What do I need for a insite-weblog?

Oriel

Folks,
I'm going to get my domain name back again, and start up my internet site.
What I was thinking of thought was a something that is quite common nowaday - having a blog on my mainpage.

Few questions:
What software am I going to to need to do this?
What's the best software?
Can I update from a client application?

Cheer,
S.

P.S. I konw there's a web hosting fourm but nobody's going to see it there.

angelofdeath

you'll need some sort of content management system, wordpress is very popular, i like cmsimple aswell, also gonna need a test server if your going to be doing any modifications to either, i like xammp for that

Stephen

Wordpress is the dog's dangly bits. To run wordpress you'll need a webhost that supports PHP and one mysql database.

m_stan

If you want amuch simpler solution and dont want to have to deal with all the server side stuff, messing with PHP etc, then you can use blogger.com.

It's free, you can use your own templates as well as theirs, it works with your own domain name as well as subdomains of blogger.com, and all you need to do is display their logo to use it.

Check out my personal site for an example of how you can customise it. I'm using a bare-bones version with no reply posts, archives etc etc - you can do all that if you want. (lots of problems with my site I know - not looking for feedback!).

If you have any questions on it, let me know.

www.ragorder.com

Oriel

Well I'm going to go for a "my website first, blog second" kinda thing. So I'm not just looking for a customisable weblog. I'll give WordPress a wee look into then. yeah, m_stan something like what you have. I'm sick of making sites that I look back at after a few months and thinking "what was I thinking of?".

The main purpose of my site is for my photographs, and just thoughts and options and general file storage.

Any more advice, keep it coming!
Cheers for the replys so far.
S.

Oriel

With Word press, do you have to take a www.something.wordpress.com* URL?
See this is the bit that gets me, how do I add a blog onto my own webpage without having to go through the blog website?


*Yes, it's an actual blog I checked too

m_stan

you can do what you want with blogger. see my site. I designed my site, and fit the blog in where I wanted to - based on my template. You could format it and display it any way you wanted. you just need to play with the blogger.com tags a bit to get it to work the way you want.

best approach is to design your site 'offline' without going near blogger.com, then wen you are done and happy, fit it all into a blogger.com template.

then you just go to blogger.com to create a new post, and it ftp's a new file to your web host at your domain and your blog is updated.

not sure about the other options like wordpress - no experience of these, so I won't knock them. all I know is blogger.com is simple, and requires no server side stuff on your side.

Stephen

sinecurea: No.
You just install wordpress on your webserver - Normally just a case of uploading the files to it, and telling it your database details, and then it will be available at whatever your domain name/url is.

for instance: my own wordpress install at www.feckoff.net. I installed it in the root of my public_html directory as I want it to be the main part of my site.

You mention photos being the main purpose of your site. I can't recommend coppermine photo gallery enough for this. Have it running on my own site too.

Oriel

Thanks for the info Stephen, again I'll look into both of those when I don't have to go to bed.