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Creating a Writing Blog

Discussion in 'Original Fiction Discussion' started by Vira, Jul 12, 2015.

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  1. Vira

    Vira Third Year ~ Prestige ~

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    Jul 12, 2015 #1
    I’m looking to start an original writing blog, but I don’t know which website to go to. I’ve looked around at wordpress and stuff, but everything just confuses me. I have to pay for a decent blog, what?

    The blog will just be a blog and book reviews, nothing fancy.

    Any advice?
     
  2. Jon

    Jon The Demon Mayor Admin DLP Supporter

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    Jul 13, 2015 #2
    Buy yourself a domain and ill host it for free and take care of the setup for you, or I can let you use a subdomain of either demonsdesire.org or reprion.net. Domains are pretty cheap these days.

    Personally recommend buying your own domain. They're dead useful.
     
  3. Ched

    Ched Da Trek Moderator DLP Supporter ⭐⭐

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    Jul 13, 2015 #3
    I was planning to use Ghost (maybe WP, but probably Ghost), buy a domain from Ghandi (there was some legal thing with your information?), and host it with either Ghost (if using Ghost) or something else (Bluehost?) if using WP (I'd use the .org version, but again leaning towards Ghost).

    I wish I could better remember why I picked all that.
     
  4. newageofpower

    newageofpower Professor DLP Supporter

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    Jul 13, 2015 #4
    Ah. I've made a few WordPress sites. 2 or 3 are half decent and still up.

    You'll learn each time you play around with it. As with relationships, you get better with experience and a mind willing to learn.

    The newest one, side ealchronicles.wordpress.com hosts my original fiction. Although, I've barely edited it, mostly my coauthor's work on it.
     
  5. Vira

    Vira Third Year ~ Prestige ~

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    Jul 14, 2015 #5
    Making a blog is hard. :(

    I’ve been researching domain names and they sound useful with the longevity and professionalism I want. It’s intimidating, though. A whole website? It’s like going out to adopt a cat only for someone to hand me a baby and say, “This is yours now. You better take care of it.”

    My dad’s a website designer so he says he can host my site. I just want to clear a couple things up. Excuse me if they sound really stupid.

    Would the wordpress.org software work on a domain I buy? Or would I have to get a domain anyways to go with the software? The wordpress.org site made it seem there were only two things I needed, a host and the software. If I didn't get a domain name, where would that leave me?
     
  6. Jon

    Jon The Demon Mayor Admin DLP Supporter

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    Jul 14, 2015 #6
    Wordpress can be installed seperately on any domain.
     
  7. Oz

    Oz For Zombie. Moderator DLP Supporter

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    Jul 14, 2015 #7
    You can also buy your domain and point it at a WordPress.com blog if you don't want to have to pay for hosting. About to go to bed but I can do a write-up for you tomorrow and cover all your options.
     
    Ched
  8. Ched

    Ched Da Trek Moderator DLP Supporter ⭐⭐

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    Jul 14, 2015 #8
    Ah ha! I found the bit of information that made me think Gandi was the way to go for domain names. But now that I've found it, those of you who know more than I do can tell me how much BS it is.

    http://www.gandi.net/domain/whois/

    Basically it's the whois policy. All the other registrars I read about way back when had (1) no privacy protection, so a whois gave all of your information out, (2) full privacy, where they listed themselves on the whois, which is an issue because legally that apparently makes them the owner and not you, or (3) both/either.

    Gandi lists your name on whois, but hides your contact information and tells any curious folks to contact them if the information is needed. I thought that sounded good.

    Now I don't expect anything like any of that to ever be an issue, since I'm not anticipating stalkers or anything illegal, but since I didn't see any advantages to the other options I decided to go with it.
     
  9. Joe's Nemesis

    Joe's Nemesis High Score: 2,058 ~ Prestige ~

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    Jul 17, 2015 #9
    I'll be starting a professional blog/website pretty soon for employment purposes. So, could you forward that information to me as well? I think I'd find it dead useful.
     
  10. Oz

    Oz For Zombie. Moderator DLP Supporter

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    Jul 17, 2015 #10
    Yeah, had the intention of writing it up but just started at a new job and been pretty busy. Off to a friend's birthday party, but I'll get something written down tomorrow. Don't be afraid to message me if it looks like I've forgotten.
     
    Joe's Nemesis
  11. Lord Ravenclaw

    Lord Ravenclaw DLP Overlord Admin DLP Supporter

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    Jul 27, 2015 #11
    How technical are you willing to go? There are some really excellent static blog generators out there that work with GitHub.com (a code repository service), http://jekyllrb.com/ among them. There's something built on top of Jekyll called Octopress that's a premade blog on top of Jekyll. You write posts as Markdown documents and push them to GitHub, it generates static pages that load incredibly fast. The flipside of this is that you don't get a lot of the fancy features of Wordpress, not that you need them.