B is for Blog
So as some of you know I’ve had a Livejournal for a while, and recently it’s been getting quite a bit of attention around the interwebs. I think the time has come that I have outgrown my little blog, and I’d like to start my own site, namely one in which I can display ads that will get me some sweet moola.
Problem is, I am totally clueless as to how any of this works. I know a lot of you guys have been running your own site since back in ’Nam, so what better group to ask about this?
I really don’t know where to start. I mentioned it on my LJ, and I’ve had people barking things like DOMAIN and WORDPRESS and whatnot at me, but I honestly have no idea what any of this means. So…any tips? Help? Explanations in layman’s terms?
I know I need to register a domain name, but is there a certain place to go for that you guys would recommend?
What about photos? Most of my posts are very image heavy. I have unlimited bandwith on Livejournal for my photo gallery, but the images only show up on their site. If I were to use something like Photobucket the bandwith would be gone within a day.
A friend of mine left me this comment and it’s confusing me…she had given me an account on her dreamhost a while back, although I had no idea what that meant haha.
Remember when I gave you an account on my dreamhost? We just get you a domain name ($10/yr.) and you have free hosting through me, complete with Wordpress, Gallery, and Email newsletters, yadda yadda. You need to own your URL though, since you’re the one creating value in it. You already have a free domain (ack.fandomart.com), but that’s a subdomain to me, and though you’re welcome to use it, you shouldn’t be giving me the free press, if you know what I mean.
You just put up your blog site – you have lots of offers above, or my company GrangeGraphics.com does it too – and you start sending your fandom traffic over there – instead of giving your click dollars to Livejournal!
So yeah, please help. I’m excited but confused.
Comments
I will send you an email with a lot of details. This is what I do. Wordpress may be too old-hat.
Huzzah! Thanks! I knew I could count on you.
what do you write about?
Lost, mostly. And Battlestar Galactica. I write about other stuff too, but those are the things I’m getting attention for.
I write these retarded Lost Recaps that sound nothing like me talking, they sound like a cracked out 13 year old kid explaining what happened haha. I sprinkle in some pop culture references, add some funny screencaps, and people go nuts for it.
I never thought it would ever become enough of a thing for me to move off of Livejournal, but in the last month I’ve been linked by USA Today, the Chicago Tribune, the biggest Battlestar fan site online, and even one of the executive producers of BSG. Which is crazy. People have even translated my recaps to Spanish for their Lost site in Spain hahaha.
It’s kind of surreal.
wordpress old hat?
john, i might need a long detailed email as well.
Wow Rachel, that’s awesome!
Well, Derrick, so far, all I did was mention Tumblr. But Rachel needs comments. If you don’t need comments, Tumblr is absolutely the way to go for a whole bunch of reasons I don’t have time to get into at the moment.
Rach, do you have an idea for a domain name?
I know, right!? It’s crazy. I never thought I’d have enough of a following to actually make money off of this stuff, but here we are.
I’d like it to be something with ack…I was checking it out, ackattack.net seems to be available. But are .nets a bad idea? I don’t know.
Maybe theackattack.com? That seems to be open.
definitely should do .com if it’s available.
Well I think theackattack.com would work. It sucks that ackattack.com is taken, it’s a white page that says “It works!”
And that’s it hahaha. Not sure what’s going on there.
Anyway is there a specific place I should go to register for this thing? Or is it kind of whatever place you happen to click on?
Just buy it at www.moniker.com
Go Daddy sucks and Network Solutions are con artists. Moniker is supposed to be pretty good.
Wordpress is great unless you want ads, then it’s harder. You can’t use Google Adsense on there. It’s real easy to set up with Blogger. You can set it up to work on your own domain and their default layouts are kinda cheesy, but I’ve seen people get it looking pretty good.
Oh really wow I didn’t realize you couldn’t use Adsense with Wordpress! That’s definitely good to know.
Yeah, you absolutely can use adsense with wordpress.
i don’t get why you need to buy a website name if it doesn’t exist yet. you say buy from godaddy or one of those places, whos to say they own the name. i just don’t get it
You don’t buy it from them. You pay for the service of maintaining your registration via ICANN. Only approved registrars can register domains, and really, it’s all a big scam. But at least it’s cheap.
whats ICANN?
Hmmmm okay so I suppose I need to figure out how to use WordPress haha. Although should I be getting the WordPress program, or I am using the hosting site? Or are they just used in conjunction?
Kev, Google is your friend.
Rachel, I’ll take care of all of that for you.
i’m sorry i thought we were having a conversation here.
Oh, awesome!
I’m excited. It’s all happening!
Since I have zero interest in doing work today I started googling myself and there seems to be a lot more people out there who read me than I had imagined. So this is a good move.
L’Kevin L:i’m sorry i thought we were having a conversation here.
I understand.
Did you guys just have a moment?
Rachel said:Since I have zero interest in doing work today I started googling myself and there seems to be a lot more people out there who read me than I had imagined. So this is a good move.
If you want to do something very useful in the meantime, find out if you can export your LJ history into some format and find out what blogs you can import into. It’d be a shame to lose all your old posts.
You can definitely export LJ posts into Wordpress. Not sure about comments though, but I’ve done some test runs with my old LJ posts.
I believe it just exports as an XML file.
Well I’m not going to be getting rid of my LJ, that will still be there. If anything I’ll just transfer my recaps, and I don’t care if the comments come along with them. I’ll just copy and paste the codes once I reupload the images to a different server.
But yeah this is only going to be an auxiliary blog for Lost and BSG stuff.
what happens when those shows are done forever?
Who knows. I’ll either find new shit to ramble about or give up haha.
I’m planning on this being more of an all-out pop culture type blog, so even if those shows are over I can talk about other fun things. But as far as content I want to bring over from my LJ, I only want the big/funny things I’ve done, the other stuff isn’t worth transferring. And if people are that interested they’ll sign up with LJ and hang out with me there.
It’s just gotten to the point that my fun posts are drawing a huge crowd and I want people to be able to link back to an actual site and not some Livejournal haha. I’m a brand! It’s crazy.
So much scrolling… Paginate the comments!
THIS IS WHAT HAPPENS WHEN I LISTEN TO YOU PEOPLE. I had them paginated. Then you said no pagination. So I moved the pagination back. Now you want more pagination. I fucking hate you!
Pagination sucks.
Pagination sounds…dirty.
Dude, I was totally kidding…
I still hate you.
You only have to like me sometimes, apparently.
what happens when those shows are done forever?
FANFIC.
NO…these shows are like Star Trek, you could go on forever finding something to write about.
LJ posts can export to XML cause I did it. It doesn’t take comments and have to do month by month so it’s a pain, but you can do it. It’s worth doing even if you keep everything there cause LJ seems to be falling apart or something. If you have writing you care about, it shouldn’t only be on someone else’s site where they can delete it if they don’t like it or fuck it up by mistake.
HAHAHAH FANFIC. Oh my god.
I do love how people assume that since I’m so into my shows that I must read and write fanfic. They are always so disappointed when I say, “uhhh…sorry, no. Not. At all.”
I can see backing up my LJ someday when I’m really bored and have nothing better to do, but for now LJ itself doesn’t seem like it’s going anywhere. They’re having all these issues, but they are with non paid users, and my account is paid so I should be good for now.