Question

Topic: E-Marketing

Cost Of Creating A Blog

Posted by Anonymous on 6/5/2008 at 7:36 PM ET 25 Points
Are there costs to adding a blog to an existing website? I need a user-hosted blog software. I've looked at wordpress.org and it appears to be a free download. Does wordpress charge you if you want to have a custom theme? Are there some hidden costs?
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RESPONSES

  • Posted by Peter (henna gaijin) on 6/6/2008 at 12:45 AM Member
    Wordpress itself is free.

    I suppose that if you want to hire consulting services or similar, you could pay. But I think most just use Wordpress as is, along with the support docs, and don't lay out cash out of pocket.
  • Posted by Jay Hamilton-Roth on 6/6/2008 at 8:17 AM Accepted
    There are no hidden costs. You can use any one of the free themes (for example, https://themes.wordpress.net/), purchase one, or have a consultant craft you a custom one. You can modify the theme yourself, if you have the patience to learn PHP/HTML.

    However, if you have an existing website, my bigger concern is that the blog won't look like it's well-integrated into your site unless the theme is identical to the rest of your site. If your site isn't too big, create a blogsite, turning Wordpress into both your blogging platform and also your website platform. I've recommended this to many small business clients with great results.
  • Posted by excellira on 6/6/2008 at 9:42 AM Accepted
    WP should be completely free. You also can find decent free themes. The only cost incurred should be if you get "stuck" and need a WP developer to help.

    If you're looking for a pure blog script Wordpress, in my experience, can't be beat. You can plug into social media and accelerate your online marketing efforts in ways you may not have even though of with a static site. WP is a great choice.

    If you need a CMS with blog functionality to build a hybrid site then perhaps Drupal might be the best choice (has much of the same functionality of WP with the implementation of a few modules).

    Jay is correct in his comments. It is, however, a lot more effort to integrate your site into the blog. The simplest route is to install the blog into a subdirectory.

    You also do not need to have the blog be identical in design to the main site. Each site is different. Sometimes it is beneficial to have the differentiation sometimes not.

    If that is a concern you could select a theme and then adjust some of the colors through CSS and Photoshop to tie the two sites together. Minor changes can have major impact.

    Best Regards,

    Greg Hill
    Trinity Search Engine Marketing
  • Posted on 6/6/2008 at 11:39 AM Author
    Jay- thank you for the link to the free themes. Some of them look like they would work just fine.

    Greg- thank you for commenting on your experience with wordpress. I never would of thought to use photoshop to adjust a free theme instead of purchasing one.

    I'll be recommending WordPress to my supervisor so I just wanted to make sure I was correct in saying it is free.
    Thank you!
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