How much maintenance to run a blog site

[TrafficProducer]

Can some one tell me how much maintenance do it take to run a blog site?

Could one person cope with it?

(WordPress)

Thank You in advance.

[kgun]

I don't know, since I use blogger and that is very easy. I don't intend to become blog adicted. I think WordPress has most of the tools you need like (no)following links ect. And there are

1. Themes: WordPress Themes | WordPress Templates | Template Monster
2. Plugins like: http://scott.yang.id.au/code/permalink-redirect/

IMO: Better to use your time on one forum where you get instant feedback. But you / we risk loosing our links / stories. But they are already stolen by bad copy bots and advanced site crawlers that don't respect robots.txt. All of them, good as bad, are blocked from my extra net.

I think it will be no problem for one person to cope with Blog software. Forum software like phpBB is more difficult. Should have had time to look at that code. Time is what economists call a "limit" input in production.

[newoptimizer]

I am curious about optimization techniques for blogs like wordpress. I don't believe they allow you to place meta tags--I suppose you just need to optimize blog posts, blog titles and use their tag system.

[claybutler]

Word Press is way fun and easy. There are hundreds of ready to use plugins and a huge user base to turn to for support and advice. With a little css tweaking and some graphic you can customize most blog templates to your liking in a day.

For example, I took this template: Ein neues WordPress-Weblog | WordPress Theme Demo
and turned it into this
The Craigslist Free Surfboard and Wetsuit Essay Contest: Evolution of an Idea | The Craigslist Free Surfboard and Wetsuit Essay Contest

You can spend as little or more time on your blog as you like. If the content is really, really good and unique you can post only occasionally( like Paul Graham) If it's more general slice-of-life you better post near daily.

Forget about fame and fortune though. Sure, a few elite bloggers make money from advertising but it's not easy nor the norm.

[claybutler]

For "newoptimizer" I use a great plugin that allows you to generate custom titles for all your posts and pages from one master interface. So you can have your title tag be really SEO friendly but have a more reader friendly post title. See SEO Title Tag: A WordPress Plugin for SEO (Search Engine Optimization)

[webdesigntaxi]

Hi, we use wordpress on our website. We integrated the blog system into our design at Web Design Taxi Blog

We have it fully optimized with permalinks, meta tags, and we also have a plugin that autolinks specific keywords to other pages onsite or offsite links. In addition, we have google sitemaps plugin. We try to post regularly and we have a good amount of traffic from it. One of our posts shows some of our statistics so feel free to have a look.

You will also find that when you post regularly you get alot of unintended top 10 rankings for keywords and keyphrases. We posted a simple sample code for vb.net and we get alot of traffic from student developers from that single post. It is definately worth your time to install a blog, and create a custom wordpress theme for that blog to make it your own.

Hope this helps!

[srblogger]

I use b2evolution because I like the SEO features it offers and also because the templates are easy to customize. There are several people listed on the b2evolution site that offer services if you don't want to do the customization yourself. After you get the blog setup, you just need to add content regularly. It is pretty straight forward, but it does take a commitment of time.

[ronchalice]

Originally Posted by newoptimizer

I am curious about optimization techniques for blogs like wordpress. I don't believe they allow you to place meta tags--I suppose you just need to optimize blog posts, blog titles and use their tag system.

Wordpress 2.5 and older have a number of plug-ins available to support metatags. Tags are native by default in 2.6 and higher.

I have several WordPress and Joomla CMS blogs - maintenance is not the issue (as long as you use a spam trapper like Akismet) the time issue is generating high quality original content - even better if it's content people like to read

[newoptimizer]

thanks for so many replies...i will definitely be making use of the help!

[Susan Sharma]

I have been using Blogspot ( Blogger) and find it quite amenable to optimizing.

[newoptimizer]

i believe that you can add a meta description and title on Blogspot..

[chrisJumbo]

We've used WordPress for quite some time. Maintenance time is minimal. Most of the time is spent on posts. WordPress has a URL naming structure that can be customized and helps with the proper titling, etc. Also, the themes aren't too hard to modify. But, if you aren't comfortable with php, there are a ton of free themes or programmers who can customize for you at a reasonable price.

The askimet spam plug-in takes care of 98% of the spam posts. For the others, you can customize what you allow through. It only takes a few minutes each day to deal with the ones that didn't get caught.

[TrafficProducer]

Most of the time is spent on posts.

This is the biggest worry I have. How do you filer out Spam ads, rubbish post.

Thanks to everyone for all the response

[Addler]

We have had experience with Blogger.com, Typepad and WordPress. I concur with chrisJumbo that the Askimet spam plug-in works great in blocking spam. The WP-SpamFree plug-in has also helped. For Typepad, a challenge question has proved extremely effective at blocking spambots. As for maintenance, WordPress releases updates from time to time and the programming needs to be updated. The updates "may" take some time if you are hosting the blog on your own server.

[TrafficProducer]

Thank You everyone, some Great information...

but guess what.. I've just recieved this, I still have to read it fully:-

Thinking about launching your own blog? Here's some friendly advice: Don't. And if you've already got one, pull the plug.

Should You Stop Blogging?
By Chris Crum

Wired has posted an already-controversial article about how blogs are "so 2004", and how services like Twitter, Facebook, and Flickr even are here to replace them. Writer Paul Boutin says:

Thinking about launching your own blog? Here's some friendly advice: Don't. And if you've already got one, pull the plug.

Writing a weblog today isn't the bright idea it was four years ago. The blogosphere, once a freshwater oasis of folksy self-expression and clever thought, has been flooded by a tsunami of paid bilge. Cut-rate journalists and underground marketing campaigns now drown out the authentic voices of amateur wordsmiths. It's almost impossible to get noticed, except by hecklers. And why bother? The time it takes to craft sharp, witty blog prose is better spent expressing yourself on Flickr, Facebook, or Twitter.

Obviously, people have some things to say about that. So let's look at some responses from bloggers:

Click to Read More

Article posted on Wired News

[deafsinger]

I used to run a couple of wordpress sites, but i got tired and eventually gave up because of too much time doing customization. I think the trick is to keep it simple and focus on what your visitors wants. Aside from that maintenance was pretty simple for me, the only thing was to moderate the comments.