Our Blog Triage class and self-study (update: no longer available) are for artists with existing blogs, but we've been getting a lot of requests for help with starting a blog.
Sorry, but that's not something Cynthia Morris (my co-teacher) and I are going to teach in the foreseeable future.
We can, however, point you to some resources.
While it's super easy to get started with a free Blogger blog, Cynthia and I agree that you should do it right the first time and go with WordPress. Not WordPress.com (which sits on their server), but WordPress.org, which is hosted on your site. In other words, you get all of the traffic, not WordPress.com or Blogspot.com or TypePad.com.
WordPress is free as are many of the templates. It is almost always installed on servers, so you just have to install it from the server to your site.
We make this recommendation knowing that many artists blogs are successful on other platforms. But we've taught enough classes to know that those who use other blogging platforms are usually envious of what they see on WordPress blogs that they can't duplicate on their own.
Doing it yourself? Get training
There is a boat load of blog and WordPress training on lynda.com — all for just $25 a month. If you've used Lynda for WordPress training, we'd love for you to leave a comment if you can recommend specific lessons.
Check your local libraries and continuing education programs. I've noticed a number of WordPress/blog training courses in the Denver area.
WordPress Tutorials was also recommended.
Prefer to leave the hard part to the experts?
I'll be honest: WordPress takes a little more configuring than Blogger or TypePad, but it's worth it. If you'd rather be in the studio, consider paying the experts to help you get started.
Patricia J. Velte of Whitewing Design is a Web guru to both Cynthia Morris and me, as well as lots of other artists out there. Pat can have you on a beautiful WordPress blog with your own URL in no time.
Kim Bruce is anxious to help artists get their WordPress sites going.
7 thoughts on “Resources for Starting a Blog”
I’ve come across a website called Social Media Solutions. I thought this would be helpful for someone wanting to start their own site.
They install WordPress for you for free (you have to get your own domain though) with any free theme you find and 10 plugins. The website is http://wpforfree.com/. The reason why they can offer it for free is because they get a commission from the hosting partner when they sign your blog up with them.
I haven’t used it; I figured out how to do the whole web design thing myself, but people with little experience might benefit from this.
Sorry, the home page for the website is http://socialmediasolutions.com.au/
Thanks for this resource, Peter. I would just caution anyone to be wary of exorbitant Web hosting fees. I know. I paid them myself for years and now I pay $56ish a year for 1 account for all of my websites and blogs.
That’s an extremely good price. I am always wary of the up times they say they have. For example, I remember seeing a site that said they had 99% up time. If you calculate this per year, it is actually 3.65 days of down time (87.6 hours).
Put that into peak internet usage time, and that’s a lot of down time for your site. I had a lot of trouble with the down time when I was designing websites.
Thanks, Peter. I’m probably exaggerating, but I think it’s under $75.
Good calculation on your part. 99% DOES sound good until you think about it that way!
I used this e-book when I set up my blog & found it very helpful. If has pointers for co-ordinating all your various social media marketing as well. I try to go back to it every so often when i start to feel like i’m losing focus.
http://www.rebeccacoleman.ca/
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