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Blog Services

WebValence supports Wordpress blogs.

Blogs, Blogging and Responses

A blog is a web page listing chronological entries. Each entry is called a post. A post may prompt comments from readers, and reader's comments are considered part of the blog.

Blogging is the activity of creating and updating a blog, as well as moderating comments and possibly responding to comments.

The Blog owner can enable or disable the ability to accept comments. Normally comments are encouraged because this provides for feedback and two-way communication. Keep in mind that the average person may feel somewhat inhibited from commenting on a blog post. For this reason, obtaining a critical mass of blog comments can be challenging.

Subscriptions (Feeds)

Blogs offer a subscribe feature, whereby subscribers are notified when each new post is added. This notification is normally called a feed, to differentiate it from an Email subscription.

The challenge of managing feeds has led to applications called a blog readers and caused software makers to add blog reader functionality to other software.

• Net News Wire and Feed Demon are examples of blog readers. In addition to presenting blog content for reading, blog readers keep track of new postings and alert users to new postings.
  
  
• Web Browsers and Email Programs also offer blog subscription and reading functionality.
  
  
• Web sites such as google reader and others provide blog reader functionality on a web page.

An advantage of Feed subscription is that Email is not required and spam filters are not involved. Therefore it's more likely the notice will be received by the subscriber. A disadvantage is that many people do not check their feeds on a regular basis.

Subscriptions and feeds explained in Blog FAQ

Options for Blogging

We recommend WordPress for our customers who are developing a blog. WordPress is Open Source application software originally built for blogging. It requires a database and the PHP scripting engine, included with WebValence customer web sites.

WebValence supports various ways of adding a blog to a website:

1. add a blog as a new page within an existing web site,
2. add a blog that piggy backs on your web site, or
3. add a whole new web site with blog software, possibly replacing the original website

We cover these options in more detail in the next three sections.

Add a Blog to Your Web Site

For this approach, we recommend that you ask us for support to make the blog look like other pages on your web site. An advantage of this approach is that your branding and your web site is strengthened by the addition of your blog.

With the blog as part of your web site, your blog will typically be accessed via an address such as: http://yourwebsite.com/blog/

Piggy Back Blog

If you want your Blog to appear to be separate, use a different style, and/or occupy a different address, we setup a piggy back blog site. This type of Blog will normally have a completely different address from your main site and is normally hyper-linked to and from the main site.

An advantage of this approach is that the blog will generally look more like a blog and readers may easily recognize it as such. Another possible advantage is that more links to your main site from other sites may help your rankings in the search engines.

Creating an Entire Web Site with a Blog Tool

It is possible to create and maintain a web site with Blog software. If you plan to feature a blog on your site and if you like the themes that Blog software provides,this may provide a quick and economical way to obtain a web site.

However, if yours is a high-traffic site, or if you want the fastest possible response, you should avoid WordPress. Sites built with Wordpress are more complex than a comparable static website, and may add a noticeable delay to your site delivery. The amount of delay will depend upon the themes, plugins, and graphical content that you decide to present.

WebValence support staff can help you get started by designing a custom template for you, or you can select from one of the many available WordPress templates.

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