Developing a Blog

Hey Ethan,

Since you say you have no html, coding, or website experience, if you're serious about establishing an authority site it will probably be a good idea to hire a pro.

You want static html pages + ecommerce section + blog?

I'm sure you can do it yourself in a few weeks by looking up tuts online, but it won't look anywhere near what you probably want it to look like, and nothing to give your site an authority status.

As far as the free wordpress blogs go, I don't believe they give you the functionality of installing plugins or using widgets. Regardless, I wouldn't build an authority site on a free blogging platform - let alone weebly.

Hope that helps.

Learning to develop a blog isn't that hard. I personally use Wordpress and have since I got started. I took the time to learn. You don't need to know any html to get a blog started. There are themes you can get either for free or purchase that you can upload on Wordpress platform.

One thing I will tell you is that you want to stay away from free platforms like blogspot or Wordpress.com (another part of Wordpress altogether) if you are planning to sell anything. They will delete your blog if they see it. Wordpress is all free by the way. Some sell plugins you can purchase, but many of those are free also.

So really all you have to do is purchase a domain name, purchase hosting that supports Wordpress and find a theme to upload. You can find a lot of information about uploading your blog and building it online.

I do not thing that you required any professional for this task. From upgraded version of WordPress, the blog will easily develop. starting a blog site is an easy task.

All you need to do is sign up for a hosting account, and have the Wordpress application installed. Here at SiteGround we offer FREE Wordpress installation! With our Wordpress hosting package you can start creating your site right away! If you already have a hosting account and would like to change your host, we offer free website transfer of WordPress sites.

Once you have your Wordpress blog installed, you need to log in to the WordPress administration area from where you can write posts and articles, manage comments, change your theme, etc. To log in the WP admin panel, navigate to the WP login page or directly type the URL in your browser.

You can proceed with entering the desired content. Once you are ready, the new post can be published just by clicking the Publish button.

Creating individual pages in WordPress is quite similar to writing a post. You should simply click Add New in the Pages menu.

When you are ready with your new page, click Publish to save it.

If you don't know anything about html, you will either need to spend money on a theme that you really really like (because you won't be able to customize it yourself) or you can use a free theme and pay someone to customize it for you.

And yes, definitely go with self-hosted wordpress. That's the best way to blog.

you don`t need to get it right or perfect just get it going

i always use wordpress, its so easy rather than messing around with html and all that hassle

you can use all free plugins and free themes

once your blog is making some money then you can invest in a designer and progress from there

it`s no good investing lots of money into a designer if your not even sure if your blog is going to profitable

paul

Thanks everyone, appreciate all the feedback.

I think using XsitePro for your html pages and ecommerce would be good, then simply install Wordpress in a subfolder on the same domain and link to it in the main menu.

Not sure how good you are in design, but if you are not good, I would suggest you find a good graphic artist to do your graphics.

Dave