What’s a blog-powered web site? Well, the LarsonCreative.net web site is one! kathy’s-art.com, themainplace.com, and villagetheatrearts.com are examples too. While they looks and act like a regular web site as seen in LarsonCreative.net blog-powered web sites take advantage of a comprehensive set of off-the-shelf, often open source tools that allow modules to be added and customized. I use design to make these interact seamlessly.

Basic Web Site Features

• Distinctly-designed home page.
• Main navigation found on every page and other elements entice visitors to explore your entire site.
• CSS-driven pages that define the color, fonts, and other design elements and gives the site a cohesive “look and feel” and brand.

What the Blog Platforms Adds:

• A blog, of course, provides reader ...Continue reading --> it gets better!

Around three new blogs are being created on the web every second! Now with Internet hosting and bandwidth becoming cheaper, more and more companies are offering free blog hosting. This post deals with 10 things every blogger should do before they venture into blogging world.

1. Find your topic / niche

   Decide what you are comfortable writing about. You should provide worth while information to your viewers. The popularity of your blog depends on the value of your information. With out a hook or a focus you will fail to sustain the initial momentum gained by reader queries.

2. Write at least three articles you are going to post

   You should write three posts. By doing this you can have more time doing some promotion work and interacting with your visitors. Ask some of your close friends to review the articles you have written.

3. Find a blogging platform that suits your needs

   You should spend some time going though some of the popular platforms ie. wordpress, blogger. ...Continue reading --> it gets better!

Hosted vs Stand Alone Blogging Platforms

Hosted Blog Platforms

This is the type of blog that many bloggers start out with, simply because they are easy and usually quite cheap (if not free). Probably the most popular of these systems is Blogger.com - but there are others like WordPress.com and MSN Spaces. TypePad also runs hosted blogs - although have the option to go with a type of standalone option also through remote hosting..

These systems are ‘hosted’ blog platforms because they ‘host’ your blog on their own domain. After what is usually a pretty easy set up process they will give you a web address (URL) that will usually be some combination of their own URL and the name of your blog. For example a popular WordPress.com blog is Acts242 - who’s web address is http://acts242.wordpress.com/ You can see the structure of that address has two elements, the blog’s name first and then the wordpress.com extension. This means that this blog is being ‘hosted’ by WordPress as opposed to the blogger having to organize and pay for that himself.

Pros and Cons of Hosted Blog Platforms

Strengths:

• Cheap or Free to run - most hosted options are free (of the four I mentioned above, only TypePad charges).
• Relatively easy to set up - most of these types ...Continue reading --> it gets better!