Back in August 2010 I wrote an article on a theme of frequency in writing on your blog. Looks as if I haven’t been practising what I preach.

It really all depends on how what you see is the purpose of a blog. As I use WordPress for all my and my clients’ blogs, the content of this article will be aimed at WordPress users.

WordPress can be one of two things, I guess. An add on/subdomain to an existing website or a standalone site in its own right. In the latter, WordPress can be used as a blog, a content management system, an interactive tool for disseminating information or as a quick and simple way to manage news and views.

WordPress.com, offers a cheap and simple way to get started and for individuals this is a convenient way to start. For businesses, however, no matter whether a one man band or a much larger enterprise, it is paramount that you have a dedicated site.

The cost of hosting is a negligible business expense – much less than the your Broadband connection – so it is really a no brainer.

If a UK company, the choice of hosting is wide, but do ensure that you use a UK based company with servers in the UK and one where technical support is at the end of a telephone or 24/7 online. My hosting company offers terrific technical support and I can guarantee a response within a few minutes and always with a speedy resolution.

Having chosen your provider and, if you are lucky, you will have the capability of installing WordPress via your supplier. The process is really user friendly and will only take a few minutes.

Once installed you may be asked to update to newer version – do so at this stage and then you can get down to business of customising your website.

A major benefit of WordPress is that there are hundreds of templates from which to choose and, even if you know nothing about web design, you can have a professional looking site up in no time. Indeed, the current default theme ‘twenty-twenty’ is neat, professional looking and simple to customise.

The look and feel of WordPress is almost infinitely variable – you can limit the number of blogs per page, the number items on the sidebar, if you want comments, and through the addition of plugins the capability of WordPress can be enhanced greatly.

Some of the plugins that we install as part of our package include; All in One SEO package, My Page Order, WP-> Twitter, Recent Posts.

If you are a photographer, Gallery is a must and the really exciting YABP plugin (which needs specific themes )– see Dark Edinburgh and Dark Fields which use the Reflections theme. A real improvement on Flash based photographic sites.

Lightbox/Fancybox plugins are great for displaying photographic portfolios.

Clean simple themes can be very effective and Dene Happell’s mynest blog is a prime example of a how a blog can be used to good effect in business as is Workwear Plus and Ancient Egyptamania

If you need something a bit fancier, it can be more cost effective to have someone do the installation, and customising on your behalf. This need not be prohibitive in costs and we install and customise WordPress within 2-3 days and usually a lot quicker than that if hosted on our servers.

One small word of caution, WordPress has issues with Windows servers, so when ordering your hosting, make sure that you specify, Linux/Apache. Although we can offer both Linux and Windows, we advise all our clients to use Linux and we have had no issues with any of our websites – whether they be WordPress or straight html sites.

We would be delighted to discuss your WordPress requirements with you and I think you will be pleasantly surprised at our fees and hosting costs. Do please get in touch with us now for a no obligation chat about your WordPress requirements.