I love helping people with their blogs. I totally geek out on it.

But one-on-one help can be expensive for you, and for me it can also be repetitive. Where I can, I’m capturing the advice I keep repeating for clients into less expensive training anyone can afford. That’s what I’ve done here with adding a blog to a web site. Don’t get me wrong, I’m perfectly happy to consult with you about adding a blog to your web site. But for less risk you could get a map that lets you pick a route with much greater confidence than going it alone.

Now you can have my consulting in written form at a great deal.

I’ve taken everything I tell my blog coaching clients about adding a blog to a website and created a 31-page ebook. This ebook breaks down everything you need to know so that you can make the right decisions about adding blogs to websites:

• Three methods for integrating blogs into websites.
• One method for not integrating a blog into a website, with both the good and bad reasons for this.
• How to add a blog to a directory with no regrets.
• What to do if your site already uses a content management system.
• Why you don’t want to make your blog a subdomain (but what to do about permalinks in case you do).
• When and why to have the blog on an entirely separate domain from the main site.
• When and why to replace your site with a blog CMS.
• Candid reviews of the major blog software tools: advantages and disadvantages of each with recommendations.
• No punches are pulled: disadvantages and pitfalls are clearly spelled out, as well as advantages.
• A 12-step major item checklist/questionnaire so you know what to do and what information you need to proceed.
• Where to take your learning after reading this book.
• As with everything I write, there is more to this topic than meets the eye. Hidden in here are hard-won lessons in online business, marketing, and SEO, simply because my knowledge of these topics informs my clients’ decisions even before they have a blog.

If anything on the list above is something you need to know about, you’ll find the book worth a download. People who sell ebooks online often seem to have an inflated sense of what their ebook is worth. I think you’ll find How to Add a Blog to a Website worth the $24.97 (especially when you consider the cost of making the wrong decision about this).

Finally, if you don’t agree that this book tells you what you need to know about adding a blog to a website, I invite you to contact me personally and I’ll answer your question. Barring that, if you can’t use the information that’s in it, just drop me a line and let me know, and I’ll buy it right back from you with no hassles and no questions asked. In other words, there simply is no risk on your part if you get this book today.

Download Now ~ $24.97

ORIGINAL POST BELOW:

In my work as a blog consultant, I often add a blog onto a client’s existing site. Sometimes, this involves moving a WordPress.com blog to a self-hosted solution. Sometimes, it involves changing the underlying hosting platform from Windows to Linux, because that’s what WordPress runs on.

The Sticking Point – Original Site Design

The sticking point for adding a blog to a Web site is the existing site’s original design. A lot depends on this. If the site was originally designed using web standards for the separation of code and layout/style and follows a vertically-oriented page layout, it will be quite easy for me to develop a blog design that matches it exactly or that at least bears a strong resemblance to the original.

Even if the original site is using an older code base and is designed using deprecated methods (deprecated is a term we use for methods which are no longer the standard or are acceptable), it can be done. It is accomplished by taking the graphics, color scheme, and fonts from the original site, and then using them to create a standards-compliant WordPress theme.

For sites which have been developed according to standards, the Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) information is reused for the blog, with some changes and additions to accommodate the unique elements of a WordPress blog theme.

Integrating Web Site and Blog

I don’t want to get too technical here, but WordPress themes are made up of a collection of files and images inside of a folder. You upload the folder to your WordPress blog, and switch to the theme in your Presentation admin page. The files collectively are all the elements of a WordPress blog’s structural and visual design. They use special information called template tags, which are used to make your blog do its thing.

By taking your original site’s design and combining it with the CSS and template tags and files of a WordPress theme, I can create a blog design that matches (more or less) your original site. The theme can be created on my own system, so even if you don’t yet have a blog, I can develop the blog’s theme.

Because WordPress needs a database to hold all the information for the blog, a database needs to be created on your Web server. Then, the WordPress software can be installed and configured. Plugins, which enhance and extend WordPress’ functionality, are added. Then the theme can be uploaded and activated.

And now you have a blog added to your Web site!

Other Considerations

There are other considerations. One is that the original site and the blog have to link to each other so that the site’s visitors can easily go back and forth between the two. Often, entire navigation bars and other links are duplicated in the WordPress theme. A link to the blog is added to the original site’s design, and the circuit is complete.

Another is that there can be all kinds of technical glitches where the original site’s hosting configuration may not be very friendly to WordPress. The most common problem I run into is folder write permissions on the Web server. WordPress needs the ability to make changes, or, write to, the blog files. When this permission is denied, several important and necessary WordPress capabilities are blocked. So far, I’ve been able to resolve these issues every time by figuring out the technical solution or by working with my clients’ Web hosting companies.

Oasis Spa and Salon – an Example of How to Add Blog to Web Site

Oasis Spa and Salon in the state of Washington wanted to add a blog to their site, which they call eNews. This was an example of a standards-compliant website, so it was easy to use its existing code base in order to build a blog theme that looks exactly like the original site. This project was completed several months ago. I keep in touch with the salon’s owner and she reports the blog has been a success. If you visit and take a look at it, you can see that she’s using it to drive customer visits to the salon by promoting products, services, and special offers–very smart!

Steve Yastrow – Adding a Blog to a Web Site with a Twist

For Steve Yastrow, a marketing consultant, speaker, and author, we did something a little different. We added a blog, but with a twist. The blog replaced the home page of his original site, and the page navigation on the blog links to the original pages of the old site. There is a bit of a difference in the look and feel between the old site pages and the blog. Eventually, The old site pages may become blog pages.

Possibilities

As you can see, there are a few possibilities for how to do this. There are two other scenarios that are related to adding a blog to a Web site: keeping the blog separate and scrapping the old site altogether in favor of a new site that uses WordPress as a CMS for all pages and content (which people are doing more often). I’ll write more about those options later. Be sure you don’t miss them: subscribe to my blog so you always get the latest.

Photo by JAGwired