Part One, the Blog. Definitions time, sorry

• “Blog” like “Tabloid” – a physical description
• Denotation: 1997 … Automatic day-time stamp, for scientists, engineers and techies to see chronologies in R&D projects.
• Blogs so easy that hobbyists and sports clubs etc. grabbed, democratized the Web
• Connotation: Informal and spontaneous
• Some bloggers grew embarrassed by amateurs. Called theirs websites.
• Meanwhile, major websites added blogs. Writers use the time-stamp to update news stories, or photographers update albums of live events.
• Now, so interchangeable as to lose meaning.
• WordPress calls itself a blog host and blog platform. They’re websites!

Part Two, The Twos of This Talk

•• Blog and Website (as above)

• •• WordPress -> WordPress.org and WordPress.com
• • WordPress.org -> software to download, yours all the way
• —- Your domain name (dot.com dot.net), you contract with a hosting service. Base < $200 / year. Until space needs or thousands of viewers
• —- Customize as much as you want.
• • WordPress.com -> WordPress hosts your website.
• —- .com is nearly all free and what isn’t, is competitively priced
• —- —- 3 gigabytes. What’s a gig? Unlimited text files and 2,500 pictures
• —- WordPress.com drawbacks
• —- —- Only Web ads are through them, with fee
• —- —- 3 gigs is a lot but won’t hold video or audio files YouTube, Vimeo work-around, post, then link to it
• —- —- Friendly, subtle but persistent money come-ons. By the time you need those, move to WordPress.org
• —- —- Nil customizing. Reinvent the wheel? Or, 14-line sonnet, art from limits! If having it really your way is a must, coding, welcome to WordCamp Fayetteville — that’s what everything but the 101 Track is about.
• • Both WordPresses run by the same house, Automattic
• —- Compare Google, Facebook. Or Mozilla (Netscape, FIrefox)
• • Similar: Google’s Blogger/Blogspot – free. Fee-based Moveable Type and Typepad. All have good reputations. But all of us presenters, and a lot of other people, put WordPress above them. (Drupal more for business)

•• Again, twos: WordPress.com and WordPress.org, and blog and website
•• Static website files and Dynamic blog files

• Static — a pizzeria website’s hours & menus, a soccer team’s schedule
• Of course they can be re-edited and re-uploaded
• Dynamic — improvisational, informal. The pizzeria’s diner comments

•• WordPress calls Static files Pages and Dynamic files Posts

• Dynamic blog posts can be sorted into categories, for your convenience and definitely the viewers
• Static Informational Pages can be arranged in hierarchies (parent-child).

Now I can show you in this blog-creation demonstration