This is the final part of a four-part series comparing four different methods I used for creating this web site. You are viewing the results of the fourth. In Part I, I contracted a third party for design and development. From that experience, I concluded that the use of a third party was the obvious and good choice for those who wanted to focus on web content and not be concerned with the underlying technology, likely the vast majority of users. Part II described my adventure using iWeb, Apple’s WYSIWYG site builder. I concluded that the iWeb capability is best suited for personal use and small networking , similar to Facebook. In Part III, l studied and learned HTML and CSS over a period of about two weeks and built my own site. This was wonderfully satisfying. And now, armed with the ability to write my own code and far more knowledgeable than I had been originally, I decided to advance to its blog design.
I created a prioritized list regarding my blog:
1. Needs to be read by a large audience.
2. Must be attractive and readily accessible to a large number of readers.
3. Must be easily updated and maintained by me, personally.
3. Must have a fully addressable archive.
Examine the first priority, the requirement to attract and be read by a large audience. I want someone to actually read what I write; I want it to make a difference. I desire to transform the technology wizard into a persuasive force for entrepreneurial funding, research dollars, a higher paying job, or whatever else she desires.
I discovered that a primary and necessary (sine qua non – without which none) component to attracting a large audience was ‘searchability’: blog content must be frequently and efficaciously cataloged by the major search engines. There is an entire community that focuses on just this capability, generally referred to as Search Engine Optimization (SEO). It is a broad field and includes companies, tools, and schema. Since I did not want to create yet another thing to spend my time on, I decided to use a platform that already had an effective SEO capability, WordPress. WordPress is open source software that provides SEO right out of the box.
Matt Cutts heads up Google’s Webspam team. See an interview regarding his recommendation of WordPress.
Having chosen WordPress, I considered appending the WordPress blog capability onto the site I had written already. However, WordPress is designed to use its own templates so I chose one. I transferred the content from my existing site to the WordPress template. The new site was up and running within hours and here you have it. I used my newly-learned knowledge of HTML and CSS to make small modifications, but those were insignificant changes.
I will continue to use WordPress and report on its effectiveness in satisfying my prioritized criteria for the blog and would welcome any comments regarding SEO or the selection of WordPress.
In ending this series, I must annotate that my research and decisions were greatly hastened by the third party I mentioned in Part I, Harrison Givens. Harrison keeps up with all things technie and is invaluable for creating and exchanging ideas. I recommend him highly for all your entertainment lighting needs.