How can I start my own blog?

After considerable prodding by friends and colleagues, I decided it was time to get a blog working on my company web site. I spent the morning researching the different blog engines before deciding on PressTopia™. My search parameters were: it had to be free, run on a windows 2000 server, and use SQL database (I have SQL 2005). Several I looked at included WordPress, .blog, dasBlog, and PressTopia. The popularity of WordPress gave it considerable weight, but as it is written in PHP (which I am not fond of), I decided to concentrate on products developed with ".NET". All the products I looked at had just about the same set of features and very professional interfaces. I am sure I would have been happy with any one of them. My decision to go with PressTopia was purely technical as it fit in best with my IT infrastructure.

There are several options available for your own blog. The easiest is to use a hosted solution. Several providers can be found by searching for "hosted blog". The only down side I see is that the URL is something like 'KineticComputing.bloghost.com' rather than 'blog.KineticComputing.com' or 'www.KineticComputing.com/blog'. I would think that comercial web hosting companies would including blog software as part of a hosting solution. If you are interested in starting your own blog, I would check with your service provider and see if they offer blogging as part of your hosting package. If they do not, installing your own blogging software is not too difficult but does require some technical understanding. This typically means using FTP to upload the software to a new 'blog' directory under your root, modifiying the configuration with the appropriate database connection string, and then running an installation script. Access to your blog would be through a URL like 'www.KineticComputing.com/blog'. Another option is to create a CNAME record like I did (blog.KineticComputing.com) and create a new virtual folder for it to point. This takes a bit more technical know how, but is very straight forward. I did it in about 10 minutes.

Happy Blogging!

Kinetic Computing

How can I start my own blog?