How to you create a WordPress blog?

And what's the difference between a web site and a blog?

You might be surprised how many people ask this question, and how complicated it is to answer...

Anatomy of a Blog

Sips From the Firehose

When you create a blog like this one for Sips from the Firehose, you make it easy for anyone to post images and text updates, but you lock yourself into a template design that's hard to change without more advanced skills.

Dashboard for WordPress to update a blog

Update a blog with any Web browser

When you create a blog with WordPress, you can update posts through a Web browser like Firefox. You just log into a special Web page with adminstrative features like you see above and enter your text and images almost as easily as you'd use a wordprocessor.

In WordPress, 'admin tool' is called the Dashboard and you can compose and edit posts from this window only if you have the right user name and password.

You can create many different kinds of logins and different levels of access with a WordPress blog, which makes them great for news, opinion, and any other sites that are frequently updated.

If you know your site is likely to grow to more than 100 pages, you should definitely consider graduating to a blog or content management system.

(You can still use Dreamweaver to edit your WordPress blog templates, but the content will go in a database).

Design Limitations of a Blog

Most blogs 'look like blogs' on the front end because they are updated on the back end with a simple form where you can add and edit text and images. What you gain in automation, you lose in design control because all of that 'data' is most efficiently turned into web pages when they all look about the same.

The more consistent you keep the look on each page, the more efficiently you can design a blog -- it's a tradeoff.

To learn more about CSS and web design, consider learning Adobe Dreamweaver to create a custom site, or edit your WordPress templates.

Essentially, a blog (short for web log) is just a special kind of web site.

If you want to update your site often and make it easy for other people to add comments, a blog is a great choice.

Blogs are designed to make it easy for anyone to post text and images to the Internet (even if you don't know HTML, the language of web design).

If you want to make frequent updates to a site and don't want to learn too much about the technical details, a blog is a good option, but like anything there are tradeoffs.

One of the biggest limitations of blogs is that they are not as easy to customize as you might imagine. You can choose from a gazillion templates, but if you want to change the colors or images or other features in a template after you select it, the learning curve goes up fast.

A blog is an ideal way to post text and images frequently, -- similar to a diary, except with a blog your entries (or 'posts') appear in reverse chronological order, meaning your latest post is always on top.

Blogs are especially popular among people who want to share their opinions, expertise, political views, and stories.

Many popular blogs are managed by more than one person, with comments from many readers, creating a kind of ongoing discussion. Blogs also include search features and ways to organize information in categories and topics.

Today there are millions of blogs on nearly everything you can imagine:

personal blogs
celebrity blogs
business blogs
mommy blogs
political blogs
and so many more...

Another great blogging feature is that other people can add comments, and even text and images to your blog.

Of course, you can always delete comments you don't like, and even choose if comments from visitors should automatically be posted to your blog or held for your review first.) Most of the best blogs include many comments on blog entries made by readers, as well as links and references to other blogs.

Another good use for a blog is as a place where a few people can easily contribute to an ongoing discussion and share information and ideas.

Blogs are easy relatively easy to set up

Blogging enables people who aren’t programmers to create sites easily, using some of the most advanced technology on the Web. The result is a paradox: It’s easier to create a blog than a static site, and super easy to post articles and photos, but much harder to edit the design of a blog than a static web site.

All you need to create a blog is a web browser and an Internet connection. There's no software to download – if you use the blog program online.

If you want to change the design of a blog in a program like Dreamweaver and do it all on your computer, you'll need to set up a server, or copy and paste code from one program to the other. (Learn more about the advantages of blogs, and other CMS programs, to understand when they're worth the extra effort.)

You can create and manage blogs completely online, and never use Dreamweaver. Blogging through a blog site is the easiesst option, but if you want to create or edit templates or posts, Dreamweaver is a handy companion. Either way, if you choose to blog, you will have to sign up or find a web host that supports blogs to get started with this options.

A blogging program is like a software program you use through a Web browser. You can write, edit, and save posts, and return to the blog from any computer with a connection to the Internet. (Compare the best blog programs here).

Read this review to compare WordPress to Joomla and Drupal to find which Content Management System is right for you.

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