Comparing Free Blogging Software

by: Don Beavers

With the increased interest in Blogging (web Logging), many web hosting providers now provide an assortment of free usage, open source blogging software packages. Among the most popular of these blogging tools are B2evolution, WordPress and Nucleus. Each of these programs offer similar basic features, so the question arises as to which one is easiest to use and would be appropriate for the requirements of your particular website. The answer lies in the true purpose of your blog website. If your primary goal is to share your opinions and ideas with the general public, you would want to utilize a different blogging tool than a user who was creating product blogs as a commercial sales effort. A blog for search engine promotion would have entirely different requirements. All of these uses are viable reasons to create a blog, however each requires different features to be successful. WordPress Blogging Software Available for free download at: http://wordpress.org/ It is hard to beat WordPress for general personal blogging. WordPress is an open source, state-of-the-art personal publishing platform with a focus on presentation and usability. Everything related to creating and updating your blog is available through an intuitive graphical interface. With WordPress there is no need to compile your work. You simply write your column. You then select the features you want and your blog is instantly created and published to your website. If you are on vacation, you can schedule your uploads for some date in the future or even email your column to the server! The system allows multiple users with multiple blogs divided into categories and sub-categories. This allows multiple family members or friends to create their own blogs along with yours. Easy customization and the availability of many "plug-ins" that provide more functionality (add new features as you learn) makes this software a very good choice for most individuals. B2evolution Available for free download at: http://b2evolution.net/ B2evolution is another advanced web log tool that features an integrated XHTML validator. It supports recursive subcategories, cross posting and has a really cool integrated "skinning" system. The "skinning" system allows you to create multiple blogs in separate categories with different appearances for each blog. You simply "change the skin" for the blog to create a totally new look and feel. The "skinning" feature, combined with the built in multi-user administration management tool, makes the system robust enough for more commercial endeavors, such as product promotion blogs. If you have much to publish with multiple themes, this is the software you are looking for. Nucleus Blogging Software Available for free download at: http://nucleuscms.org/ Though Nucleus is an extremely robust blogging tool in its own right, it also contains some powerful features that can provide benefits in promotion of your blog. Nucleus offers the ability to optimize its URLS, creating simple page addresses that do not have and "&" or "=" characters. This makes the pages search engine (and user) friendly. Another great feature is the ability to show the contents of multiple weblogs on one page. This could allow a website owner to manipulate the optimum text / keyword balance on pages for better search engine rankings. Nucleus also provides RSS and Atom feeds that can be extremely helpful when promoting a website. If part of your blog's function is to work as a search engine marketing and promotion tool, Nucleus is an exceptional software package. Each of these blogging software packages offer the basic tools that you would need to create a successful blog and all three are PHP - MySQL open source (free to use) packages. You should try to select the software that helps you achieve the long term goal that you have in mind for your website based on the unique extra features offered by each.

Choosing The Right Blog Tools

by: Gunnar Berglund

Bloggers are constantly discovering new ways to express
their ideas through new markup.
There are bloggers who are using the latest
state-of-the-art “visual” web design programs, but few
others consider using HTML code is not a bad idea
altogether.

The XHTML family can accommodate extensions through XHTML
modules and techniques to develop new XHTML-conforming
modules. These modules permit the combination of existing
and new feature sets when developing content and when
designing new user agents.

With so many different ways to access the Internet, the
XHTML family is designed keeping in mind the general user
agent interoperability. Through document profiling
mechanism, servers, proxies, and user agents are able to
create best effort content transformation. This language is
both RSS and XML conforming. The content can be readily
viewed, edited, and validated with standard XML tools.
XHTML documents can utilize applications (e.g. scripts and
applets) that rely upon either the HTML Document Object
Model or the XML Document Object Model.

Bloggers may also use Movable Type for the weblog. Movable
Type is a powerful, customizable publishing system, which
installs on web servers to enable bloggers to manage and
update weblogs. This enables a blogger to hand edit the
other parts and pages, including the Daily Links, in
TextPad. Bloggers may use a date format string for the
individual entries, and for monthlies.

Movable Type Installation is followed by Plugins. There are
many to choose from. MT Plugin Directory and the Movable
Type Support Forums are two resources that can be referred
to. Most of the plugins make users typographically correct
and enables them to properly use curly-quotes, ellipses,
em-dashes, and en-dashes. A feature of pluggins combines
trackbacks (comments on other articles from other blogs)
and comments into one page. Another use is to create author
comments and addendums in the comments engine. Few plugins
may allow bloggers to add additional fields, example: using
keywords field to create additional fields. Few others
create a collection of links at the bottom of each
individual entry page. Title attributes can be used with
all the links. Movable Type includes a default RSS Feed.
Bloggers may set up individual feeds for each thread and
comments feed by following the naming convention of
individual archives - changing it to an .xml ending.
Bloggers may even add a Subscription Field.

Also, bloggers may consider using a WebDrive in place of a
FTP client. This tool is used to map FTP and WebDAV servers
to a network drive letter in Windows using remote files
like local ones in any application. Blogger may also
consider using validated HTML 4.01 Transitional code with a
validated stylesheet.

Blogs demand more than graphic design and HTML proficiency.
They demand extensive interaction with visitors. So,
installing a Discussion Forum is a must, as it allows
communities to exchange ideas and opinions. Tools that
could be considered are database programming, CGI/Perl
scripting, Flash animation etc.

In addition to this, bloggers may consider having an
Accessory Sideblog - another blog that stores ancillary
information and tools for the existing blog.

Accessory Sideblog allows:

· Easy updation

· Changes in entries/ information from within
Movable Type interface

· Availability of comments and trackbacks

Bloggers may consider buying opensource weblogging
softwares. These easily installable softwares offer
features like: fully-integrated comments, searching, file
uploading and image handling, completely customizable
output through dozens of templates and variables, multiple
author support, etc. For example: few blogs allow bloggers
to provide a template of their page that indicates where
they want your posts to appear. Clicking the "Publish"
button automatically sends their new page to the website
where they want their blogs to appear. Similarly, there are
sites that enable bloggers to place the RSS feed of their
blog onto any html page. For example: bloggers can copy the
completed JavaScript and paste it on any web page they
would like to distribute.

Bloggers can host their blog on their own as well with any
good web-hosting company. They can choose a good web host,
buy space on their server and host their blogs with them.

Make Money Blogging Using These Nine Powerful Strategies

by: Brandon Hong

I'm sure there are more creative ways to make money blogging, the ideas below are meant as a resource pool for you to draw from, and a launchpad to kickstart the thinking process of making money from blogging.... The question "How to make money blogging" sits high on every blogger's mind. In fact I received many questions on "How to make money blogging" when I conducted my first webcast to answer my subscribers' most pressing questions on Blogs and Rss. You can make money Blogging in a number of ways, and in this article I share with you up to nine ways in which you can make money blogging. 1. Make Money Blogging by Selling Advertising Space Before the advent of Blogs, we have e-zines and selling advertising space on ezines was a popular way to earn extra money. If you run your own Blog, you can let others advertise in your Blogs with banner ads, solo ads, sponsor ads, classifieds and so on. Now that we have Blogs, you can repeat the same business model that e-zine publishers do, that of selling advertising space. One popular advertising company that helps Bloggers look for advertisers is Blogads (www.Blogads.com). Besides placing advertisers ads on your Blog, you can also make money Blogging by placing Google Adsense into your Blog. In my "Marketing Rampage with Blogs and RSS" Videos, I show you how you can customize your Blog template to include the Google Adsense into your Blog template so that you can make money blogging. 2. How to Make Money Blogging by providing technical services such as Blog hosting or setting up Blog You can also earn money blogging by providing technical services such as helping people to set up their Blogs or providing your own Blog hosting service. One example of this is www.typepad.com . This is a Blog hosting service provider that charges a monthly fee. Typepad lets you create your Blog and they will host your Blog for you, and provide you with a number of Blog features. 3. Make Money Blogging by setttin up joint venture marketing Joint Venture marketing is a powerful marketing strategy employed by many top online marketers. Basically how joint venture works is this: You promote person B's products to your subscriber and customer list, and you get a cut from whatever sale that follows from this promotion. You can apply the principle of joint venture marketing to Blogs as well. If you have a substantial readership to your Blog, you can also promote or endorse certain products to your Blog readers and this way, and split the profits from the sales generated. This is another way to make money blogging. 4. How to Make Money Blogging from using the Membership model Over time, if your blog has lots of postings and provide good quality content, you can consider turning it into a membership site and charge access for it, again giving you another avenu 5. Make Money Blogging by turning your Blog contents into products Another way in which you can make money blogging is to repackage your Blog contents into an e-book or an audio product and sell it. For example, if you run your own Podcasting show or an 'online radio show', you can easily compile your podcast recordings into a CD compiliation and sell it. 6. How to make money blogging by swapping blogs You've heard of ad swapping when it comes to e-zine publishing, where publishers publish each other's ads in their own e-zines. This way, you save on adveritising costs. You can repeat the same model to Blogs, as swap ads on Blogs as well. So instead of paying up front, you get to save, which means more money for you to spend! 7. Make money blogging by turning blog contents into RSS feeds and sell it as premium feeds Your blog contents can be turned into an RSS feed. If the content is good, you can look for web businesses that are looking for good content for related topics and sell their feed to them. 8. How to Make Money Blogging by well, asking! Hey, who's stopping you from putting a PayPal donation jar or button on your Blog? After all, there are lots of generous people out there you know. 9. Make Money Blogging as an Affiliate Marketer Another way you can make money blogging is by promoting other people's products on your Blog. This is also known as affiliate marketing. In affiliate marketing, you get paid a commission when someone clicks on your affiliate link and makes a purchase. Depending on the subject of your Blog, you can recommend products that solve people's problems. For example, I had a subscriber who asked me how she can blog about cats and make money from blogging about cats. I shared with her that firstly, perhaps she might want to go niche instead of targeting the broad category of "cats", and using the example of a Persian cat, which is a niche by itself, she can start a blog on Persian cats, providing valuable information as well as recommended solutions and products to the upkeep and maintenance of Persian cats.

Brief History of Blogs

by: Andy Wibbels

So where did all these blogs come from? How did they get from an underground geek toy to a mainstream tool that has revolutionized politics, journalism, marketing and the media? I always find that when I learn about a new technology or way of doing something online, the geeks have already been there (and I say the word 'geek' with complete affection - I'm one too!). Before business became inseparable from the computer, email or the internet, the academics and tinkerers were there first, kicking the tires and playing with the technology. Blogging was no exception. Many of the earliest internet geeks wrote online journals detailing interesting links and points of view. As this was before programs like FrontPage and Dreamweaver, everything was done by hand - and that was a huge hassle. Each time you updated the site, you ran the risk of breaking links inside the website and leaving your readers stranded with the dreaded 'page not found' error. Eventually, the computer programmers and web designers became fed up with all of this manual work and created their own software to automate the process of updating their journal websites. Thus the weblog was born. In 1999, a website called Blogger (http://www.blogger.com/) launched, offering free blogs to anybody and everybody that wanted them. Blogger provided the blog tool for free as well as the hosting space to host a blog. Millions of people from all over the world logged on and start creating their own weblogs. The largest conversation in the world had begun. Blogs have changed the way academics do research, journalists write, families connect and politicians fundraise. It was only a matter of time before businesses woke up and realized the power of blogging for marketing online. Blogging provides a way for companies and customers to meet on common ground to talk about what excites them and makes them tick. It also allows them to closely track where and under what circumstances their products are being talked about online. Today, blogging continues to grow at a swift pace with more than 400,000 posts added per day and 12,000 new blogs being created every day. Millions of people look to blogs for a good laugh, a great idea, a fantastic tip or an instant analysis. The blogosphere doubles in size every 5 months, allowing anyone, anywhere, in any language, to make their mark in the world to share their ideas, passion and products. 'Blog' was the word of the year for 2004 according to Merriam-Webster, the famous dictionary publisher. The year 2004 marked a turning point for blogs as a sought after media format. Now it was seen as a venue for gathering large audiences of devoted readers who used blogs to supplement, compliment and fact-check their nightly news. My favorite milestone for blogging was when 'Blogs' appeared as a category on the Jeopardy game show. I'll take blogging for one thousand, Alex! Copyright © 2005 Andy Wibbels About Andy: Andy Wibbels is a blogging evangelist and creator of the Easy Bake Weblogs seminar that has helped hundreds of small businesses all over the world leverage blogs and RSS news feeds to increase profits and save time. You can download his free special report on business and blogs at http://easybakeweblogs.com/.