Are you hesitant to start your own blog because you want to “do it right?” Would you like to hear some step-by-step startup tips directly from an expert blogger? If so, you are in luck! No, I’m not talking about me, folks — Brent Ozar, the SQL Server Expert who has been blogging for ages, just wrote a 5-part series on this very thing.
Here is a quick synopsis of the series:
How to Start a Technical Blog – Part 1
- Why start a blog in the first place?
- Set your expectations
- Get a good name
- Be yourself and blog regularly (but not on certain days; read to find out why)
Part 2: WordPress and How to Configure It
- If you are serious, you want WordPress, period
- Configure WordPress just right
- Get yourself found by Google
- Get Feedburner and other necessities up and running with little effort
- Easy database backup solution — you need this
- There are tons of themes to control your look and feel
- When you find one, customize the customizable but do not think about editing the code if you have a day job that doesn’t involve writing PHP and CSS
- Give credit for content, but respect individual privacy
- Don’t burn your bridges, your writing is somewhat permanent online
- Allow visitors to comment
These are some of the highlights, not a table of contents for Brent’s fine series. Even if you are a field-hardened and crusty old blogger, I bet you will find something useful there. Check it out!
Here are a couple tips of my own that I would add:
- Be prepared to deal with SPAM comments and trackbacks; as with email, it’s sort of an arms race
- Use the “more tag” in longer posts so that only a portion shows up on the homepage, otherwise the homepage can become very, very long
- Most plugins take computing resources: CPU, SQL queries; moderation is key
- Set up a test blog to try out new plugins, themes, or ideas without disrupting your live site
- I did this by setting up a subdomain with a second installation of WordPress — it doesn’t cost anything extra with the host I use
- Be careful: recently I sent pingbacks to another blog from my development site by accident, doh!
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Thanks for the writeup, and your tips are great! I’m at fault for not using the “more tag” myself, and my home page looks like War and Peace. In fact, I think I’ll go read up on using that right now…
I wrote up a “how to configure wordpress preqs” post a while back for getting php, mysql, iis, ntfs, etc. to all play nicely together.
http://www.boche.net/blog/?p=31
I was thinking of writing a blog like this today… too late. Although I think I can add a couple of things to that list.
@Brent, thanks and I hope the more tag works well for you.
@Jason, looks like a good recipe you have put together there. I don’t know if I should be embarrassed or not to admit that my webhost has a one-click script that automatically deploys a WordPress instance, including a MySQL DB. It worked perfectly, so I went with it. 🙂
@Duncan, you’ve set the bar for virtualization blogs, let’s hear some of your tips. I’ll be taking notes!
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@Eric There is no shame in working smarter, and not harder.
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