Setting up a Blog

Well, I give in. I used the blogging software that was the easiest to set up on my site, and low-and-behold, it has been buggy, unreliable, and although free, unsupported by my hosting company (can’t really blame them for that part!). NucleusCMS was great in theory, but the more time I spent on my blog, and on others’ blogs, and in doing more and more research, I decided I needed a stronger platform. So I am switching to WordPress.

I was intimidated by the WordPress installation – because I had to create a database. I may be a bit more technologically savvy than many moms, but I am NOT a coder; nor do I want to be. But in my desperation for a blogging software platform that had plugins that work, and was widely supported in the blogging community, I decided to give the installation a shot. Besides, WordPress is free too, so what did I have to lose? Nada. And you know what? The “Famous 5 Minute Installation” was pretty darn close to that – OK, maybe 30 minutes for me – but fairly harmless all in all.

Customizing the page is always a challenge, because I don’t know PHP or CSS. But I do know a little (and I mean little) html, and I have found that if I look at the code long enough, it starts to make at least a little bit of logical sense and I have had some success in getting the layout the way I want it to be. I think I can hire a freelancer to make some quick changes to appearance and it will cost me very little, so it will be worth it.

And I was even able to get most of my current posts imported into the new blog by saving the blog as an RSS file. I will have to manually add my comments in, but I don’t have a lot to add anyway . And now I am resting easy knowing my trackbacks will work, that I will be able to obtain some REAL analytics for the blog to track where traffic is coming from and track what readers are most interested in so that I can create more of it! If the blog is to succeed, it’s better that I recreate it now with 32 posts rather than a year from now, when the site is much bigger, and I have hundreds of posts and readers to migrate.

So now I am happily and heartily recommending WordPress. Go tell your friends!

If you liked this article, you might also enjoy:

1. A WordPress QuickStart Guide – What Plugins Should I Use?
2. eMoms Comparison Guide to Blogging Platforms and Hosting Companies
3. A WordPress QuickStart Guide – Compare WordPress to TypePad