The Creative Blogger

This module is great for writers, artists and anyone creative who wants to build an online presence and is interested in delving into the wonderful world of blogging.

Blog posts can include written essays and stories, photo galleries and journeys, advice columns and link rolls, feature articles and embedded YouTube content – whatever you want it to be, as blogs are highly personal creations.

The Blogger package can include any or all of the following, and there are many choices you can make to reduce costs if you need to. Prices will vary depending on which bits you pick and choose.

• Domain: you can either;
  • have me purchase and setup a domain on your behalf, or,
  • purchase a domain and send me the login details (or, I can just send you DNS details when the time comes), or,
  • not purchase a domain and opt for a hosted website (eg, through wordpress.com).

• Web hosting: you can either;
  • have me purchase and setup website hosting on your behalf, or,
  • purchase the web hosting yourself and send me the cPanel / FTP details, or,
  • not purchase hosting and opt for a hosted website (eg again through wordpress.com).

Please note that for hosted options – free website hosting – restrictions to the level of customisation you will get apply. We might not be able to customise as much as you like, but hey – it’s free, and you’ll pay only for my time. Just bear in mind that some free website hosting packages are highly restrictive, so you might not be able to customise as much as you like. It’s really a case of getting what you pay for.

• Design: you can either;
  • have me design your blog listing page, archive page, search page, and a standard non-blog page template for any extra pages you want on your blog, or,
  • purchase an existing wordpress theme and send it to me to install, or,
  • select a free theme, send me a link to it and I’ll install it for you.

Please note that for hosted options, there are many options when it comes to themes, but they must be available through the http://theme.wordpress.com/ site only (anything on theme.wordpress.com with the “Premium” ribbon on it costs you money – see individual themes for full costs). Hosted sites don’t allow you to upload your own custom theme. Hosted sites won’t let us change a whole lot, either. Be ready for me to say “sorry, we can’t do that with this theme.”

• Development: this one will depend on whether you’ve opted for a free/hosted website, or have gone for the custom/private hosting option;
  • If you have a custom/privately hosted blog, I take care of;
    • all the setup, customisation, plugin installation and custom coding,
    • integration of any existing social media services that you like,
    • search engine optimisation,
    • Google webmaster tools and analytics integration (with an explanation of why this is needed, during the process).
  • If you have a wordpress.com hosted blog, I take care of;
    • the setup and customisation available through wordpress.com’s back-end,
    • integration of third party elements like social media depends entirely on what’s allowed through wordpress.com’s hosted platform,
    • minor theme changes – whatever the hosted theme allows (usually header image customisation, background image/colour changes, and overall heading/link colour changes),
    • note that with this option, your customisation options are limited by what is available to control through wordpress.com’s back-end.

• Plugins: configuration of any wordpress plugin you want or need. This is only available for the personalised, custom – non-wordpress-com hosted – options. There’s so many plugins there, all you need to do is ask and I’ll see if one’s available. A lot of them are free to use; some of them incur a one time cost, depending on the plugin developer. Plugins are little bits of code you can add to your blog that give you added functionality; things such as;
  • the ability to sell your own eBooks directly from your blog,
  • the ability to add contact forms anywhere you want on your blog,
  • the ability to add sophisticated image, audio and video galleries to your blog,
  • the ability to add a forum to your blog,
  • the ability to publish whenever you make a blog post straight to twitter or Facebook,
  • and much, much more – check out WordPress’ plugins area if you’re interested in seeing what’s available.

• Plus, everyone gets;
  • email support and training until handover to you.

In summary, you can either go:

The Cheap Way: where you get what you pay for, but hey, perhaps it’s all you need to get started? No domain costs, no website hosting costs, select an existing theme from theme.wordpress.com, and I just set it all up for you and teach you how to use it. Installation of extra plugins and features and changes simply isn’t possible on wordpress.com’s hosted platform; the chances are that if you ask ‘hey, can I add/change this?’ the answer will be no, simply because it’s turned off by them.

The Personalised Way: your own domain, private website hosting, custom wordpress theme design, custom plugin and social media integration, and fundamentally, the ability to change more things on your blog, to make it a truly personal experience.

There are so many options with this package though that the best thing to do really is just ask, and we can sort out exactly what kind of blog module you need. Send me a wave to discuss, or submit a quote enquiry.