Is anyone running a blog on their v8 site ? Which one ?

[webgirl]

Hi,

I have searched the threads and could not find an answer to this although the question had been asked I could not find the answer.

I would like to add a blog to one of my v8 sites but have no idea how to do this. Wondered if anyone who is running one could advise and point me in the right direction.

kind regards
Katie

[leehack]

You'd either add a blog manually by using brochure or section pages within actinic or the more usual approach is to have it sitting outside of actinic, often on its own sub domain and usually your host can provide some facility for this.

[pinbrook]

yep running an actinic store has no real bearing on adding a blog to your site. its just the same as if you had a html site.

Do a www search for blog software to install or simply use a service where you get given server space plus blog and you edit it from a browser. if you choose the later, create a actinic brochure page or fragment and put a link on it to the blog url

start by looking at blog.co.uk, blogger.com

[grantglendinnin]

In my honest opinion - if you want to 'integrate' a blog with your Actinic site, you're best to install WordPress on a subdomain or subfolder, and skin the Actinic theme you use into WordPress - thus an effectively seamless shop/blog. I believe that's what John@StinkyInk has done on their blog, with a recent post on Refilled Lexmark No 1 Tri Colour Cartridge (Couldn't help but plug it)

It's a fantastic idea - the support available for this particular blogging system is unreal - and you can do just about anything with it. It's a worthwhile process to integrate and create a suitable template for your site - and helps drive a lot - with a correctly integrated blog into your site navigation, this can only help conversions.

There's plenty of sources available to create wordpress themes - you can get it done on various web forums for less than £100 for a very high quality job.

[mattc]

you're best to install WordPress

I did exactly that - its hidden atm as we didn't update it much. I just made another brocure page with 100% iframes and put the wp blog in it. Naughty i know - but it looked good and worked well. It's easy enough to customise as well.

[grantglendinnin]

I did exactly that - its hidden atm as we didn't update it much. I just made another brocure page with 100% iframes and put the wp blog in it. Naughty i know - but it looked good and worked well. It's easy enough to customise as well.

Naughty? A little more disastrous than naughty. iFrames will help your search engine rankings just as, if not less, than having no content there in the first place. There's a lot of content on the web regarding search engines crawling ability and ranking of pages with iFrames embedded. Some of the web's most prolific search engine optimisers would cringe at the thought - I advise you do the same, and invest in a few quid.

[dyingtosaythis]

Hey! I'm just finalising our new V8 site now and I've set up a seperate blog with Blogger, which I've just linked through the navigation to open in a new window. I find it easier to maintain the blog outside of Actinic, it means you can post to your blog from any location and you can also invite other members of staff to post too.

Steph

[webgirl]

You'd either add a blog manually by using brochure or section pages within actinic or the more usual approach is to have it sitting outside of actinic, often on its own sub domain and usually your host can provide some facility for this.

Wow lots of differing opinions on this

I quite like the idea of running it within the actinic site as then we own the blog. I have been doing it in my sleep. If we do it this way is it likely to slow the site down ?

My concerns regarding an outside blog is that the blog company own it and could run google ads etc on it. Is this a reasonable concern ?

I am really excited about starting a company blog and really welcome everybodies input

katie

[webgirl]

In my honest opinion - if you want to 'integrate' a blog with your Actinic site, you're best to install WordPress on a subdomain or subfolder, and skin the Actinic theme you use into WordPress - thus an effectively seamless shop/blog. I believe that's what John@StinkyInk has done on their blog, with a recent post on Refilled Lexmark No 1 Tri Colour Cartridge (Couldn't help but plug it)

I had a look at the stinkyink blog and it is the sort of thing I was hoping to find and is indeed seamless. Is this something I could set up myself ?

Katie

[Duncan Rounding]

Wordpress is very simple to install. You only need to set up a mySQL database on your host space, configure a few simple lines in Wordpress, and upload and run the install. Best, as mentioned, is to use a subdomain of your site. There are tons of themes/layouts available or or you can create your own.

Don't under estimate the maintenance aspect of having a blog though, it can be a fair bit of extra lot of work.

[pinbrook]

Don't under estimate the maintenance aspect of having a blog though, it can be a fair bit of extra lot of work.

this is the most important point raised, IMO.

I too would recommend Wordpress if you want your own software, the only disadvantage of using your own sw in place of something like blogger, blogspot etc is maintenance as you will have to keep it up to date and patches for security etc etc etc. Hackers etc tend to target scripts (cgi, php, js etc) so as well as keeping content up to date you effectivey double your task.

The later is the main reason i tend to prefer using hosted solutions as maintenance is then someone elses task.

Blog software like most other hosted solutions will have a free version with ads or a paid version without.

[webgirl]

Originally Posted by drounding

Don't under estimate the maintenance aspect of having a blog though, it can be a fair bit of extra lot of work.

this is the most important point raised, IMO.

Hackers etc tend to target scripts (cgi, php, js etc) so as well as keeping content up to date you effectivey double your task.

When you say high maintenance do you mean keeping it up to date and current ?

The issue with the hackers does that apply if I keep it within the V8 sites as Lee suggested ?

I have actually just posted one up. I currently do a news page but had to keep taking stuff down as the page was full-this way I keep the content but means I have to create a new page & fragment each time

Katie

[pinbrook]

Before you run any software in your webspace you should evaluate it for reliability and security.

PHP,CGI,JS, databases are all subject to attack, thus if you run such things you should be aware of the need to keep them up to date so hackers etc do not find holes in which to attack your site. All to often people upload forums, blogs etc to webspace and concentrate on content and forget about updating its core.

More often than not providers of such sw ie wordpress, phpbb and so on will release security patches but it is up to you to apply them, thus another task gets added to your list of things to do.

The issue with the hackers does that apply if I keep it within the V8 sites as Lee suggested ?

if you use brochures/fragments - you will only need to concentrate on actinic

[webgirl]

Before you run any software in your webspace you should evaluate it for reliability and security.

PHP,CGI,JS, databases are all subject to attack, thus if you run such things you should be aware of the need to keep them up to date so hackers etc do not find holes in which to attack your site. All to often people upload forums, blogs etc to webspace and concentrate on content and forget about updating its core.

More often than not providers of such sw ie wordpress, phpbb and so on will release security patches but it is up to you to apply them, thus another task gets added to your list of things to do.

Thanks Jo, we want to keep it fairly simple and fun. I think we will try and run it using brochure page and fragments initially as that seems easier option from what you are saying.

I did want to add a fourm to one of our sites but the sw package I was looking into has just starting running google ads and banner ads on other companies forums which is a bit offputting.

Pity we have not got a mole end plugin for blog and forum-any chance Jan ?

[pinbrook]

I did want to add a fourm to one of our sites but the sw package I was looking into has just starting running google ads and banner ads on other companies forums which is a bit offputting.

there are plenty of paid solutions for forums that will not run ads. This is current practice amongst lots of shareware products, free with ads, pay for software to get it ad free