New theme for my blog

// March 22nd, 2008 // No Comments » // wordpress

I installed a new theme for my blog because I was bored of the old one. This new theme comes with some nice build in features but I want to keep it as simple as possible. Maybe I’ll change some of the colours over the next few hours but I’m first going to make all my old plugins work.

The picture in the header shows my office.

Updating blog this weekend

// March 22nd, 2008 // 1 Comment » // wordpress

I’ll be updating my blog this weekend so it’s possible that you see some strange things when visiting my domain.

How to make your own blog; the theme

// July 1st, 2007 // No Comments » // wordpress

I am writing a manual on how to start your own blog because of the requests I got in the last few months. The first step was to get a domain and hosting, the second to install wordpress. After this we are going to choose a nice theme for the blog.

One of the nicest things about WordPress is the big community developing this software. There are a lot of themes available you can easily put on your blog. I’m currently using a customized version of Peaceful Rush made by Small Potato. My previous blog was using the Hemingway theme.

To install a theme you need to download it, unzip the file and put it in your wp-content/themes folder. When you go to your WordPress dashboard you can select the theme under “presentation”. It’s amazingly easy to tweak your blog in a few minutes.

The best place to look for a theme is the WordPress theme viewer website. You can sort the themes by selecting some of the options like color, number of columns, sidebar or width. When you find a nice theme you can look at a live demo to see if you like it. There are a lot of other websites where you can find themes like the wpdesigner website. Or you can simply use google.

If you run into a website that is using WordPress but you can’t find the name of the theme try to look in the stylesheet. Most of the times you can find the authors information here.

How to make your own blog; the software

// June 18th, 2007 // No Comments » // wordpress

I am writing a manual on how to start your own blog because of the requests I got in the last few months. The first step was to get a domain and hosting. After this we are now going to run the (open source) blogging software on the domain.

There are a lot of different free tools you can use to build a blog. The most popular ones are Pivot and WordPress (Movable Type has an open source beta release now). I prefer WordPress because of the large active community and the number of plugins that are available. I never used other open source blogging software, but I would recommend WordPress to everyone.

Setting up a WordPress blog is really easy, even if you don’t know much about Internet/PHP/MySQL and all the things you are going to use. The installation guide basically tells you everything. Here is a short summary to see how easy it is:

1. Install an FTP program like Filezilla (windows) or Cyberduck (mac).
2. Make sure you have a text editor (even better would be a HTML editor like Nvu).
3. Download and unzip the WordPress package.
4. Create a database (MySQL) for WordPress on your server, if you use direct admin this can be done wih only one click.
5. Open wp-config-sample.php in your text editor and fill in the database details.
6. Safe this file with the name wp-config.php.
7. Upload the WordPress files with your FTP client.
8. Run the WordPress installation script by typing www.thedomain.com/wp-admin/install.php in your web browser.
9. That’s it! WordPress should now be installed.

You can choose to install WordPress in your root directory but it’s also possible to use a subdirectory (pietervangils.com/weblog/) or subdomain (blog.pietervangils.com). If you have questions about this leave a reply on this post or send me an email.

How to make your own blog; the domain

// June 13th, 2007 // 2 Comments » // wordpress

In the past few months a lot of people have asked me to build them a blog. I wish I could help everyone but I don’t have time for this. That’s why I am going to write a manual how to make your own customized blog.

First you have to choose between hosting the domain yourself or using a free blogging service. Because there are limitations on customization when you are using a free blogging service I recommend to host it yourself. If you really don’t know anything about the Internet I would suggest taking a free service like wordpress.com or blogger.com. Do the same if you don’t want to spend much time in building your blog.

If you want to host it yourself you have to look for a good domain, this can be really hard. There are three main strategies in choosing a domain.

• Your own name (or a nickname): When you write stories about yourself, your expertise or your interests this is the easiest way to come up with a name. (e.g. pietervangils.com or polle.net)
• Using keywords: If you write about a specific topic you can use keywords that match these topics. The only hard part is that the most common words are already gone. (e.g. chinauncovered.com or marketingfacts.nl)
• A fantasy name: We live in the web 2.0 era so it’s also possible to just put some random (pronounceable) letters together and make a new word. (think of websites like flickr.com or zamzar.com). Read Seth Godin’s blog for more inspiration.

When you have your domain you need a hosting company (you can also register your domain at the hosting company). My website is hosted at 1mhosting, they are cheap and have really good service. Because you are just starting with your blog you don’t need a big hosting plan. I would recommend the following: 100mb webspace, 1-3 gb data, 1 MySQL database, PHP 4/5, POP-3 email and FTP access. I love to work with direct admin so that is a big plus for a hosting company, it’s easy to use and gives you all the control you need. I pay € 9 a year for my hosting and I have everything I need. My domain costs $ 6,99 a year (registered at mydomain.com).

It’s important that you use a hosting provider in the country you live in (or close to you) because then you have the best connection to the server. I had my hosting in the U.S. for some time but the upload speed was really bad.

Now you have a domain and hosting, next week more on how to set up your blog. For questions feel free to contact me.