If you have read any of our posts on blogging platforms, you know the authors at How-To-Blog.TV have an affinity for self-hosted blog platforms. We like self-hosted platforms because they provide bloggers with maximum flexibility and control, which can help them reach larger audiences, provide outstanding reader experiences, and minimize future problems.
One of the downsides of self-hosted blogging platforms, however, is that there is some upfront blog theme customization and other development involved. Since your end goal is blogging and not being in the business of customizing software, I will give you a few tips to quickly and successfully get past the “tinkering” stage and onto the “blogging” part of your venture. Most blogging software consists of a base content management system, modules or plugins that provide specific functionality, and a theme that renders the look and feel of your blog to your readers. Though you do not have to develop any software to bring your blog to life, you might want to customize your blog’s theme or some of its functionality. You may decided to pay an outside resource to customize your blog, and thus you will still have to switch your mindset to one of an executive at a software company in order to deliver on time and on budget .
The following are a couple of guidelines:
- Contract a resource with experience and references in the platform you have chosen. Just because they are a “web developer” does not mean they are going to be effective on the blogging platform you chose.
- Do not build what you can buy or assemble from components that are already built
- Buy a quality theme and have your developer/designer customize it versus building a theme from scratch.
- Use best of breed plugins and modules to extend the functionality of your blog versus having a developer hand code it.
- Don’t let your developer make decisions for you based on their skill set or comfort zone. Make decisions that are right for you.
These points will help you to save time and money. Still, there is more to delivering software than these starting points. I will now take you through a mindset that will help you succeed in launching and evolving your blog without driving yourself crazy.
There are several business processes that you outsource to specialists. A few examples are filing your tax returns or moving offices. These tasks have a definitive start and finish. Software, on the other hand, requires a “multiple release mindset”. If you try to build the perfect website and bring closure to it like you do your tax returns, you will likely fail or be unhappy with the result. The beauty is that software can easily be undone or changed.
The following are a few rules to keep in mind when designing and deploying your blog:
- Take a 3 release approach
- Release 1 is 70% of what you want.
- Release 2 picks up the additional 30% and fixes what didn’t work in the original release
- Release 3 is to tweek and/or completely change your blog based on user interaction and feedback.
- Pick a fixed delivery date. Increase resources or cut features but do not miss the release date. Remember you have two more releases to get what you want.
- Don’t be afraid to release with minor flaws as these can be quickly fixed once the site is live.
In addition, understand that your developer will have strengths and weaknesses. Developer strengths include their technical know-how, creativity, and personal drive to get the job done. Their weaknesses can include time management and communications skills. Manage to their strenghts and weaknesses and you will have a much smoother experience. Also keep in mind that it is very tough to wear the role of both developer and tester. If you can step up to the role of testing the site, this will greatly increase your chance of discovering flaws prior to the launch of your blog.
At Orangecast, Matt designs and develops many of our WordPress blogs. We also outsource some of this work firms like our friends at Prism Web Media or Nick Ohrn (WP-MalWatch developer). Regardless of whether we develop our blogs internally or externally, we force ourselves to use the same guidelines we recommend above. We too have a laundry list of changes that we’d like to make to our blogs and future visions for their designs and functionality. Still, we don’t allow ourselves to get drowned in the design and development process as every day that a blog is not online is a day that it is losing the opportunity to interact with readers and gather inbound links from other bloggers.
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Derick Schaefer is a blogger and the founder of Orangecast Social Media. Prior to starting Orangecast, Derick spent 15 years in the software industry including 10 years at The Microsoft Corporation. During his time at Microsoft, he was influenced by a talk given by Chris Sells who stressed techniques for delivering quality software on time. One of Derick’s favorite books about software development is Show Stopper by G. Pascal Zachary which tells the story of the race Microsoft had to deliver its next operating system after parting ways with IBM.
