Deciding to Blog

.. but need lots of guidance

[old_expat]

I have decided to start a blog that should be, I believe, an excellent complement to my website, which is on a slightly more general topic.

Searching the web seem to turn up little except the blogging service sites.

-I want to host the blog on my server.
-I do all my own sites, so HTML is not an issue
-I don't know anything about getting a blog syndicated

*Should I design my own blog and do it in HTML or use a CMS such as Wordpress or ...?
*How important is it to allow "Comments"?
*What other tools do I need?
*What strategy should I undertake?

Apologies if I have used the wrong terms.

BTW, shouldn't WW have a Blogging category .. or did I somehow miss it?

[phantombookman]

I would go for wordpress
Did it a few weeks ago, separate hosting, unique IP etc.
The potential of wordpress is simply stunning if you are looking to do a lot more than 'yesterday the cat was ill' etc
Highly recommended

[old_expat]

Hello phantombookman,

What do you recommend for getting your blog picked up by other sites .. or is that built into Wordpress?

[old_expat]

Should a blog be hosted as blog.mysite.com or mysite.com/blog?

[joaquin112]

both are same seo-wise. I'd personally go for mysite.com/blog

[etechsupport]

Depends upon your priority and features you need, worldpress is more popular but if you need more features and flexibility you might opt for few other blog software.

[old_expat]

It is not going to be a very fancy blog, but I am interested in "easier" means of promoting it.

[Beagle]

Some blog software comes with built-in RSS feed tools. I don't know if Wordpress is one of them. That would be your "really simple syndication."

[Iguana]

Wordpress has an RSS feed - it also pings pingomatic every time you make a post

[old_expat]

Beagle - thanks. Looks like that's my software .. and I love the price!:)

Iguana - "it also pings pingomatic every time you make a post"

Pardon the dumb question, but does "making a post" mean uploading to my server? Or is there a step that Wordpress does that I am not considering?

[SteveLetwin]

Normally with Wordpress and other blogs one doesn't upload posts or new articles to the server with FTP or something similar. Posts are normally written in a browser through the blog's interface and once finished you hit 'Post' or 'Publish'. Depending on how the blog works this either just updates the database or updates the DB and rewrites various html files. WordPress is written in PHP so it's all dynamic, no pages need to be created each time you add a new post or comment, since on each page load the page created fresh and new.