Over night there was a bit of a conversation snippet that came up among the mentors. Ammers from Backlog Crusader mentioned that she had noticed a number of the sites didn’t have the easy to use WordPress Follow button, in spite of being almost all wordpress based sites. The reason behind that is simple, because it is a missing feature if you roll your own blog using WordPress.org software. There is a plugin that is effectively must have software called Jetpack, that adds in a lot of the functionality you get with the managed WordPress, but not quite all of it. I had planned on doing a deep dive into plugins in another post but for now you will need that installed.
Ultimately this had been something I had in my own backlog of things to research. However stuff and things always got in the way and I forgot about it. This morning before sitting down to write the post I decided to figure this out. Truth is it is fairly simple but has a bunch of prerequisites for making it work. As you can see in my sidebar I now have a WordPress Follow button ready to go and we are going to show you how as well. I followed a guide on this blog to verify everything but I will also be walking you through the steps.
Now that we have verified the prerequisites you can actually generate your button knowing it will work successfully once you have embedded it. On the WordPress Developer site there is a handy tool that generates a button for your site. It gives you a handful of options as seen above. Unfortunately I had to disable the follower count because my sidebar only has so much real estate, and the button doesn’t dynamically adjust to fit the space allowed. Simply fill in your site information and hit generation and it spits out some HTML that we are going to use in the next step.
Now we just need a final resting place for the code. You could of course integrate it directly into your theme if you wanted to go through that effort. Personally I slapped it in a Custom HTML sidebar widget and called it good. Now the truth is this is going to harm page load performance since it violates best practices for the placement of script blocks. That said… it is very hard to use ANY plugins on your site that will not ultimately violate the best practices and strand script blocks in all sorts of inopportune places.
WordPress.com offers a rather good RSS reader, and now you have made it much easier for someone to add your site to it. The truth is I had not been focused on using it as a primary blog reader, in part because I have a premium subscription to Feedly, and do my reading through it. During the great fallout that happened with the death of Google Reader, that just happened to be the product I gravitated towards. WordPress.com however is a site I regularly use because thanks to the Jetpack addon it gives me access to manage all of my wordpress sites in a single dashboard. Definitely worth checking out if you have never done so.
Yesterday I talked about the two most challenging aspects of starting a blog, namely deciding what to write about and what to actually call your creation. Today I am diving into probably what is the next step in the process, that is where to put your content. I need to make a bit of a disclaimer. I use WordPress and have done so for the last decade and some change. That is likely going to make me a little bit biased towards that platform. However I’ve also used blogger and a number of the other tools I am about to talk about.
One of the first decisions that you ultimately need to make is just how invested in the process you are going to be, both from a financial standpoint and from time investment standpoint. Ultimately technologies are going to fall into one of two buckets that I feel like you need to understand before we get any deeper into the weeds.
Managed – A managed solution is largely one that is hands off to the users. What I mean by that is you won’t have to patch anything yourself and will always be on the latest version. You simply insert your content and move on with your life. As a result you will have less freedom to make significant changes to the tools and will largely have to deal with things that are going to frustrate you just because that is how the software works. If you have no server management or programming experience and don’t really want to change that, then this is probably going to be your comfort zone.
Self-Hosted – If you like to tinker with things and don’t mind getting your hands dirty, then you might be interested in installing and setting everything up yourself. This is going to give you absolute control over exactly how everything functions on your site. However this also means you are going to need to be constantly vigilant in your patching and maintenance of the site. Every single day someone is looking to compromise your self-hosted site and you have to be prepared to fend off those attacks. If the thought of this stresses you out then it is probably not for you. However if you have a deep instinct to fiddle with things until they are just right, then welcome to the land of having to SSH into servers!
Mostly to this point I have talked about time investment, but there is also the aspect of monetary investment. A lot of the “free” options also offer a subscription plan that adds some additional features. If you are going the self-hosting round you are going to need a handful of extra things.
Hosting Plan – You will need to effectively “rent” server space from a provider and this varies wildly in pricing and features. In both cases their most basic single site hosting is less than $6 a month. However these can scale up depending on the sort of things you want access to.
SSL Certificate – Now that google shames sites that do not have one… I would suggest that getting an SSL Cert is just part of the game these days. Again this is going to vary based on your choice on option one. My host for example gives us free LetsEncrypt certs, but others only support the paid variants that can be anywhere from $30 a year to $200 a year depending on encryption level.
Domain Name – You are going to need a name to send people to your hosting. Some of these will be included with your hosting plan, however you really need to read the fine print to make sure that you can take your domain name with you if you choose to sever the contract. If you are registering one on your own these generally range between $15 and $30 per year depending on the registrar.
There are a bunch of ancillary fees that can happen as well. For example I purchased the theme that I use which gave me a lifetime subscription and the ability to use it on as many sites as I like. If you decide to dip into podcasting there could possibly be fees for hosting the MP3s. Essentially self-hosting could possibly be a money pit and you need to go into it prepared for things like bandwidth overrages to be a thing you may have to at some point deal with when your site pisses off some group of miscreants and they fire down a DDoS on you.
Managed Free
Today I am mostly going to dig into the free options that are managed because they allow you to get something started quickly. On another day I will dig further into the whole self-hosted thing.
Blogger
Blogger has been around forever and offers a great jumping off point to blogging. It requires you to have a google account, but at this point I think everyone has one of those as google now owns our soul. Back in the days of Google Reader this was a really compelling option because it had lots of baked in tools for directly connecting your BlogRoll to it. The site allows for some basic customization, allowing you to tweak some of the settings if you know basic HTML/CSS. It offers some of the better support for posting by email, if that is a thing you want to do.
The big negative that I see with blogger is the fact that it is connected to Google. Google has this bad habit of canning products that they cannot figure out how to monetize. The death of Reader made me deeply question the future of Blogger as a platform. It hasn’t really received much in the way of updates since 2016… other than recently stripping out support for the now defunct Google Plus social network… aka another thing that Google killed. That said Blogger has seemingly survived until now and may surprise me and be something that effectively lasts forever.
https://www.blogger.com
WordPress
WordPress effectively comes in two variants… WordPress.com the managed option and WordPress.org the self-hosted option. The managed version also offers subscriptions, but I am going to largely be talking about the freebie version. What you get is a pretty solid option that allows you to write posts and post images. You have a bunch of themes to choose from, but really can’t do much with any of them apart from change some colors or slap a logo on them.
To get any real customization you need to start ponying up for a subscription plan that will give you a lot of the functionality that the Self-Hosted version gives, but honestly never quite as much. WordPress excels at allowing you to snap functionality in through plugins, and the Managed variant has none of that support. The biggest thing it has going for it is the ease of which it is to move a Managed site to a Self hosted site. I think the biggest benefit here is that you could start out with something small and free and decide you wanted to branch out into something bigger without much hassle. There are tools to export Blogger to WordPress as well, but it is nowhere near as seamless.
https://wordpress.com/
Tumblr
If you just want to write some text and throw some pictures of video with it, and don’t really care much about the rest of the features… then Tumblr may be for you. I’ve used it quite a bit over the years and have my own Tumblr blog that I syndicate content to. I am not the biggest fan of Tumblr as a whole but it gets a firm “It’s Fine” from me. The main reason why I would use Tumblr over something else is one of two scenarios. Firstly you mostly want a photo blog, but want the ability to throw words with those photos in something that makes more sense than an Instagram. The second reason is if you are part of a community that has already planted its flag on Tumblr and decided it is home.
I spent minimal time on Tumblr as a content delivery medium, but I weirdly do have several followers there that consume Tales of the Aggronaut in that manner. If you are already reading Tumblr then you might as well turn it into your blogging platform.
https://www.tumblr.com/
Medium
I largely feel like Medium was started as a place for when a Twitter post isn’t enough. However it has evolved into a really solid means for writing content. If you don’t care about the look and feel of your blogging experience, but you want really solid text crafting tools… then Medium might be for you. It is the most boring and bland presentation as far as sites go… white background and black text. However if you are a minimalist at heart it might appeal to you. The only time I have used Medium is when I want to write a story that isn’t necessarily connected to my blog, because thematically it doesn’t really make sense. It is PERFECT for that, but I’ve never actually followed someone on Medium directly. It is possibly the least bloggy feeling of the blogging options?
https://medium.com/
I am certain there are other tools out there that might fit your needs. You should in theory make a perfectly reasonable blog with a Facebook page for example. Ultimately you need to find what works best for you personally, and I feel all of the above options are a really great starting place. They all let you get started within minutes of signing up for an account and post content. As I said earlier I will dive into the self-hosting thing a bit later, because it requires a lot more care and feeding.
Well folks… it is finally time. Today marks the very first official day of Blaugust, but as you can see if you follow the Hashtag there has already been quite a bit of traffic related to it as people stretch their limbs and prepare. As the pseudo presenter of this event, the hardest part each year is trying to determine the information that I need to post in order to help people get started. After awhile all of the advise starts to feel very much the same, given that I have participated in several of these sort of events. That said I feel like each year I gather more experience and probably tackle the same topics from a slightly different perspective.
What is your blog?
I think the first and most pressing decision you need to make is ultimately what your blog is going to be. I am focused on blogs since that is really what I do, but the same is true with pretty much any other type of serialized content. You ultimately have to build up a picture in your head of what you want to accomplish and then set forth trying to lay the groundwork to get there. What is it that you do better than anyone else? What fresh perspective can you bring to an existing topic? Of course you don’t have to answer either of those, but there will however be relevant questions in a similar vein that apply to your own project.
The truth is… most of us jump straight into our first blog. I have an elder blog that doesn’t see the light of day because it had some fairly personal content on it. However I just started writing and assumed that was enough. Tales of the Aggronaut was my planned and thoughtful blog experience, and even then I failed to account for all of the things that I would ultimately want it to become. You could take a similar trajectory, but you will probably save yourself a lot of headache if you set forth with a plan in mind. Ultimately at a minimum you should have a picture in your head with what you want to accomplish.
There are as many types as blogs as there are people to write them. However most blogs can somewhat be lumped into a few general categories.
Project Blog – The idea here is that you are presenting to the world your experience of completing a project. Generally speaking these are tightly focused, and that drives a lot of the content forward. This could be a weight loss journey or learning to speak a foreign language… or honestly anything else that requires sufficient effort and planning and makes for an interesting journey for your readers. The negative of something this laser focused is that when the goal is eventually accomplished… the blog either needs to reinvent itself or fizzles out completely.
Single Subject Blog – Expanding out from a project you have what I generally think of as a blog that has a single theme. Personally I have seen these most often revolving around a single hobby or in the case of MMORPGs a single video game experience. There have been a plethora of blogs solely devoted to World of Warcraft for example, and I largely cut my teeth in that community. The major positive with this method is that you have a baked in audience that you just simply have to introduce yourself to. Chances are there is already an infrastructure ready to accept you and all you really need to do is get yourself into the mix. The negatives come in when you decide you no longer really fit into whatever that community was. For example Tales of the Aggronaut started as a World of Warcraft Warrior Tanking blog… and sorta morphed several times along the way having to reinvent what my purpose was.
Variety Blog – I’ve always hated the term “variety streamer” because it always seems so damned dismissive, and here given the chance I am doing the same thing to blogging. The idea here is that you have a lot of topics that you want to talk about, but are still largely a topic focused en-devour. A prime example of this would be something like Dulfy.net where she plays a handful of games and digs deeply into depth about them all. These synthesize with your audience pretty well because again you are writing about some easily recognizable subjects. Where these go a little off the rails however is when your fanbase wants you writing about one thing, and you instead are really interested in something else. It is hard to really evenly like and represent a bunch of different subjects, and the folks that only care about one thing will more than likely wander away.
Personal Blog – This blog is focused on you as a person and your journey through whatever you happen to be doing. At various times during the history of Tales of the Aggronaut I have been several different of these blog types but have ultimately wound up in this category. If you are reading my blog at this point, it is likely because you have bought into me as a human being and are for some reason interested in my opinion. The positive about this style of blogging is that you never need to feel like you should conform to fit in a box. The negative however is that your readership will vary wildly as you vacillate through phases and topics. When I am playing Final Fantasy XIV or World of Warcraft… I pick up readers that care about those things and ultimately deposit them on the sidelines when I move on again.
What to Call It?
Another big decision you need to get out of the way early is what the heck to call your blog. There are a bunch of different ways to approach this, but ultimately you need to wind up with something that is at least somewhat memorable. Ultimately what ends up happening is there will be a group of individuals that only know you as your blog. So there are folks that call me “Aggronaut” for example even though that is the name of the blog and has never been a name I have used anywhere. This is just going to happen because especially if someone finds your writing organically, they are going to know you best as whatever the masthead says.
Ultimately the name of your blog is a deeply personal decision. If I had to go back and do it all again I would have simply registered Belghast.com and be done with it. Instead I was attempting to be cute about it. In my mind I was making a tanking blog and as such I tried to come up with a clever tanky name. Since “naut” as a prefix means to explore or travel, I figured an Aggronaut was someone who navigated and managed Aggro… aka a tank. In the end however it just became a url that people associated with me, and I am not sure if anyone actually broke down the meaning.
As with any of the advice I give, it all should be personalized to your own tastes. However here are some thoughts to keep in mind while choosing a name.
Keep It Short – You know what people hate? They hate long urls. I am one of those weirdos that doesn’t really use bookmarks and instead types a good number of the URLs that I hit on a regular basis and as such I have a deep appreciation for something that is short and simple. Ask yourself… how would this look on a business card?
Don’t Box Yourself In – As I stated above… Tales of the Aggronaut has been a blog that has reinvented itself over and over during the ten year run. I have been able to do this fairly fluidly because I have a fairly generic blog name. Had I named it “Belghast’s World of Warcraft Blog” I would have basically signed the deathnote as soon as Cataclysm happened and I faded away from that game. Give yourself an escape clause and pick a name that could have multiple meanings.
Do Some Research – Spend some time googling your desired name, to make sure that there isn’t another very similar site out there. Also make sure there is nothing terribly heinous being returned with those search phrases. I didn’t know it at the time but apparently there is a band called The Aggronauts.
Check Into Domains – Sure you might launch your site with the subdomain that comes with Blogger or WordPress, but you might want to see if an actual domain name is available. If you have the spare cash go ahead and register it even if you are not going to use it. If you wind up down to a handful of names this might be a way to sift through which one you should go with.
Be Catchy – My favorite blog names are the ones that come from other terms… especially commonly used gaming terms. I wish I had figured out something like that when I wound up creating this blog. No one will ever forget the name of “Bio Break” because it is something so universal at this point and as such no one will ever forget Syp either. A great name is sorta like an earworm that you can’t get out of your head.
Ultimately these are the two decision points that I would labor on the longest. Once you’ve figured out what you are going to write about and what you are going to call it, honestly a lot of the rest of the pieces fall into place. In the next few days I will be talking about more technical decisions that you will need to make, but for now this is a good starting point.
I am going to start off this mornings post by linking a tweet that I read yesterday morning. When I first processed this shortly after posting my blog for the day… I had the immediate reaction of “no it didn’t, that game is old”. Please note I am in no way singling out GameSpace here or picking on them, because much like I did in my own inbox they received a press release talking about how the game was coming out of Early Access. I am not even picking on Fantasy Strike to be truthful, because they are only the latest instance of this to catch my ire. The problem is that in my mind this is a game that launched roughly two years ago.
If game sales are based upon the amount of hype that you can generate for your game, doing Early Access means whatever hype you could have generated was spent on that. For me personally a game launches the moment you start taking money for access to it. I also feel like a game doesn’t get a pass for me while it has an alpha, beta or whatever the next industry catch phrase for “unfinished” is attached to it. Once you start accepting money to let players play your game, you have launched.
I think the core problem here is we have two different offshoots for why games claim to be going into Early Access. The first is as a funding vehicle, and if you are a small studio and need an infusion of cash especially if you are self publishing… then you should feel zero shame about using this. It does not give you the rights to make a big deal about it when you “officially” launch other than maybe a pat on the back and a hearty “good job” for not imploding along the way. I think the ideal scenario was that of Starbound that held back a massive update to release to their fans as a sort of last hurrah for leaving the Early Access system and going into official release mode.
The second route seems to be in a scenario when a game wants the fans to feel like they have shaped the end product. While I have vacillated wildly about on this point… I am arriving at the stance that this is a horrible idea. In truth fans should have very little say in the design of the game and really should only be engaged with the final fit and polish… as was traditionally the role of a closed or open beta process. I will always have opinions on the way things should have been done, but the truth is as a fan and a blogger I have no clue at all what I actually want until I get my hands on it and play it.
There have been many times that a game on paper sounds like everything that I ever wanted. Then I start playing and I realize that it was a horrible idea. Also similar there have been many times I wound up playing a game that I never thought I would like and it ended up eating two or three weekends of my time. My ability to decide what I actually like is flawed… and I think it is similarly flawed for every other gamer out there. We fundamentally do not know what it is that makes an experience that we will enjoy. We are really good at determining what it is we do not like, and tend to focus on eradicating those things rather than actually promoting the things that we enjoy. So in the end you wind up with experienced that have been carefully curated by people screaming at the top of their lungs telling the studio what not to do.
The truth is, if I had my druthers… I would not even know a game existed until three to four months before it launches. I know we have an entire industry built upon the constant stream of hype surrounding the game release cycle, but I am not entirely certain this is a good thing. During the EGM era of games magazines you had a month to month cycle of content to fill… now if you don’t get the eyeballs within the first few hours of an announcement you have lost that revenue. This leads to a very short sighted and hyperbolic approach to trying to be as sticky as humanly possible to cash in on that brief blip when people are hungry for more information.
This has lead to a situation where announcements are timed for all of the major conferences and are comprised of about 90% vaporware and good intentions. The tale of the Anthem development cycle is all too familiar with E3 demos being loosely cobbled together and not representative of the final product at all. Hell this has even become its own kind of content, where you take trailers that were first shown and bash the product based on how much it did not live up to those expectations. We are a snake that is eating itself and I fear that eventually this is all going to end up with an Atari style crash if we are not careful.
