In Praise of WordPress and FeedBurner

About 7 years ago, our family started a Web Design and Publishing business (Hightide Web).  When blogging caught fire, we launched 14 blogs and recently added Blog Configuration and Hosting to our Hightide services. 

Blogging is a whole different ballgame from web design/web publishing.  Just when we reached ownership status with html, php shows up at the door.  Along with it, comes all sorts of headaches like rss (migraine), content management, databases, etc. 

To get my mind around blogs, I put my first one on Blogger.  I didn’t have any bad experiences with them - aside from the fact that I didn’t have my own domain name, and the strip at the top annoyed me.  But the rest of the experience was a breeze. 

When I felt like I could take the training wheels off, I researched the heck out of TypePad and WordPress.  I went with WordPress and have never, ever regretted it.  All of our blogs are WordPress blogs, and we’ve never encountered any reason(s) to change that status.  WordPress is even more of a breeze than Blogger, and it’s 100% easier for readers to leave comments on than the others.

My favorite part is all the great plug-ins you have at your disposal with WordPress blogs - they’re really amazing!  The techlicious brainpower that goes behind developing these themes makes my jaw hit the carpet.  (If you’re a plugin developer, you pretty much rock!)

FeedBurner is another gift from the blogging gods - if not for them, I’d be decked out in a white jacket today - the one that ties in the back.  And I haven’t nearly enough of a tan to pull white off yet. Like WordPress, FeedBurner has a style and approach that is impossible not to catch.  IF you read their site thoroughly and ask questions when they arise, you’re home free.

If you currently use WordPress, I wanted to throw you a few links you may or may not be aware of.  There’s a wealth of information here and is more than worthy of printing out and reading through:

1.  WordPress Advanced Topics
2.  WordPress Terminology
3.  WordPress Lessons

Blogging isn’t going anywhere - in fact it’s just getting hotter and hotter.  Companies aren’t ditching their websites (as a web designer I breath a huge sigh right about here), but they are adding blogs to their sites.  It’s getting to where Blog is one of the first things I look for on a website - and if I don’t see it in the navigational column or tabbed menu, I kind of wonder why they’re out of step!

If you have any questions about blogs or blogging that I could answer, feel free to shoot me an e-mail - joi@selfhelpdaily.com.

Have a wonderful day,

Joi

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