The idea for this post came to me in a workshop entitled “Websites that Work,” given by Nansy Grill at Southeastern Christian Writers Conference last month. Her entire session dealt with how to set up a WordPress blog that could also be used as a website.

There are three ways to set up your WordPress site. You can start with option #1 and use that until you build your confidence. You can “graduate” to option #2 or skip to #3 if you feel brave.

Option 1, Free Site with WordPress: Costs only your time and effort. See my how-to article on setting up your free WordPress site here. Note that, with WordPress.com, you cannot have advertising on your site. Hosting, design, and domain name are all free with this plan.

Option 2, Use Domain Mapping and Your Own Domain Name: The URL for your free WordPress site/blog will end with “wordpress.com.” For example, see the site I built for my music club,  http://pmgmartin.wordpress.com/. If I want the name of the club as the URL without the WordPress.com ending, I must buy a domain name. I would pay WordPress for the domain mapping service that would allow my URL to show instead of WordPress URL. See the WordPress support page on how to do this. I’ll pay WordPress $17 per year if I get the domain name from WordPress or $12 if I get it elsewhere. The cost of the domain name registration varies with the registrar. Check out Namecheap.com for their pricing. I’d be getting hosting free this way, but I still can’t have advertising.

Option 3, Self-hosted WordPress Site: With this plan, I buy my domain name, download WordPress from http://wordpress.org, and purchase hosting from a company that offers WordPress hosting services. My site, http://emilyakin.com, is done this way. See the quick-start guide on WordPress.org for more details. I pay for my domain name and hosting. Free themes (designs) are available, but I may choose to pay for a theme. Total cost depends on the choices I make. Cost of hosting could be as little as $80 a year plus domain name cost. Advertising can be used on self-hosted WordPress, so it is possible to offset some of the cost that way.

In a future post, I will share my “adventures” with self-hosted WordPress. Meanwhile, if you have questions or if you have a WordPress site, please let us know by commenting on this post.

The purpose of this post is to show you some writer blogs that are (1) FREE and (2) done by writers who are admittedly not tech-savvy. I’ve limited my examples to Blogger and WordPress. Each writer created his or her own blog using free designs provided by the blog service. Some are customized with options included in their free design, but none of the blogs listed below was tinkered with by anyone other than the author.

Blogger:

• Sue Tornai’s Reflections of God’s Glory (free Blogger design).
• My book review blog, Tennessee Christian Reader (free design with header modifications included in the free design).
• The Stream’s Edge by Jeanne Doyon (uses free design and custom components provided with the design).
• Kentucky Christian Writers Conference blog (free design, static pages added).

WordPress:

• Pat Rowland’s Prayerful Ponderings (Using the custom header feature in her free design, Pat uploaded a photo that her son provided).
• Deborah Hemstreet’s Hope for the Hope-Challenged (Uses a free template from TemplateLite.com).
• Sue Tornai has two WordPress blogs: Kid Konnection (free WordPress design) and Pathways to Publication (using the same basic design as Pat Rowland’s but with one of the standard photos in the custom header).
• My devotional blog: Devojournal (free WordPress Theme).

If you have a blog that uses a free service and has not been extensively customized, I will happily publish your link in the future. The writers included in this post responded to my invitation on Christian Writers Fellowship International online group. If you sent me a link and your blog is not shown, I’m saving it for a later post. E-mail me at akinemily@gmail.com or post a comment on this post to send me the link to your blog.

Next week, I’ll show you how to have your blog and your website in all in one. Meanwhile, if you aren’t blogging, you need to get started. Here’s some how-to information:

• Free Site with WordPress
• Beginner’s Guide to Blogging with Blogger

First, you must decide on your blogging tool. There are plenty of options, but WordPress is my favorite. I started by first blog on Blogger, but after experimenting with both, I chose WordPress. Back in 2008, I shared my evaluation of the two. Both have offered many upgrades since then.

Both Blogger and WordPress are free. I recommend that you look at this “Pros and Cons” article on RemindBlog.com.  For those of you who don’t mind a little technical language, here’s an analysis comparing the two on Pulsed.com.

Whether you’re thinking of starting a blog or re-thinking an existing one, you need to ask yourself these questions.

Which is easier to use/learn? Well, that’s like asking how big your doghouse needs to be. It depends whether dog is a Chihuahua or a St. Bernard. If you are proficient with word processors and have some Web expertise, you should be OK with either. However, if you’re shaky on your skills, I think Blogger is easier to learn. There are number of tutorials onlne. Here’s a good one. However, if you are more confident with your Web skills, WordPress offers more design options and a few other features that give your blog a more professional look.

Do you want a unique design? I think many new bloggers get too concerned about the design. It’s the content that matters. Whatever design you choose, it should not be so busy or elaborate that it detracts from the purpose of the blog, which is—your writing. Blogger and WordPress both offer design variety and customization, although WordPress offers many more options than Blogger. To get a unique custom design, you will have to hire a designer on either platform.

Do you plan to upgrade to a self-hosted (paid) blog in the future? If you’re committed to blogging for the long term, I say, “Start with WordPress.” The same skills you learn for your free WordPress site on WordPress.com will transfer to the paid version that can be downloaded from WordPress.org. Transferring your content from WordPress.com to a self-hosted site is much easier. You can also keep your design if you want.

And finally, a confession: The main reason I chose to use WordPress and graduated to a self-hosted WordPress site was that I wanted to model my blog/site on that of Jim Watkins, one of my favorite Christian authors. I’ve learned and lot, but I still feel borderline incompetent sometimes. It’s a lot like walking a tightrope without a net.

Whatever you decide about your methods, concentrate on content. It’s easy to get engrossed design and structure, wasting time that could be spent writing.

Next week’s post will be “Blogging: Measuring Success.”

• If you don’t have a WordPress account, go to www.wordpress.com and create one (username and password).
• Log in to your new account (or existing one). Once you are logged in to WordPress, you should be on the WordPress home page. If you don’t see Register a new blog about center page, go to My Account (top left) and select WordPress.com from the drop-down menu.
• Click on Register a new blog. Type in the name of your blog in the Blog Domain box. Add the title if you are sure what you want. Otherwise, it can be done later. Check your language and leave the privacy box checked.
• Choose a design for your blog. This can be changed later, but try to decide what basic layout you want. Choose one that features a custom header and at least two columns. My marketing blog design is Mistylook with custom header. See also my devotional blog (Spectrum). You can take your time finding a design for your custom header, but you don’t want to have to re-arrange your content if you change your mind about your design later.
• Once your WordPress blog domain has been accepted, you’re ready to go to My Dashboard and select your new blog from the drop-down menu.
• The default “home” page is a blog post. To use this blog as a Web site, you want a static page to be “home.” From the menu on the left, click on Pages, Add New. In the title box for the page, put Home. Also, look for Attributes on the right side. Under Parent, leave Main Page. Lower down, under Order, enter the number 1. Click on Publish to establish your home page.
• Go to Posts on the left menu. Place your mouse under the title of the default post, and a menu will appear. Click delete to remove this post.
• Scroll down to Settings at the bottom of the left-hand menu. Click on the arrow to expand the menu, then choose Reading. Under Front page displays, click Static Page. Next to Front Page, choose Home from the drop-down menu. You now have your home page set up.
• Set up other static pages such as About or Contact using the New Page menu. Come back to Reading menu and set the page order like you want them to appear on the site navigation bar.
• Go to Links and click on the arrow to open the menu. Choose Edit. Delete all of the default links. Add your own links now if you want.
• Go to Appearance and click on the arrow. Choose Widgets and, if there are existing widgets in your sidebars, drag all of the ones you don’t want down to the bottom of page under Inactive Widgets. You can always re-activate them if you decide you want them.

It’s next to impossible to list every single detail for setting up your site. I hope I’ve at least made it easier for you. Once you’ve done these basics, you can work on the sidebars, links, and other navigation details. WordPress has a pretty good help section, but, if you can’t find what you need there, go to Google and search. I’ve found excellent help there.

Although I make no guarantees that you will find this easy or that you will like it, I’m happy to try to answer questions you might encounter in your experiment. I welcome comments on this blog or questions by e-mail to akinemily@gmail.com.

I was slow to hop on the blogging train, but now that I have, I am enjoying it immensely. Last year, in Blogger vs. WordPress post, I shared my research about the pros and cons of the two blogging tools. If you’re new to this blog, review that post before continuing.

I decided then to go with Blogger, mainly because I found it easier to use, especially for beginners. Later, I decided to work with WordPress more and to see what the differences were. I now use WordPress for most of my blogs. On the Blogger version of Wired to Write, I explained why I decided to change here.

Paste from Word: Now that I’m using WordPress regularly, I am discovering some really great features. For example, you can compose your posts in Word and paste into WordPress using the “Paste from Word” tool. All the formatting comes with it, including hyperlinks and text formatting like boldface and italic. This is a big time-saver, because, f you compose your posts online, it takes longer to do all that formatting. If you just copy and paste from Word without using the tool, you lose the formatting entirely.

Static Pages: One of the primary reasons I changed back to WordPress is that you can have a static page on WordPress, and you can’t have that on Blogger. See my book review blog as an example. Notice the menu bar across the top. There’s an About-Guidelines page and a Reading and Resources List for Writers page. Those pages are always there no matter how many blog posts I enter.

Use as Web Site: Some writers use WordPress as their primary Web site rather than having a main site and a separate blog. See Brandy Brow’s site here as an example.  Using one of the standard WordPress designs, she has the welcome message on the home/blog page. Her other pages are static pages ( not available on Blogger). This makes a great free Web site, and Brandy can use it as a blog later if she chooses. I’ve tried some of the free Web site offerings out there, and I think WordPress is much easier to use than most of the ones I’ve tried.

Generally, WordPress offers a lot for the low price of FREE. If you get into it and find you need more sophisticated features, you can always upgrade to the paid version which is described at WordPress.org.

I started from scratch with the Ky Christian Writers site. The theme for the writers conference is “Publish His glorious deeds among the nations” Psalm 96:3 (NLT). The print logo used by the group has a globe and a book with the Bible verse superimposed. I wanted to keep the concept but have more color and depth for the Web site design. I searched for a free graphic on the Web and found one that’s just right. I set up the banner in Publisher 2000, copied and pasted into Ulead photo software and converted it to a jpg. Once I had the banner, it was just a matter of plugging it in and setting up the rest of the page. I’ll admit, I did have to get professional help at one point.

I used the same banner on http://www.kychristianwriters.blogspot.com/ to provide continuity between the two sites. If you’re at all interested in writers conferences, please subscribe to the KCWC blog, and maybe we’ll see you at the conference next year.

I’m doing OK with Front Page, but I would not have gone out and bought it to do these sites. I want to do more research on the WordPress version that you download onto your computer. This version requires a hosting account, and therefore is not free. Supposedly, though, you get a lot more functions with that version.

News flash: I just found a great article on Web sites for writers on the Writer’s Digest site. Be sure to check it out, especially if you don’t already have a site or if you’re thinking of changing your current arrangement.

I’ve noticed many other writers like WordPress or Typepad. My primary criterion was that the blog service be free. Next, I wanted it to be easy to use…”intuitive” in Geek-speak. Typepad costs, or at least it did when I was doing my evaluation, so I didn’t even consider trying it.

I’ve decided to stay with Blogger after experimenting with WordPress. Although WordPress does have features that Blogger doesn’t, I think Blogger is easier to use and has more features that I want for my purposes. There’s plenty of help available through the regular Help channel and there’s a blog on using Blogger, too.

I’ve done some research on what others think about this subject. Here’s some info that helped me make my decision.

http://pulsed.blogspot.com/2007/07/blogger-wordpress-chart.html

http://www.jonbishop.org/2008/05/blogger-vs-wordpress/

Many writers are using blogs in lieu of a Web site to promote their work. I’m not sure it’s a good substitute, but it’s working for some people.