Blogging Tools » Mad Brew Labs

RPG Blogging Tools III: Writing Tips and Sample Setup

Posted by Mad Brew On December - 17 - 2008

This is the conclusion to my three part series on RPG Blogging Tools. In this installment I provide some basic writing advice, point you to the advice of the experts, and then show you how I set my WordPress blog up. The rest of the series can be found here:

Writing Tips

There are a lot of resources out there that can improve your writing. In fact, there are thousands of books and websites devoted to the topic. In my opinion, the best way to improve your writing is by writing. The more you write, the quicker you will develop your own style and the more consistent your writing will become.

The Basics

I see RPG Blogging as a mixture of editorial, journalistic, and creative writing, and so certain approaches to writing in this medium work better than others. I have said before that the best thing a blogger can do is write new, quality content on a regular basis. “Content is King” is a catchphrase constantly heard in the realm of blogging.

But before anyone will read your amazing article on the history of the icosahedron as a gaming device, you are going to need draw the reader’s attention. This begins with the title. The title is the gateway to your article, but you are not done there. You have to entice the reader to read each consecutive sentence. The first sentence leads to the second, and the second to the third. Keep this idea in mind when authoring posts.

Keep posts focused on a single topic and each post should fit within the domain of your chosen niche. Keep in mind the short attention span of web surfers, so break long articles up over several posts. You’ll find that many sources say the average amount of time the average reader spends on a page is not much longer than a minute and a half (app. 100 seconds).

Make sure your content is readable and easily scanned. Break up those walls of text into paragraphs and emphasize keywords by changing the font size, color, or style (bolds, italics, & underlines). Be sure to proof read your content! I know I easily get disgusted with poor grammar and spelling (and I find mistakes in my own writing ALL the time!).

Keep your content fresh and beware the echo chamber effect. Echoes happen easily in the RPG blogosphere because the industry is relatively small and when news from the publishers hits the ripples do not need to travel far before ten or twenty blogs regurgitate it. Your content doesn’t need to be original, and it probably won’t be. But you can make it unique by applying your perspective and presenting the information in a way not found anywhere else.

Become an expert on of your particular niche. Do you specialize in OGL d20 games? Then research the topic daily. Know the history, current developments, and future projects in the genre. Become very familiar with the basic rules and what the trends are when changes are made. Play the games. Then write about it and before you know it, the community will confer that title upon you.

Be sure to mix up your sources for articles. This becomes more difficult the more specialized you are (after all, how many publishers and blogs produce content for Live Action Hentai Cyberpunk Cthulhu?). It is a matter of credibility I think.

Also, ensure you follow general internet etiquette guidelines. This means obeying Fair Use doctrine for copyrights and trademarks, citing your sources, and avoiding hot-linking (linking directly to an image, .PDF, or other file on someone else’s site).

My final piece of advice is that blogging shouldn’t become a job. RPGs make us happy and provide countless hours of entertainment. So writing about them should be fun too!

Advanced Tips

Since I do not consider myself an expert on the topic of blogging and writing tips, I am not going to say much. What I will do is provide some links to those I do consider experts on the matter and let you expand your knowledge by reading their excellent posts.

ChattyDM

Phil, the Chatty DM, is perhaps one of the most prolific RPG bloggers, and certainly an influential one. Just after I started blogging myself, he started a series of articles called, “So You Wanna Write a RPG Blog.” I am sure it still one of his more popular series and he even invited Berin of UncleBear to do a guest post for the series.

UncleBear

Berin Kinsman (doesn’t that sound like sci-fi/fantasy hero’s name?) has been a mainstay of the RPG blogosphere since before blog was a word. He has the oldest blog (12 years old?) I am aware of, so he has a lot of experience. He continued ChattyDM’s series where it left off with his guest post.

The Core Mechanic

Jonathan runs The Core Mechanic, and while only starting his RPG blog in July of this year (2008), I would put him the “bloggers to keep an eye on” category. He initiated the very successful RPG Blog Carnival (for which I was asked to guest blog for his entry, Skill Challenges of War, in this month’s (December ’08) carnival hosted by Critical-Hits. He is also working on the Open Game Table: The 2008 Anthology of Roleplaying Game Blogs, which should be available early next year!

Living Dice

Trask of Living Dice organized the Bloggers Bloodbath tournament this year which featured bloggers battling it out with each other using d20Pro. I totally kicked ass in this event using a pre-generated character that was an ECL 10 Centaur Ranger with horseshoes of speed, dual wielded scimitars, and a hawk animal companion. Trask also created RPGSeek, a customized Google search that only indexes RPG Publishers (which should be VERY useful for article research!).

Yahuda

Yahuda is/was a professional blogger with a keen interest in boardgames. In fact, he actually created a pretty nifty collection/auction boardgame called, It’s Alive!. He is also involved with Purple Pawn, a prolific gaming blog. In the second linked post from Yahuda, he mentions that swapping links (blogrolls) and site design are things that don’t matter. This may be the case in his experience, but I think these things do matter. 1) Swapping links is a form of networking, and the more friends you have the better. 2) You only have one chance to make a first impression, so site design can be crucial. EDIT: Yahuda responded to my comment on his post and clarified that he does believe networking is important, but he doesn’t swap links just for the sake of swapping links.

Copyblogger

Copyblogger is a blog dedicated to copywriting, which is defined on their site as “the process of writing words that promote a person, business, opinion, or idea, with the ultimate intention of having the reader take some form of action. Even if that action is a link, bookmark, or a vote at Digg that leads to the traffic you need.” Ok, so combining wordsmithing with marketing. There are tons of excellent tips available there, so I will contribute to their bank account by sending more traffic their way.

ProBlogger

Problogger is run by Darren Rowse, a guy who makes six digits as a full time blogger. This site is just one of many he runs and maintains and this one is dedicated to helping people learn the skills of blogging and has over 3500 articles devoted to the art. When you read any of the “make money with blogging” articles, keep in mind that our particular niche of RPG blogging, has a significantly smaller audience that some other topics (which means significantly smaller revenue).

My WordPress Set-up

I figured I would give an overview of my WordPress install and show you how I have customized it to make it my own. I find the earlier you implement some settings and plug-ins, the less of a headache it is later. For instance, if you wait until you have 100 posts to install All-In-One SEO, it is going to be a pain in the ass to go back and optimize all your old posts.

If you have any questions about how I accomplished something, feel free to leave your question in the comments and I will either answer it there or, for more complicated issues, I’ll email you. Keep in mind, I am using WordPress v 2.5 (I know I’m behind the power curve!) but I am getting ready to migrate to the new 2.7 release.

Theme

I shanghaied Design Blog‘s Modern Marvel theme and put it to work on my blog. I have made some simple adjustments to the theme, such as shrinking the width of the sidebar to allow more room for the content (because content is king!). I want to make the content area even wider.

I also made the search, category, and tag pages show excerpts instead of full posts to make it easy to browse and find particular articles. I further modified the excerpts and added a line that listed the tags associated with each post.

I think the next step will be implementing excerpts for all posts after the current article on the main page as well as creating a new banner, for which I finished my new avatar. I would say it is important to never keep the default design of any theme off the shelf. Make your blog stand out from the rest!

Mad Brew

The key to choosing a theme is to pick one that is readable (no yellow text on white…) and has an easily navigated layout. A couple of blogs that have excellent themes include Critical-hits and RPGCentric.

Settings

I pretty much kept with the default General settings of the WordPress install (except of course customizing the blog title, tagline, URLs, etc. I would make sure the if you are allowing members to register, that you set the “New User Default Role” to subscriber so you don’t have just anyone messing with your content..

In the Reading section of the Setting, you can select the number of posts that displays per page. Your setting depends on whether you write super long articles and have them display as excerpts or full posts. I would set it so a read doesn’t have to scroll for minutes before reaching the bottom of the page (I think mine are too long!).

In the Discussion section, it is important to note the “Comment Blacklist.” While this feature seems to only work half the time, this is where I put the full or partial IP addresses of those asshole spam commenters. Also of note are the avatar settings, I show them and default to Gravatar.

In the Permalinks section you can determine the URL of your posts. I personally use the day and name option because I like to have that information in the address bar.

Plug-ins

Oh damn, it can be real easy to go nuts with plug-ins, just make sure you back-up your site before you install one. Installation requires you to unzip the contents of a plug-in into your plug-in directory. I usually use an FTP client for this (FileZilla).

For traffic analytics, I use CyStats, StatPress, and WordPress.com Stats. Between these three plug-ins, my server’s traffic analyzer, and Google Analytics I can find out just about anything I need to know about my traffic.

For general stats about my blog, like the number of articles, authors, pages, tags, and comments I use WP-Stats and for my word count I use TD Word Count.

For Search Engine Optimization, I make heavy use of All In One SEO Pack which allows me to customize the title (including separate formats for different page types: category, tags, archive, etc.), keywords, and description of each article. I made my own robots.txt, but you can use KB Robots or Robots Meta. And to keep my sitemap up-to-date for Google, I implemented the Google XML Sitemaps plug-in.

Besides using the “Comment Blacklist” setting, I have to say Akismet has done an excellent job of catching spam. But for the be all, end all of defeating those dumbass serial spammers, you can add the following bit of code to your .htaccess file (usually found in the root of your site):

order allow,deny
deny from 87.118.118.133
deny from 94.102.60.
deny from 193.86.
allow from all

For improving the efficiency of my writing, I added several templates with Post Template. I like to embed invisible Technorati tags in my posts, so I added them to my template as well as a schema for the “Listening to:” line I put at the end of my articles. For a quick and clean method (read: standard compliant) of embedding Flash into the site, I use Kimili Flash Embed which adds a nice little button in the post editor.

I have also added tons of social networking and interactive plug-ins. ShareThis I think is very important because it adds a widget to every post that allows reader to add the page to their favorite social bookmarking sites like StumbleUpon, Digg, and Reddit. CommentLuv automagically detects the most recent post(s) of a commenter based upon the entered URL and provides a link to it. This encourages fellow bloggers to comment because it gives them free advertisement. I have also added WP Ajax Edit to my site to allow users to edit their comment for a short period of time because I know how frustrating it can be to catch bad grammar or spelling errors after you submit your comment.

I also added the MiniMeta Widget so I can instantly navigate to the write, dashboard, and stats pages of the admin section from anywhere on the site. WP Cumulus is another widget I have added just for the cool factor (it’s the cool spinning “3D” tag cloud).

Coding

I am a programmer, and I like adhering to standards whenever possible. I have meticulously ensured that my blog validates under XHTML 1.0 Strict as well as being CSS 3 valid. I even created icons that link to the official validation so anyone can check it. So if you happen to check the validity of my code and it fails, LET ME KNOW!

Anyways, WordPress uses a combination of SQL, PHP, XHTML, CSS, and JavaScript to eventually arrive at the finished product you see now. I recommend visiting W3C Schools for help with XHTML and SQL (not that I foresee anyone changing any SQL). For CSS I also recommend W3C Schools but you also need to check out CSS Zen Garden. Finally, for general PHP help, we will again visit W3C Schools but for things specific with WordPress I recommend you visit the lessons section of WordPress Codex, especially paying attention to anything about tags.

Listening to: Lollipop Lust Kill - My So Called Knife - Personal Jesus

gaming blogging writing rpg roleplaying writing tips wordpress

Culture, Design & Development

RPG Blogging Tools II: Promotion & Measurement

Posted by Mad Brew On December - 4 - 2008

This is part two of a three part series on RPG Blogging Tools, if you haven’t read part 1, “Intro, Hosting, & Platform,” I suggest you begin the journey there.

Promote

We have a host, chose our platform, and now we need to get the word out about this fantastic blog with fresh and exciting content for the RPG community. Where do we start? I am going to tell you the number one best tip to driving traffic to your site is NEW & ORIGINAL CONTENT. Role-players (you DID want to be an RPG Blogger, didn’t you) are going to be your primary, if not exclusive, audience. So you will need to produce content that your target audience, role-players, will find useful, engaging and want to read. However, you can narrow your (already very narrow) target demographic such as horror role-players, or even go further, like Call of Cthulhu role-players.

I am not going to delve into writing tips at this point, because I want to cover the more technical aspects of how you can help your blog reach its audience.

Blog Aggregates

Many aggregates cater to the blogosphere, and the more places you have your site, the more opportunities potential readers will have of coming across your blog. Blog aggregates usually require you to create a profile and place a line of script into the header of your site to be able to submit and verify your blog to the aggregate.

As an RPG Blogger, the best aggregate you can belong to is the RPG Bloggers Network. This is a fantastic aggregate dedicated to bloggers just like you and me. It was conceived by two of the biggest names in the genre, Dave of Critical-Hits.com and Phil of ChattyDM.net. This should be one of the first networks you join, and you can find out the details on their application to join page. The RPGBN also has a Google Group that I highly recommend joining, as it provides a means to discuss upcoming events and talk shop.

RPGLife also has a blog aggregator that you can submit your blog to, but I have personally not taken this opportunity. However, do let my personal feelings keep you from getting your name out there. I do recommend you use excerpts for your feeds so that interested readers will have to click through to your site to get the full story (which is done by default on RPGBN).

Some other aggregates of note include Technorati, MyBlogLog, BlogCatalog, and BlogTopSites. Technorati has a feature called Authority that is calculated by the number of other Technorati listed blogs that link to you. So an excellent way to increase your Authority is to comment on and collaborate with other listed blogs.

A word of warning about commenting: do not just hit-n-run sites posting half-ass comments to get your name to show up. You should only comment if you have something of substance to add. I would hate to think that my suggestions here spawned a new generation of spammers.

Cross-Pollination

Cross-blog readership is essentially the goal of the RPGBN, but I am talking about more direct measures. Jonathan of The Core Mechanic kicked off the very successful RPG Blog Carnival, which has rolled its way through five blogs at the time of this writing. The RPG Blog Carnival is hosted by a different blog every month, which announces the topic for participants to blog about. Participating blogs submit their posts to the hosting blog which collects all the URLs and puts them into one final post. It is a great method to earn recognition as well as feed your fingers something to type about.

There are also other collaborations between blogs, publishers, and other sites that happen often. Many are announced on the RPGBN’s Google Group, such as the Cthulhu and Pathfinder mini-carnivals that have been hosted by the Atomic Array. Trask of LivingDice organized the 2008 Blogger Bloodbath. Jonathan from The Core Mechanic is just wrapping up nominations for what will no doubt prove to be another successful venture in the Open Game Table: The 2008 Anthology of Roleplaying Game Blogs. It is too late to submit now, but if it is as good as I think it will be, you can start working on writing excellent posts now to submit for next year’s edition.

You can also contact blogs you like to read and see if they will participate in a link exchange with you. It is as simple as adding a link to their site in your blogroll and they reciprocate. I am very hesitant about doing this, because I do not want to make the other blogger feel obligated to do so (or be crushed with rejection). I have been told I am silly for being so reluctant, but I suspect you should wait until you have a few quality posts under your belt. I would also look into using a CommentLuv plug-in (if available on your platform) and registering with their site, as rewards other bloggers for posting on your site by placing a line after their comment with a link to their most recent post.

You don’t have to wait for opportunities like these to happen; you can create them. If you have an idea for a good collaboration, don’t hesitate to pitch it, because I know other bloggers are looking something to write about too.

Social Networks

I include a large number of services and sites in my definition of social networks. Social networks can be anything from Web 2.0 communities like Facebook or MySpace (ugh!), to forums like RPGSite or EnWorld, and even social bookmarking sites like Digg or StumbleUpon.

How do you go about taking advantage of these fine places and making them work for you? Well you need to go out and create accounts at all the sites you will want to use. You can simply post excerpts of your articles to your MySpace blog and Facebook wall. If you create art, I also recommend creating a DeviantArt account and maintaining a gallery there. I have also been looking into Twitter for a while, thinking of a unique way I could leverage it. You can find an exhaustive list of social networks on Wikipedia.

There are literally hundreds of forums dedicated to RPGs out there. Some local, some dedicated to systems or publishers, and many general communities. Search for ones that fit your topics, create an account, and put a banner or a simple text link to your blog in your signature. After that, jump into topics you have something of substance to add to, and begin plugging away. Again, I caution you to not become a shameless plug machine for your blog, actually contribute useful posts! A few of the bigger forums include RPGsite, EnWorld, Wizards Community, and RPGnet.

Exploiting StumbleUpon (though I have found I could only submit 11 pages from any domain), Digg, and other social bookmarking sites will probably yield one of the most significant and immediate increases to your traffic; second only to the RPGBN. At least this has been the case with my experience. Sign up for accounts and begin bookmarking your articles. While you’re at it, don’t forget to bookmark other bloggers’ articles you find interesting. We are a close knit community, and I like to promote my colleagues’ work as well.

SEO

Search Engine Optimization, possibly the darkest art of the World Wide Web. What exactly is SEO? Wikipedia defines SEO as “the process of improving the volume and quality of traffic to a web site from search engines via “natural” (“organic” or “algorithmic”) search results. Usually, the earlier a site is presented in the search results, or the higher it “ranks,” the more searchers will visit that site.”

Keywords, content, and juicing your pagerank are common methods of optimizing your site. Most methods revolve around Google as the primary search engine. Reducing duplicate content, duplicate title tags, and URL errors are other methods of improving your site.

Bloggers who are conscious of their pagerank need to be aware of how their chosen blog platform produces content pages. An unmodified WordPress blog will create the same content for archive, category, tag, and search pages that also reside on your main pages. Google sometimes sees this as a negative thing and will then put your site into “supplementary search results” which is a bad thing, because no one will see it. Google pagerank is also uses the number of external sites that link to your site in its algorithm, so the more people talk about your blog, the higher your PR will soar.

Google Webmaster Tools can help you identify and fix problems with your site. You will need to create a sitemap for your blog and place some code in the header to verify that you own it in order to use the tools. I also used a robots.txt at the root of my site to keep Google’s spiders from seeing duplicate content.

Other than waving a dead chicken around your head three times and throwing salt over your left shoulder, creating relevant content and remembering to give your pages good titles and meta tags should keep your site optimized for search engines. Don’t forget to submit your site’s URL to be indexed by Google!

Advertising

This is not about placing ads on your blog to make money (I’ll leave that topic to someone who actually makes money with their blog); it is about spending money to drive traffic to your site. This is an area I have yet to breach, because I am happy with my current readership and its rate of growth. But there may come a time you have some dollars (or pounds, rupees, or gold) burning a hole in your wallet and you want to pay for some advertisement.

I would first try the free method of banner exchange with friendly sites (something I think I might look into in the near future). The next step would be to purchase ads on Google (AdWords or Adsense) or other search engines. Finally, you can find sites that offer paid advertising directly on their pages. This will require some research on how much traffic they receive, how often your ad is displayed, and how much it costs.

I will note a couple of things about earning money on your site with advertisement. I am also aware that RPG Now as well as Amazon offer affiliate programs that allow you to earn discounts or credit. Also, once you have established a significant amount of traffic to your blog, advertisers may even approach you directly. This has yet to happen with me, and I tend to shy away from cluttering my interface with advertisements, but it would be nice if the blog actually paid for itself. As with all things of this nature, there is a trade-off.

Measure

Even if your goal is not to topple the likes of Critical-hits.com or ChattyDM.net from the top of the RPG Blogging ranks, you will still want to gauge the success of your site. And if that is your goal, then you most definitely will want to use some of the following tools to monitor and analyze your traffic. That and it is just plain cool to know that someone in Siberian Russia is reading your blog. Здравствуйте!

Your hosting company should have traffic monitoring tools, but I like to compare the stats of several analyses to get a better picture of what is happening.

Google

I’ve already covered Google’s Webmaster Tools as an excellent method to whip your site into shape for search engine optimization, but they also have an excellent traffic examination tool called Google Analytics. I’ve been working with for about two months now, and I don’t even know all the cool things you can do with it, but you can see where your traffic is coming from and where visitors are spending their time. You can also check your Google pagerank at prchecker.com (also available in Webmaster Tools).

Aggregates & Other Sites

Many of the blog aggregates have a built-in ranking system which will let you know how well your blog does compared to the other blogs listed on their network. Tony from RPG Centric pointed out BlogPatrol to the RPGBN, which offers a simple tracking system for blogs.

You may also choose to redirect your feed through Feedburner to use their feed analysis. However, it can sometimes be a pain in the ass to get Feedburner to work properly; I still intermittent delays in posting to my feed reader. Ed Healy from Atomic Array let the RPGBN know about this video on owning your feed.

Plug-ins

Most of the blogware out there also have built-in stat pages or have stat plug-ins available. Read the available documentation on your platform or search the plug-in directory (or the web) for what you need. Some useful stats to look for are your sites traffic (unique visitors, hits, spiders), most visited blog page, most commented post, search engine search phrases, and referring sites.

In the end, the best measurement of how successful your blog is whether or not it makes you happy. If you find yourself frustrated by chasing impossible numbers, perhaps blogging is not for you. I believe the numbers will come as long as you provide consistent, enjoyable content. Remember, you probably won’t be getting paid to do this, so it should be FUN to blog, not a JOB.

Again, I welcome my fellow bloggers to comment on their experiences, preferences, and tips on blog promotion and measurement. Stay tuned for the final chapter in my three part RPG Blogging Tools series entitled “Writing Tips and Sample Setup.”

Listening to: Danzig - Danzig II: Lucifuge - I’m the One

gaming D&D d20 rpg roleplaying dungeons and dragons world of darkness

Culture, Design & Development

RPG Blogging Tools I: Intro, Hosting, & Platform

Posted by Mad Brew On December - 3 - 2008

I specifically target novices wishing to write about table top role-playing games (RPGs). I am providing additional content that is only relevant to the RPG Blogosphere, eventhough the majority of the content of this article applies to blogs of any topic.

What is RPG Blogging?

What is RPG blogging, or blogging for that matter? Well, a blog is defined by Merriam-Webster with the following entry:

blog
Pronunciation: \’blȯg, ‘bläg\
Function: noun
Etymology: short for Weblog
Date: 1999

: A Web site that contains an online personal journal with reflections, comments, and often hyperlinks provided by the writer; also: the contents of such a site.

So blogging is the act of creating an online journal of reflections and commentary. RPG Blogging is merely focusing those reflections and commentary on the specific subject of Role Playing Games, and in our case, the ones referred to as table top or pen & paper games.

I originally created my blog as a design & development diary for my own custom rank-based d20 rules, Echelon, and my original steampunk/horror setting, The Dead Wastes. But it grew to be more than that, and it now incorporates product reviews, GM and player advice, points of inspiration, and cross-blog event participation.

Some RPG bloggers write about their experiences at the table, some talk theory, and others run the entire gamut of possibilities. Some of the more successful bloggers are able to relate their real life experiences into gaming elements. I have condensed the topics that most RPG Bloggers write about into the following list:

• Product Review
• Industry News
• Game play Logs
• GM advice
• Player Advice
• Homebrew Rules & Settings
• Game Design/Theory
• Gamer Culture/Rants

I am sure that I could be missing some huge niche in RPG Blogosphere, but I believe that most, if not all, topics can fall into one or more of the listed categories. I should note that any topics devoted to a particular system (such as D&D 3.5, World of Darkness, or Warhammer) are actually just a subset of one of these categories.

I think one of the most important aspects of RPG Blogging, is that it seems to be more of a community than most of the other topic-related blogs out there. We are aware of most of the other bloggers and we like to help each other out. I keep a small circle of friends, so I am not one to claim everyone I encounter as a friend, but I do believe I have formed a few solid friendships with other bloggers. This is one of the fringe benefits of being an RPG Blogger.

Hosting

The first decision that must be made by any burgeoning blogger is whether to use a free, but limiting host service or to pony up the money for full featured paid hosting. The answer to this depends on how dedicated the blogger plans on being to the hobby as well as what kind of budget is available.

Hindsight being 20/20, I wish I had sprung for paid hosting from the beginning. The reason is that after three and a half months, I had managed to establish regular traffic with a few popular articles. Once I decided to go with paid hosting, due to the limitations of the free host, I found that it was a pain in the ass to redirect that traffic to the new site. This and the fact that you cannot hope to update all the links still connecting to your old blog.

WordPress.com offers forwarding for an annual fee, but your new blog must maintain the same post structure, which was something I wanted to change. Other free hosts may have similar options.

Free

So you have decided that you just want to test the waters or, for whatever reason, you are not ready to pay for hosting. Some of the major players in free blog hosting include WordPress.com, Google Blogger, Live Journal, and Blog.com. There are also a couple of social networks for gamers, EnWorld and RPGLife, that provide blogging tools (most likely trying to fill the vacuum left by the now defunct Gleemax).

Or if you are thinking about using the Wiki approach, Wikidot, Wetpaint, and WikiSpaces are popular free hosts. But for the RPG Blogger, I would also check out Obsidian Portal and Campaign Wiki which are both geared towards the organization of campaigns, but might prove useful as a blogging tool.

It is important to note that if you use a free host, you may have to pay a fee to modify the theme, CSS, and HTML, or not be able to change them at all. This will mean that it will prevent you from joining networks that require you to insert scripts into your site as well as keep you from using external traffic analyzers.

Self

Self hosting is a mixed bag. The caveats of running your own web server from your home outweigh the benefits in my professional opinion. First you will need to have an always on broadband connection, preferably something with some significant upstream speed. And, you will need to ensure that you have a static IP Address. Even if you have a cable connection, your IP may still be dynamic.

Most average machines will cost you about 1 USD a day (at average US rates) if you keep it on 24 hours a day, seven days a week. Decent paid hosting will probably charge a fraction of this cost, less than 0.20 USD a day (using a 6 USD/mo plan).

Installation, maintenance, and security will all be additional obstacles to consider when looking to self host. Hosts already have web server software installed (Apache, IIS, etc.) and most will pre-install or have one-click installation of popular software. And if a hard drive fails, the host most likely will have it replaced and your site back up in minutes.

However, if you already have a machine you run constantly, have a decent internet connection, savvy with configuring routers, and familiar with installing web servers and software then by all means self host. It will provide the greatest amount of control, but for what little extra it provides, I do not think it is worth it.

Windows users should look at WAMP (for the web serving essentials), DynDNS (for free DNS service and a very good dynamic DNS update client for not-static IPs), and WordPress.org (to download the actual blogging software). Linux users probably already know how to do this, and since there are so many distros out there, I’m not going to delve any further. Oh, and before I forget, Macs should already have a shiny icon sitting in the dashboard that should one-click start everything you need, if you believe their ads.

Paid

If you have decided to take the plunge and go full bore on this blogging thing, congratulations. Paid hosting can be acquired fairly cheaply, depending on what features you need. Some features to keep in mind when choosing a host are costs, domain names, bandwidth allotment, databases, scripting languages, methods of access, drive space, hardware, and supported software.

The first thing you will need when going to paid hosting is a domain name, preferably something unique but memorable. Many hosting plans offer free domain registration, so picking out the domain name is part of setting up your account with them. If you need to obtain a domain name from another service, I recommend GoDaddy.com. It may also be important for future developments if your host provides multiple domains and/or sub-domains. These can be handy for unrelated and related side projects you might want to develop.

While not so important for blogs when just beginning, the amount of bandwidth allowed for your site can be important. When your blog takes off and becomes popular, you do not want to hit a bandwidth ceiling. But if you are mostly serving text and small images, 100 GBs of bandwidth is probably more than sufficient.

To run blogging software, you will need a database, as most blogs produce web pages dynamically by using template pages and inserting the necessary content on the fly. All of the popular software works with MySQL, which is usually provided in even the most basic hosting plans. Other databases of note include MS SQL Server and Oracle. Be sure to reference your chosen blog software to see which database (and version) it requires.

The other tools blogging software needs to operate are scripting languages. The most popular language I see used is PHP, but some others include Python, Perl, and Ruby. Again, refer to your chosen blog software to see what it is written in and make sure the correct version of the scripting language is installed on your host.

You will probably want to upload themes, plug-ins, and other resources (possibly the blogging software itself) to your site at some point, so it will be important to note what services the host provides for accessing your site. I prefer SSH (Secure Shell) and FTP and I recommend WinSCP or FireFTP for FTP only file transfers. You will also want to utilize FTP to backup your site. DO NOT depend on the host for timely and accurate backups. Save early, save often.

Make sure you will have enough space available to build your blog empire. It will need space for the software install, the database where all hour content will be held, additional themes and plug-ins, and whatever else you need to serve. I would not settle for anything less than 10 GB because many plans offer unlimited space!

See what kind of hardware the server has tucked under the hood. It will not do any good to have unlimited everything if it takes five minutes for simple pages to load. If the specs are not listed, try other sites that use the same host and see how fast or slow those sites are. I doubt this will be a major factor, but it is something to pay attention to.

See if the host supports your chosen software by installing it for you or with simple “one-click” installs. Perhaps it has some other software you think you could take advantage of, such as Content Management Software (Joomla, Mambo, or DotNetNuke), forums (phpBB, vBulletin, or Invision), and wikis (MediaWiki, TikiWiki, or PhpWiki).

I currently use WebHostForASP.net for my hosting needs. It is a Windows based host (fairly rare) because I actually develop .NET programs for a living and I want to host some examples of my work in the future. This will require the use of MS SQL Server and ASP.NET 3.5 which can only be had on a Windows platform.

However, unless you have some exotic requirements like me, the following web hosting companies come highly recommended:

Each of these hosts provides web hosting for less than 7 USD and most provide free domain name registration.

Platform

A platform is a software architecture that applications run on. I am liberal in what I consider a “platform.” I usually chain all requisite software starting with the Operating System to the final application. Some examples include Windows → II6 → MS SQL → .NET 2.0 → Visual Basic → DotNetNuke or Linux → Apache → MySQL → PHP → WordPress. No doubt the more programming savvy of you will recognize the LAMP platform.

I highly recommend you take a few platforms for a test drive before you commit to any one solution. I would also ask other bloggers what they use, how their experience has been, and if they have any tips. I cannot speak for everyone on the RPG Bloggers Network, but I am sure most of them would be more than happy to share their thoughts on the matter. I personally recommend LAMP and WordPress.

Blog Software

There are many blogging applications at the burgeoning blogger’s disposal, but I am presenting the few that are 1) free, 2) open source, 3) has an active user base, and 4) easy to use. These are software that I highly recommend and have seen in service; however, feel free to check out additional software at WeblogMatrix.org.

WordPress

While I do not have any facts or figures, WordPress may be the most popular blogging software as of this writing. WordPress is well documented and has a wealth of themes, plug-ins, and tutorials on modification available. It also conforms to XHTML 1.0 Strict and CSS standards out of the box. It is built with PHP, uses the MySQL database, and is licensed under GPL. WordPress is currently on version 2.6.5 and 2.7 is nearing completion.

b2Evolution

If WordPress is the official successor of b2, one of the first full featured blogware, then b2Evolution is WordPress’s step-brother. No doubt due to their shared roots, b2Evolution shares many features with its sibling, WordPress, such as being standards compliant, being written in PHP , using MySQL, and licensed under GPL. Of particular note, b2Evolution supports hosting multiple blogs.

Textpattern

Textpattern is another recommended blogging tool, and it also produces standards compliant code. If you have not noticed yet, I prefer standards compliant software, because as a professional programmer, I despise sloppy code. Textpattern is also built using the winning combination of PHP, MySQL, and GPL.

Wiki Software

From a programmer’s viewpoint, there is not much difference between Wikis and blogware. They both use a scripting language married to a database to produce dynamic web pages. This is usually accomplished using the tried and true platform of PHP and MySQL and being released under GPL. I am presenting what I consider the three best Wiki applications, but you can compare more at WikiMatrix.org.

TikiWiki

TikiWiki is a feature rich content management system that supports the following features: wikis, blogs, forums, RSS syndication, WYSIWYG editing, calendars and events, database tracking system, file and image galleries, user and group management, surveys, quizzes, and polls, and includes an activity-based workflow engine. It is written in PHP and uses a database abstraction called ADOdb for use with many databases (including MySQL). TikiWIki also incorporates Smarty, a template/presentation engine to facilitate customization. It is released under LGPL.

MediaWiki

MediaWiki is the magic behind the ever popular Wikipedia, the online user-editable encyclopedia. It is very well documented and has plenty of resources available to help a user customize it to their satisfaction. MediaWiki, just as the blogware mentioned before, is built using PHP and MySQL and is released under the GPL.

PhpWiki

PhpWiki is a clone of the original WikiWikiWeb and is one of the more mature Wiki architectures. All of it was born from the need for quick and easy collaboration. Imagine a world where you have to program all your pages by hand with HTML, upload them to the server, and then set their permissions. Thank to the people behind software like PhpWiki, we can edit from anywhere we have a browser!

This concludes part one of three in my series on RPG Blogging Tools. Look for the next part entitled “Promotion & Measurment.” I welcome my fellow bloggers to share their experiences, preferences, and tips on choosing a host and platform.