SiteGround Tutorials

Blog Tutorial

People feel the need to share their thoughts and opinion with other people. Nowadays, the most effective way to do that is to create your own weblog or, as it is most popular - blog. But, how to start your own blog? Fortunately, today starting a blog site is a really easy task.

There are free Open Source blog tools, which help you create and manage your blog site.
You do not need to know anything about web design or development to start blogging.
All you need to do is open a hosting account, where you can have a blog application installed and activated. Here, at SiteGround, we offer FREE blog installation with our blog hosting package. You can start creating your site right away.

The easiest way to create a blog site is by using a ready-made blog tool.

The blog application has built-in fuctionality such as, posting articles, HTML editor, commenting, archive, etc.
The most popular blog tools have a large supporting community. You will be able to find free themes for your blog and customize it the way you like.

Which blog application to use?

With the help of a blog application you needn't be a web designer or developer in order to share your thoughts with the world. In the following pages you will find brief instructions how to build your own blog by using two of the most popular blog tools:

Define: Blog

There are different descriptions of that concept. According to most of the articles in the Internet 'blog' is short form for 'weblog', a frequently updated publication of comments and thoughts on the web. Usually it is reflecting the views of the blog's creator. Blogs consist of text and images and are sorted by date. The newest information is on the top and there is an archive of the old one. People create blogs to share their live experience with the world. The person who is updating that journal is called blogger. They write about different topics: from the typical daily situations to the progress of some scientific researches. The readers also can leave comments and this make the whole thing more interesting and useful.

History of blog

Blogs are part of the World Wide Web since its creation. In the beginning they did not have a define name, but their purpose was near to the contemporary ones. Here is a list of the first blogs:

Dawn of Internet: Tim Berners-Lee at CERN begins keeping a list of all new sites as they come online.
June 1993: NCSA's oldest archived 'What's New' list of sites.
June 1993: Netscape begins running it's 'What's New!' list of sites.
January 1994: Justin Hall launches Justin's Home Page which would become Links from the Underground.
April 1997: Dave Winer launches Scripting News.
December 1997: Jorn Barger coins the term 'weblog''.

Create blog site with WordPress

Adding blogs from external sources - Blogger

In WordPress there is a way to import posts and comments from a Blogger account. First you should make an account in Blogger at the following location: Blogger.com. The creation of a new account is pretty easy. All you have to do is to click on the orange arrow with title "Create your blog now" and follow the instructions. Once you are ready and you have a post there, you can import it in your WordPress site. There are some simple steps, that you should complete:

Step 1. Log in the administrator's area.

Step 2. Click on Import tab.

Step 3. Choose Blogger.

Step 4. Enter the login credentials for your Blogger account and click on [Start] button.

Step 5. Once the automatic procedure is over, you can see your Blogger content on the main page of WordPress.

Create blog site with Drupal

Try Drupal! Get a FREE Drupal installation with SiteGround Drupal hosting Package!

Drupal is one of the best Open Source CMS tools in the web. It has been recently awarded the Overall 2007 Open Source CMS Award at the PacktPub Contest.

Drupal is written in PHP and requires a MySQL database, both of which are available with the SiteGround Drupal hosting services. Drupal basic installation can be easily turned into many different types of web pages - from simple web blogs to large online communities. Drupal includes features to enable content management systems, blogs, forums, newsletters, picture galleries, and more. Here we will explain the use of Drupal as a blog application.

Drupal installation

Please, visit the pages listed below to find detailed instructions how to install Drupal on your website with the help of the Fantastico auto-installation tool or via the web.

How to create a blog site with Drupal?

Once you have finished with the installation of Drupal, you should navigate to the web address, where the script is located and you will see the main page. First you should create your account:

Create blog - Create new account in Drupal

Once you have your password, you can log in the Administration area. There you can create content or edit your profile, manage your installation and more from the administer menu:

Create blog - Drupal Administration

To start using Drupal as a blog, you should first enable the blog module from Administer -> Modules. The following modules should be checked:

menu
node
path
page
statistics
story
taxonomy

Also you can download and install image module.

Drupal Settings

Then please go to Administer -> Settings and fill in the text boxes with the required information. This will help the Search egnines to easily crawl your blog site.

After that you should continue setting the access control in Administer -> Access control. Click on the roles tab. Create your own role. The rights you give here depend on how you use your site. In the beginning you can check the following options:

administer and create images
administer menu
access content and administer nodes
create pages and edit own page
create url aliases
access statistics
create and edit own stories
access administration pages
administer taxonomy

After that you should go to Administer -> users, click on the configure tab and choose "Only site administrators can create new user accounts". Click on the add user tab and create a user account you will blog with. Assign it the role you have created earlier.

Now it is time to navigate to Administer -> themes. Choose your desired theme and select the configure tab. Scroll down to "Display post information on" and uncheck the box next to "page".

In "Toggle display" make sure that "Site name", "Site slogan" and "Mission statement" are checked. With Drupal you can change the visualization of your site without changing the links to the content.

Creating Content

Now you should go to Administer -> content. There you should click on configure tab and then on content types. Click on "page". In the "Workflow" remove the check next to "Promoted to front page". Save and do the same for "story" as well.

This will set only story type content to be automatically promoted to the front page.

It is time to create content for your blog. Please, logout from the administrator's area and login with your newly created account. You can create content for your blog from create content link.

There you can add or edit a page or a story:

If you want to add a static page, like a contact page or an about page, use the page type.
Stories are articles in their simplest form: they have a title, a teaser and a body, but can be extended by other modules. The teaser is part of the body too. Stories may be used as a personal blog or for news articles.

Once you are done, you can go to your home page. There you will see that the default Drupal new site message is now gone and your post is placed.

Useful links:

Please, feel free to contact us if you have any questions or recommendations about this tutorial at: tutorials 'at' siteground.com