Relief: A Quarterly Christian Expression - Why Writers Need a Web Site: Part Deaux

Why Writers Need a Web Site: Part Deaux

Written by Coach Culbertson

Tuesday, 29 April 2008

Today's blog brought to you by Coach Culbertson, Tech Guy here at Relief, and by the fans of the TV series The Chronicle, because great TV never really dies, it only goes to DVD.

So trying to follow up to Mark's brilliant blog, the second great reason to have a web site is that it's so freakin' easy these days. In the old days of Web 1.0, you'd have to rent web space, learn HTML, a bit of Javascript if you want anything to move, figure out a decent graphic design suite, blah blah blah.

Don't get me wrong, you can still do all that, however, there are simpler alternatives. These alternatives are:

Easy to Sign Up and Set up
Not Scary
Free

Some of you have been putting it off, scared that it'll be hard, or that you won't know where to start. Hit the Read More link to check out some services that you'll want to check out that are easy. free, and don't have any weird strings attached

1. Blogger.com - Google's own blogging service, easy to set up, add in widgets on the side bars, and get easy Google seach rankings, as it's already part of their systems. Definitely one of the most popular services.

2. Vox.com - One of the newer services, if you're an absolute newbie, I'm recommending this one. It also has a social networking element, which is great if you're into the whole MySpace/Facebook thing.

3. Wordpress.com - One of the pioneers of blogging services, a lot of pro-level bloggers use Wordpress as their primary platform. While not as easy to grasp as the first two, Wordpress does offer a lot of powerful features that you can grow into.

While you're at it, it's not a bad idea to also grab a Facebook account as well. Think of it as MySpace for grown-ups. And for those who want a Christian variant of MySpace, try ShoutLife as well. Having mutliple web presence spaces is a good way to increase your search rankings on Google and Yahoo (i.e. it's easier for people to find you). We should probably do a whole blog on the social networking thing, but I'll leave that for a different time.

What do I not recommend: MySpace. While they have been improving, MySpace is more for the kids. I don't recommend having your primary web presence be MySpace, simply due to the insanity that has taken over there. While it won't hurt you (yes, I have a MySpace account), if you're just starting out, keep to the easy-to-control easy-to-grasp stuff first.

That's it for now, more later, gang.

-Coach

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