Month: May 2005

Posted:May 29, 2005

Preparing to Blog – WordPress

I have been doing alot of investigating of various blog software packages, which more generally go under the heading of content management systems (CMS) software. The first criterion I had for choosing an implementation package is that it must be open source, since I am not sure what my longstanding commitment will be to maintaining a blog site and I do not want to make a big financial outlay.

According to a Gilbane report and information on opensourceCMS, there are on the order of 80 open source CMS packages today, out of perhaps a total of 500 CMS packages including those for sale.

I looked at online demos for a number of the packages. (The opensourceCMS has nice online demos for about 40 systems.) The buzz around WordPress, however, was particularly strong. I was very much impressed with a rolling set of WordPress templates from a recent competition and really thought the ease of adding plugins and the number available would meet my near-term needs.

Though I could have done a more detailed comparison, which is my normal style, my approach in this instance was to act more like a “standard” new blogger and only do as much investigation as necessary to make a defensible choice. Thus, WordPress, here we come!

Author’s Note: I actually decided to commit to a blog on April 27, 2005, and began recording soon thereafter my steps in doing so. Because of work demands and other delays, the actual site was not released until July 18, 2005. To give my ‘Prepare to Blog …’ postings a more contemporaneous feel, I arbitrarily changed posting dates on this series one month forward, which means some aspects of the actual blog were better developed than some of these earlier posts indicate. However, the sequence and the content remain unchanged. A re-factored complete guide will be posted at the conclusion of the ‘Prepare to Blog …’ series, targeted for release about August 18, 2005. mkb

Posted by AI3's author, Mike Bergman Posted on May 29, 2005 at 5:29 pm in Blogs and Blogging, Open Source, Site-related | Comments (0)
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Posted:May 28, 2005

Preparing to Blog – First Test Drive

As a way of getting my first taste of what a blog is, how difficult it is to set up, and how one maintains it, I set up a test site on Blogger. The ease of setting up the site was remarkable! Truly, within five minutes of sign-up, I was editing and working with a blog site. It is clear why blogging has grown so fast, with reportedly 5 million of the sites alone being hosted by Blogger!.

However, because my interests go more to scale and bleeding edge funcitonality, I will forego using a hosted site (though it appears to be the right answer for most users). Instead, I will investigate and chose my own software package(s).

Author’s Note: I actually decided to commit to a blog on April 27, 2005, and began recording soon thereafter my steps in doing so. Because of work demands and other delays, the actual site was not released until July 18, 2005. To give my ‘Preparing to Blog …’ postings a more contemporaneous feel, I arbitrarily changed posting dates on this series one month forward, which means some aspects of the actual blog were better developed than some of these earlier posts indicate. However, the sequence and the content remain unchanged. A re-factored complete guide will be posted at the conclusion of the ‘Prepare to Blog …’ series, targeted for release about August 18, 2005. mkb

Posted by AI3's author, Mike Bergman Posted on May 28, 2005 at 11:58 am in Blogs and Blogging, Site-related | Comments (0)
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Posted:May 27, 2005

First Post – Decided to Blog

In conjunction with some open source investigations today, I came across a reference from Technorati that there were more than 10 million blogs currently in existence, with growth doubling every five months. A latter reference from BlogPulse suggested that the number of blogs was closer to 11 million!

The phenomenal growth rate of this medium convinced me to investigate setting up my own blog and understanding better what this new medium is all about. This date marks the initiation of this blog site.

Author’s Note: I actually decided to commit to a blog on April 27, 2005, and began recording soon thereafter my steps in doing so. Because of work demands and other delays, the actual site was not released until July 18, 2005. To give my ‘Preparing to Blog …’ postings a more contemporaneous feel, I arbitrarily changed posting dates on this series one month forward, which means some aspects of the actual blog were better developed than some of these earlier posts indicate. However, the sequence and the content remain unchanged. A re-factored complete guide will be posted at the conclusion of the ‘Preparing to Blog …’ series, targeted for release about August 18, 2005. mkb

Posted by AI3's author, Mike Bergman Posted on May 27, 2005 at 2:16 pm in Blogs and Blogging, Site-related | Comments (0)
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