How to use your own domain with a TypePad blog
Posted on 09. Oct, 2009 by Catherine in Blogging
TypePad lets you use your own domain name for your blogs so that when someone types in www.yourdomain.com they actually see the content at yourdomain.typepad.com while still thinking they are at www.yourdomain.com. To do this, you need to do something called “mapping” your domains.
We recommend using NameCheap.com as they are cheap and reliable. They also have a good reputation for being ethical. We will be using NameCheap in these instructions. We will also just be showing you how to map a normal domain that is not currently hosting anything, not subdomains.
Step 1: Access the Domain Mapping Section (more…)
How to use your own domain with Blogger
Posted on 07. Oct, 2009 by Catherine in Blogging
There is a certain amount of insurance about having your blog at your own domain, rather than at somedomain.blogspot.com. If for whatever reason, Google decides that Blogger doesn’t fit into its business model and isn’t making enough money, it could decide to wind down the service. Unlikely, but possible. If this happens after your blog has generated heaps of backlinks to the blogspot.com address, you’ll lose all those backlinks. It is also possible that Google might remove your account if it thinks you’ve breached its terms and conditions. Having your own domain can also look more professional.
Theoretically, you can have the ease of having a Blogger blog and still use your own domain using a technique called “mapping” where your domain name is made to point to your Blogger blog. So any posts at your Blogger blog will look like they are being hosted at your domain.
We say “theoretically” because we haven’t found Google’s redirect service to work that well, and a quick search of Google will confirm that this is quite a common problem. We did manage to get it to work, but after a few different attempts.
We’d recommend that you make the choice to use your own domain early on because if you can’t get the mapping to work, you can just use another blog service and you don’t have to worry about losing audience.
There are two ways of doing the mapping, you can purchase your domain directly from Google and they will do all the setting up of the mapping for you automatically or you can purchase your domain separately and do the changes yourself. We’ll go through both options.
What is an RSS Feed?
Posted on 05. Oct, 2009 by Cat in Blogging
One of the most useful aspects of blogs is that they have these things called “feeds” or “RSS feeds”. RSS stands for “Real Simple Syndication” and it allows your readers to subscribe to your blog, be notified when it’s updated and read your blog updates through a feed reading service like Google Reader.
Not everyone uses a feed reader but many people do and so it’s a good idea to make sure your blog has its feed prominently displayed.
The standard way to display a feed is to use the RSS feed icon – which is like a couple of broadcast waves coming out from a dot, generally on an orange background like so:
Be aware that web designers sometimes feature this feed icon in different colours and incorporated into different objects. Sometimes the feed icon doesn’t show at all and instead you’ll see the words “Subscribe to my blog”.
It can sometimes turn up in the address bar of some web browsers. Here is an example of it in Firefox:
However, don’t rely on it! It is important to make sure that there is a clear way for people to subscribe. I have seen too many poorly designed blogs where there is no obvious subscribe button anywhere.
Feedburner
FeedBurner is free (it is now owned by Google) and gives all sorts of tools to make your feeds that much more powerful. Of particular use, it lets you analyse your feed traffic as well as add advertising.
If you decide to go with FeedBurner, and you probably should, then switch over earlier from your blog’s default feed sooner rather than later so that you can ensure as many as possible of your readers are using your FeedBurner feed.
Full feed or Exerpts?
Either through Feedburner or your blogging software, you will usually have the option to allow people to subscribe to your full posts or you can just give your readers a small excerpt in your feed. If you only allow small excerpts to be published, then readers will have to visit your blog to read the rest of your post. There are pros and cons for both ways. It’s probably best that you err on the side of giving your readers convenience – after all, a primary reason for having a blog is about building a relationship with your reader. Excerpts can be annoying as it forces them to read you in a way they don’t want to.
There are other ways of getting people to visit your blog from an RSS reader – for example you can link to your other blog posts. You can also ask a question that encourages people to comment (and they’ll have to visit your blog to do so).
Introduction to blogging
Posted on 02. Oct, 2009 by Cat in Blogging, How To
I’ve had quite a few of my friends ask me what a blog is, so I thought I’d put together this article explaining exactly what one is.
What is a blog?
Originally, “blog” was a shortening of “web log” – or a web journal. What differentiates a blog from a traditional website is that blogs facilitate the publishing of “posts” or stories in reverse chronological order. So you will see the most recent blog post first. Like a news feed, blogs meant that a reader could quickly see which entries were the most recent. Also like news feeds and also like a journal, it is expected that blogs are regularly updated. While if a traditional website hasn’t been touched in a number of months, most people wouldn’t notice – if a blog has had no updates for the same time, it’s considered at the very best “dormant”, but most usually, it would be seen as “dead”.
Blogs are now an important component of online publishing. Major newspapers and many magazines have incorporated blogs into their websites. There are influential publishing companies like b5media and Weblogs Inc that are based solely around networks of blogs.
That’s not to say that big companies have an advantage when it comes to blogging, they don’t, and in fact, the big media companies have been relatively late to jump on the blogging train. A big part of the popularity of blogs is linked to availability of blogging software which allowed blog authors (bloggers) to post entries to their blog with very little or no coding ability. The main thing that separates blogs is the quality of the writing, the dedication, the personality and the insight of the writer/s – not technical resources. This has meant that blogging has really levelled the playing field and it has provided, and continues to provide, countless opportunities for individuals.
Blogs have really opened up the world of independent publishing – now anyone from kids to grandparents can easily become web publishers.
Why Blog? (more…)
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