The short answer is Yes!

The long answer is Yes, but might not be the best of idea’s if you have not started your blog or site and are asking the question. If you are planning to start a personal blog or site without much inspiration to conquer the masses then a wordpress.com blogging platform is your way to go, but if you are planning to have anything remotely commercial with your site / blog then you should at least get your own domain and point it over to wordpress.com. Doing so will require you to join the Premium Features of wordpress.com and start to cough up a few dollars. So if you have opened your wallet already, then you might as well go pro and get your own domain and some simple hosting to go with it. As you might already know, I use Dreamhost for all small customer blog and sites, and starting out with self hosted WordPress has a handfull of advantages :

• Choose from any available theme free or commercial , I love to recommend themeforest for great themes with a small price.
• You can install any plug-in you wish.
• Easy to upgrade and move to another host if your site gets really big.
• Use your own domain name
• Have your own email address on your domain name and even start to work with Google Apps (Yes – I recommend it).
• From an SEO standpoint you have some really neat tools and features that are not available on the wordpress.com platform
• Host the site in your own country on local hosting servers, especially important for non US blogs.
• You can edit the CSS and make small modifications to the theme when required
• Get your self hosted WordPress installed for FREE with bloginstall.com

These are just a few points off the top of my head, I am sure that I can add a few more.

There is one nice little feature that comes with the wordpress.com “Premium Features” – VideoPress, it costs about 60 bucks a year and will allow you to stream and manage HD video on your blog. Usually I would just point you in the direction of youtube or vimeo , but VideoPress does have a list of nifty features that might be worthwhile if you go heavy on video.

There are many ways to keep your blog data safe for a rainy day, you can start by using a host that keeps an accessable snapshot backup of your blog data (the actual ftp directory) and your MySQL database. This alone can save the day in most cases of a fire .

In other cases when the snapshots are not sufficient due to some tech guy that accidently split coffee over the backups it is advice to keep an offsite copy of your WordPress files and media. If you only update you blog once every blue moon, then you can stick to a manual backup of your data once on a while, but if you are a problogger or are using WordPress for a content thirsty commercial websites then you surly need some real assurance that you are not going to get wet.

Manual Backup of your WordPress blog

If you are already friendly with FTP and know how to install a plugin or two you can easily backup your site by downloading the following directories :

/wp-content/themes
/wp-content/plugins
/wp-content/uploads

I strongly suggest un-selecting the option “Organize my uploads into month- and year-based folders” in the Settings > Miscellaneous WordPress menu. In addition to these directories you also need to create a backup of your WordPress database. I recommend installing the wp-dbmanager plugin, this little goody with easily help you create a backup file of your database and if you set up the plugin it can even email you the database backup file once in a while (whenever you decide). It is an old plugin that still does a great job!

VaultPress Coming Soon!

The guys that created WordPress did it again… and they are now offering out beta access to a new real time backup service called VaultPress. A nifty name for a simple service that makes sure that your entire WordPress enviroment is safely stored away. The service requires installing a plugin on your WordPress that takes care of the whole process in the background. I am sure that it also takes care of optimizing the backup process to minimize the amount of data that is required to be sent over to the backup cloud. You can read more about it on there blog. They are currently in beta so go try it out before the beta is over.

If you want to use your own domain for url shortening you may use the Short Url Plugin and make your own url shortening service for your private usage. You can create a url such as blog-install.com/u/21.

The plugin also provides basic statistics that includes the number of times the link was clicked.

Spam Protection

wp-spamfree by Scott Allen
An extremely powerful anti-spam plugin for WordPress that virtually eliminates comment spam, including trackback and pingback spam. The plugin includes a spam-free contact form too. The plugin works behind the scenes without any captcha’s, challenging question such as “is the sky green ?” or any other inconvenience to your sites visitors. You may follow the plugin’s on twitter @WPSpamFree

CMS

my-page-order – A simple plugin that allows you to easily rearrange your pages into whatever order you’d like.

page-restrict – You can select all, none or some of your pages to be viewable only by registered users. Great for sites being used as a CMS.

Page Template Extended – A simple plugin that allows you to build templates unique to any page by simply building it a PHP file named for its ID tag.

xavins-list-subpages – Allows you to display either all of the subpages, or just the ones you choose, on the parent page.

automagic-twitter-profile-uri – Automatically add your users twitter profile link to comments

faster-image-insert – Image manipulation directly form a metabox.

Getting visitors to sign up!

wp-greet-box – This plugin lets you show a different greeting message to your new visitors depending on their referrer url. This can certainly help increase your RSS and email subscriber count. The greeting is placed at the top of the post.

After a little searching I came across 2 free applications that solved my file syncing problem and more.

GetDropBox
Dropbox is a small application that supports windows,mac and linux that allows you to define a specific directory (and everything inside) and sync it with other computers, so that when you change or save a file, it is automatically updated on all of your other computers. Each computer has its own copy of the file and are always updated. Even if your other computers are OFF they will be sync’ed as soon as they are turned on. In addition to this newly discovered feature the files are also available online under your dropbox account. You may also define specific directories that you may sync with other dropbox friends and use a public directory to allow file access directly from the web.

By the time of writing this post the service is now out of beta anyone can sign up and join a free 2GB account. Be sure to invite your friends and get an additional 1GB per invite.

Note that there are additional applications in this category such as syncplicity

If you are just looking to backup your files to a secure place you might want to try the free 2GB account at Mozy

But is that enough ? I claim that the answer is NO.

An RSS feed can be read in many places such as Google Reader, the browser, or in one of the many reader applications.  These are tools that make you just one of the crowd. In order to get your message right “in the face” of your reader you would be better off by receiving your message directly in the visitors inbox.

The simplest solution would be to enable the rss to email feature in Feedburner or FeedBlitz, but that is only good for users that actually click on your RSS link and know and see that there is an option to sign up via email.

So to solve this the correct path to getting visitors to sign-up via email is to add a signup form to your blog (in addition to the RSS link or icon).

Here is a simple example of a signup form and button (that actually works, so try it out!) :

And here is the HTML code example :

<form action=”http://feedburner.google.com/fb/a/mailverify” method=”get”> <input name=”email” type=”text” value=”type your email here” /> <input type=”submit” value=”Send” /> <input name=”uri” type=”hidden” value=”bloginstall” /></form>

Be sure to change the URI value to your feed name.

Below you will see the outcome of our simple form, a direct insertion of the email into the feedburner email signup form.

Feedburner Signup Form

This is all great, but there is still one downside to this wonderful tip! This is all based on the usage of feedburner, that means that we have great statistics but no emails of the actual visitors. For some that is not a problem or a concearn, but what can you do when you want to sent your subscribers a notice, offer or update that is not a post on your wordpress site ?

Well, we will deal with that problem in the next email marketing post next week.

Tumblr – Superfast micro-blogging

Tunblr is a micro blogging enviroment for simple, quick blogging with support for posts, images, quotes, video, audio and links – all you need to get your message out as quick as possible. A simple interface for super fast blogging. Not feature extensive as the others.. but that is the beuaty of the beist. Quick and simple, great for personal and quick blogging.

Pros
- Tumblr’s backend is stylish
- 3rd party tools for Tumblr
- large array of themes (but less than wordpress)
- Easy managment from your phone
- Using your own domain on tumblr is FREE
- Can use Google Analytics to measure your traffic

Cons
- Troublesome archives
- Need to tag to support search
- Limited flexability and plugin support
- No direct RSS feed
- Does not expand easly
- No built in commenting

Wordpress – hosted on wordpress.com

For a personal blog that has no commercial value or no intent to become commercial I would recommend using the free wordpress.com blogging platform, it is simple to setup and incldues a selection of wordpress features that would expect to install yourself. The ease of the hosted wordpress.com platform is great if you do not want to pay for your own web hosting and if you don’t want to have the hassle of handling the wordpress installation on your own webhost. Also here you can add your own domain for $15 / year or map a already purchased domain for $10 / year. So if you don’t require custom design, custom plugins and other customizations it would be a good option to start with. Note that there are many popular plug-ins that are highly recommended that are not included on the wordpress.com blogs.

Pros
- Dozens of gorgeous themes
- Integrated stats system
- Commenting with anti-spam built-it
- Good support community
- Mulitlanguage support

Cons
- Using you own domain cost $10 / $15 a year
- Limited plugin support, can not install your own plugins
- Custom CSS / additional storage costs extra
- Ads shown from time to time
- Can not optimize for SEO

Wordpress – self hosted on your own domain

If you have not found your heaven in the above and are looking for more, or looking to start a serious personal or commercial blog, a self hosted wordpress blog is certainly a good solution. You may either signup for hosting that includes pre-installed wordpress that you can start using, or install wordpress yourself. Will a little bit of computer / internet knowledge you could have your blog up and running in 5 min – well it will usally take longer than that, but the basic installation is really simple, it is the customization that can drive a non tech-savy wordpress installer crazy. Feel free to drop us a line for a free professional wordpress installation on your hosting or follow us on twitter via @bloginstall

Pros
- Highly flexable , fully customizable
- Easy installation / updating of plugins (from wordpress 2.7)
- Thousands of gorgeous themes from all over the globe
- Great community support
- Excellent plugins and features for SEO optimization

Cons
- Requires your own domain and hosting
- Requires some technical knowledge and maintanence
- Is not backed up automatically (so make sure you you do)

In the end I would choose from either Wordpress or Tumblr according to the kinds of users and usage. For personal blog I would go for a pre-hosted blog on tumblr or wordpress.com and for a serious personal blog or commercial blogsite I would go for a self-hosted wordpress installation.

Looking for a wordpress guru to install your wordpress blog on your own hosting for free ? let us help!

Adding Google Analytics manually

1. Login wordpress admin panel
2. Goto Appearance > Editor (theme editor)
3. Select the footer.php or index.php
4. Find the </body> html tag
5. Copy and page the Google Analytics code before the </body> tag.
6. Don’t forget to click Update File to save changes.

The only problem with the manual installation is that if you swap wordpress themes you will loose your  Google Analytics tracking. That is why it is better to handle the Google Analytics tracking code within a plugin. The selected plugin is a simple plugin with no-mumbo-jumbo.

Adding Google Analytics with the Header-Footer plugin

1. Download and install the Header-Footer plugin
2. Goto Settings > Header-Footer
3. Cut and paste the google tracking code in the bottom footer textbox.
4. Enjoy.

If you are looking for a more advanced feature packed plugin that can also handle the above and more, you might want to try HeadSpace2.

Please note that this tip requires wordpress installed on your webhost.

Well stop twiddling since Hao Chen has cooked up a online export tool for tumblr that exports your Tumblr data into a wordpress formatted XML file.

How to import the Tumblr XML into Wordpress :

1. Log into that blog as an administrator.
2. Go to Manage: Import in the blog’s admin panels.
3. Choose “WordPress” from the list.
4. Upload this file using the form provided on that page.
5. You will first be asked to map the authors in this export file to users on the blog. For each author, you may choose to map to an existing user on the blog or to create a new user
6. WordPress will then import each of the posts, comments, and categories contained in this file into your blog

If you want to get your hands dirty with some custom integration, the tool is based on the Tumbr API.

Need help getting your wordpress blog installed ? Take advantage of our FREE wordpress installation and customization offer today! Follow us on twitter @bloginstall

Managing these META tags with the help of a plugin helps keep your tags nice and tidy even when changing themes.

I will show here how to create your own little plugin to manage your HTML META tags and make sure that they never get lost again.

Below you will find a snippet of code that you can put in a empty my_header_plugin.php and place in your plugin directory.

You may find some examples for the top 3 search engines webmaster tool verification META tags used to verify ownership of your site.

Just replace the placeholders below with your valid keys.

<?php
/*
Plugin Name: My META tags
Version: 0.1
Plugin URI: http://blog-install.com/plugins/
Description: Insert META tags into your HTML headers
Author: blog-install.com
Author URI: http://blog-install.com
*/

function insert_my_meta_tag() {
echo <<<EOT
<meta name="blogcatalog" content="INSERT_BLOG_CATALOG_HERE">
<meta name="verify-v1" content="INSERT_GOOGLE_WEBMASTER_KEY_HERE">
<meta name="y_key" content="INSERT_YAHOO_WEBMASTER_KEY_HERE">
<meta name="msvalidate.01" content="INSERT_MSN_WEBMASTER_KEY_HERE">
EOT;
}
add_action('wp_head', 'insert_my_meta_tag',3);
?>