Generally, beginning bloggers register at site’s that provide blogging tools for free in exchange for the ability to place ads and share revenue with each blogger on their unique blogging page.

Companies providing blogging tools in the space include Google’s Blogger.com, Typepad.com, Squarespace.com and LiveJournal.com.

The upside is you get to use their technology for free. The downside–you’re restricted by their templated systems to add plug-ins that will enhance your blog or allow you to post your own advertising inventory, whether you’ve sold it on your own or through a ad network such as Burst! Media.

In addition, you are part of a network of bloggers who’s content all fall under, for example the blogger.com domain. Your blog URI might look something like this: http://myblog.blogger.com. You aren’t standing on your own two feet, so to speak, which means not only are you beholden to the company you’ve registered with. This could limit your ability to export your database from one blog system to another due to incompatibility issues.

Have you started a blog and posted content for a year or so? Are you dissatisfied with the service you are on and want to move to another? Did the company make changes that aren’t compatible with the way your want to present your content? If you’re registered with one of these services, you could be stuck in limbo while you are trying to get your old content from one system to the other. If you’ve got a successful blog, this could be an issue when users come in to search your archives.

Now, this has never happened to me, so I can’t speak from first hand experience, but knowing what I know about web standards and cross-compatibility issues, generally these companies are building proprietary systems that won’t work with each other. I am registered with Blogger.com, but that’s before I found the Open Source project, Wordpress, downloading and installing 1.2 and then 1.5 when that rolled out about 10 or so days ago. Wordpress boasts 50,000 downloads within the first few weeks of its current update release. It’s a solid Blog tool and will be around and supported for quite some time.

So, now you’re stuck and frustrations go the better of you. Why not go Open Source and download Wordpress 1.5 from the developers web site at Wordpress.org. First, you must have web hosting account with a company operating Linux or Unix servers running Apache server, php 4.0 or above and have a connection to a mySql database. Sound simple? Not really, huh? Okay, let’s explain…

If I can do it, anyone can do it. I’m not a certified webmaster, nor am I great at web design, but I installed Wordpress on my own and have been using if for a few weeks now. Pretty good for a novice! You can do it too!

You’ll need a domain name of course, and server space from a web hosting company such as 1and1.com, GoDaddy.com, Interland.com or Verio.com.

You can register your domain name (the name that people will type into the browser’s address bar, i.e.; http://www.netmix.com) with any one of these host providers or at Network Solutions. Registering at GoDaddy or one of the other domain hosting services is usually around $9.95 for one year. Network Solutions is $29.95 for one year. Don’t ask me why one is so disparate from the other, but it just is. Network Solutions is the most expensive on the block. At some point, they’ll have to drop their pricing to remain competitive with the rest, but until that time, I prefer GoDaddy, although their site is rife with marketing gimmicks to get you to upgrade to other services.

Once you’re registered a domain name, you can request the most basic co-located web site hosting package (co-located servers are shared servers which reside at the host company and host hundreds of web sites along with yours, a dedicated server is your own server not shared with any other web site), which usually contain all the web tools you will need to host your web site or blog. Co-location web hosting today can run you between $5 a month and $20 a month or more, depending on how much server space you’ll need for both your web site and your blog. Dedicated servers are more expensive, but you only need one of those if you’re a high traffic site or concerned about security issues and you want to maintain full control over the server. The hosting company will not support dedicated servers as they assume you have your own webmaster.

After you set up your account you will be allowed access to the server via FTP or SSH. Once you’ve completed the process, you’ll have access to an adminstration area, usually through the host company’s web portal, where you will log in and then find your database host name, password and other pertinent information you’ll need for Wordpress 1.5.

Then you’ll download Wordpress 1.5 from Worpress.org, and if you don’t know any Unix/Linux commands, decompress (un-tar or un-zip) the distribution (a single folder containing a number of files inside of it, compressed to make it easier to transer by email or via FTP). You’ll need a program like WinZip or DropStuff with Expander Enhancer to open it. Find the folder that has just been decompressed, open it and you will see a directory of files you’ll need to install Wordpress.

You will then log in to your server remotely (from your desktop) using an FTP client, for example Fetch for the Mac or WSFTP Home for the PC. You can get these for free at CNet’s Download.com. Use your FTP client to upload the folder and its contents to the folder specified by your hosting company where your web site’s main page, usually index.html or main.html resides. Of course, never delete your index.html file unless you are replacing it with a new, updated version. This is the main page of your site and you may take down your whole site without even realizing it.

It’s easier to know a few Linux/Unix commands, which enables an upload and decompression of the full distribution to your server without decompressing it on your desktop. Better to do this than to decompress the file and have to upload a folder full of files one after another.

If you decompress a file using Linux/Unix commands, 1. it’s faster than uploading the decompressed folder using and FTP client, and 2. you’re decompressing directly on the server, which leaves you at less risk of not uploading all the individual files properly. This has been known to happen, but is becoming less of a problem with broadband connections. However, it’s best to be safe then sorry, when you start pulling your hair out because you can’t figure out why you’re getting error messages from the server when you go to view the Wordpress admin area.

If you’re not familiar with Linux/Unix commands, you can grab the SAMS book Teach Yourself Linux in 10 minutes or the Teach Yourself Unix in 10 minutes. In the book, you’ll find the compress and decompress commands to un-tar or un-zip the distribution you’ve uploaded to your server.

There’s even a command you can type which will go get the file from the download source (another web site or ftp site) without having to download it to your desktop at all. So, it’s good to learn some Linux/Unix. It can save you time and frustration. The command unzip < filename.zip > will un-zip a .zip file directly on the server. And the command, tar -xvf < filename.tar.gz > will unpack the .tar file.

Once you’ve unpacked the files, you will see a folder called Wordpress either on your desktop (if you didn’t unpack it on the server) or you’ll see the folder in the directory on your server (if you uploaded the solo zipped or tarred file and decompressed it using the Linux/Unix command above). You’ll find a ReadMe.txt text file in the folder, which you can read using Fetch or WSFTP Home by requesting to view the file as text, and that file will give you all the remaining instructions you need to set up your Wordpress blog.

The great thing about Wordpress is that there is a whole community of supporting users who are building templates for the software, from very stylish and bright to conservative newsprint looks. You can find even find Wordpress Themes Competitions at AlexKing.org.

Install a new Wordpress Theme template by simply downloading one from the creator’s web site, then upload the folder to the “template” directory in the ftp:(yoursite)/wordpress/wp-content/template folder. Use your Linux/Unix command to decompress the file (or decompress it on your desktop and upload it that way). By this time, you should have already learned how to log in to the Admin section, set up a user name and password for yourself and surf around, checking out the various adminstrative tools.

You’ll generally be in the Write, Manage, Plug-Ins, Presentation and Options sections, which are the meat of Wordpress. The Presentation section gives you direct access to the code that makes up the Wordpress theme you selected. You can choose between themes, or you directly edit the stylesheet or php code, without having to resort to HTML WYSWG editing programs like BBEdit or CoffeCup. This makes life a lot easier, believe me. And, on the Wordpress web site you will find a Support section that is helpful to anser your questions.

Once you’ve gotten your feet wet, it’s time to start surfing around for cool plug-ins that will let you add images to your blog postings or even set up a full media page for images, text files and multimedia files.

If you’ve registered for Google’s Adsense program, then you can grab the plug-in which will allow you to add your Adsense javaScript code to your blog and you can start generating some revenue for your web site. The downside for this script is you can only run the ad in once place on your page, the code breaks if you add it to different posts and will leave a blank space in your post.

I’ll be adding more here on Wordpress and other php/mySql web development and blogging tools as enhancements and new plug-ins are released.

Of course, there are other Open Source blog projects. A very popular one is MovableType, at MovableType.org. I found it to be difficult to install and couldn’t get it working, but many people are using it and swear by it. For now, I’ll run the Netmix.com blog off Wordpress and see how that goes.

Peace,

Tony