I’m a programmer but I’m also very busy. I have made websites in the past but I haven’t done that lately. I wanted a place to park my thoughts. However, if I started building my own from scratch, I would never get anything else done. So I started looking at free blogs.
The most feature rich FREE blog website for my purposes was WordPress.com. WordPress has two versions. The first is the free blog host and it has a lot of bells and whistles but not too many. If you want more, you can use their free codebase (WordPress.org) on your own website you host somewhere else. WordPress has a huge fan base. There are plenty of free themes (visual design) and widgets/plugins/modules (code). The first two I picked added search to my web site and an archive of posts. But there are others such as displaying your last five twitter status updates or your last flickr picture upload.
I decided to use the codebase and host my own website because the free blog on WordPress’s site had too few features for my purposes. WordPress.org suggested some hosting companies. I choose one that featured an auto-install, BlueHost.com. I went to the hosting company, created my account, and wound up at the Control Panel. I control my entire account with the hosting company from the control panel. That was huge. I felt very empowered.
The Control Panel allows me to manage files, software, email, etc. Some of the stuff it offers I don’t understand. That’s fine. If I don’t need it immediately, I don’t mess with it. The first thing I did do was to set up a URL forward (Domain -> Redirects) so that anyone coming to that website (which wasn’t built yet) would redirect to my existing site. I also forwarded any email (Email -> Forwarders) sent to that new Bluehost website to my GMail account. At that point, my hosting company stuff was working but the website wasn’t.
I went to the programming section of the control panel (Software / Services) and rummaged around until I found the WordPress stuff under Simple Scripts. This is a script management website from Bluehost that offers one-click installs of a lot of free software such as blogging, photo gallery, mail, and ecommerce to name a few. I chose WordPress. If you have used the free blog hosted on WordPress.com, the installed software looks exactly the same but with more features.
WordPress installed as a directory off my main website and included an Administrator’s area for managing the blog content, design, and code. WordPress allowed me to dink with the design and code if I chose but I stayed away from that. I found a few widgets I wanted (Search Engine Optimization aka SEO and Twitter Updates). I installed those and configured them. There are a lot of free themes and plugins so I look at those when they are mentioned on Mashable or Alltop.
I tweak the Blog from the Administrator’s area every once in a while but I haven’t written any code yet. That makes me happy. I can focus on other things in my life. I’m using this site as any non-techy would so I think just about anyone can get one up and running with very little help.
I’ve looked into more feature-rich websites for content management (CMS) such as Drupal and Joomla which are also auto-installs at Bluehost. Joomla is far too complex for my needs. Drupal is much closer to what I want but not different enough from WordPress to make the jump.
