Archive for the ‘Admin’ Category
Blog outsourced
I decided to re-outsource the blog (see earlier posting on in-sourcing it). I’ve been touting the virtues of outsourcing to anyone who will listen recently, e.g. Google Sites, Wik.is, and decided to take my own advice.
As far as I can see, it has little effects on Google search results. Both my hosted (personal website) and non-hosted (WordPress) blogs appear just as often in listings. I couldn’t see what I was gaining/loosing by “rolling my own”.
Seems to me, having it on WordPress is one less thing for me to have to take care of.
I wonder what Damian would think…?
Hosting my own blog.
I finally decided to try hosting my own blog.
Seminar
I attended a seminar during the week at the Irish Computer Society on blogging (actually, the title was “Web 2.0 – The Emerging Opportunities in Mass Collaboration”). The second of two presentations was given by Damian Mulley. I found Damian’s talk very useful from a strategic blogging perspective, i.e. if you’ve got a blog, how to get more out of it.
Damian recommended hosting your own blog instead of free siting. I’d been thinking of doing this for a while but mostly out of laziness I didn’t. Plus, I thought using WordPress would give me more powerful (aggregated?) exposure. I’m not sure if that turned out to be true.
GoDaddy
Since I host with GoDaddy (whom I find pretty good, despite all the bad press out there) I used their automated installation option and set up WordPress on my own site: www.kmassets.com. It was pretty hassel free insofar as they set up the database and everything in one or two clicks. I also set up a subdomain instead of using folders. I’ve always liked sites that organise in this manner.
Subdomain
One thing that tripped me up for a few hours was I think you need to set up the subdomain before you install WordPress. My first attempt didn’t take but then I did it the other way round (set up subdomain, then installed blog). That could have just been me monkeying around though.
Widgets/add-ons
I discovered you have to select and upload any widgets/add-ons you want as the install comes bare bones. Not a big deal for me. I also discovered that there are many more templates for own-hosting than free-siting. Of course, I stuck with the same “simpla theme”. I’ll get experimental over the weekend…
Driving traffic
The main reason I switched over was, per one of Damien’s recommendations, it helps drive traffic to one’s website. The example he gave was IceCreamIreland which is a relatively small scale blog/webiste operation run by Kieran Murphy in Cork. Kieran has a huge Google presence even though he does it all himself. It’s due to his regular blog postings, another key point, according to Damien.
Exploration
Anyway, for me, most of this was a technical exploration. Since I don’t have anything on my website yet the benefits will be minimal. I’ll be curious over time to see if it increases my Google rankings. Sure, it’s all good fun!
Opps! Nearly forgot… here’s the link where I’ll be posting from now on… blog.kmassets.com.
