Ever since I started to realize that blogging is a phenomenon with great potential, I have toyed with the idea to set up my own blog. There will be more to come on the content of this blog, but in this post I thought I would summarize some of the findings and stumbling blocks on the road to the first functioning installation of the blogware of my choice. Here is an itemized list hopefully well describing that journey, and that can serve maybe as a complement to other How to instructions for WordPress.

  • Basic equipment - I have a PC with Windows XP SP2 connected to the Internet via a broadband connection. I am using Internet Explorer 6 as a browser. Fairly standard setup.
  • Basic competence - It is now a long time since I was a software developer, but I do know something about the innards of computers of today. I know the meaning of words such as clients, servers, databases, uploading, etc. I had my first own webpage on the standard hosting area provided by my internet service provider (ISP). All this was helpful during the following, but I should stress that in no way is the expert level of competence required in these areas. I should also stress - but maybe that is obvious from my basic equipment - that I am not a hacker or a computer nerd.
  • First training - Reading blogs! This is a great way to get to know the blogging phenomenon from many aspects. Finding the blogs you like to read gets you motivated to go on. Finding out how comments work, what bloggers typically link to, and learning about RSS-feeds, gets you aware of what type of functions blogware typically provide.
  • Blogware awareness - I learned about the requirement for some server side functions for a blog to work. I quickly found out that my ISP did not provide anything besides the standard 20 MB of diskspace. Sure, it is possible just to create a web page, edit it for every new post, and then upload it. But then comment, archiving, search, and feed functions are not present. Also posting will be difficult from anywhere but my home computer.
  • Where to host the blog then? In this Wiki article this is explained in more detail. Basically it is the choice between using an existing service that someone provides, mostly for free, or to install a blogware tool on a host on your own. I had decided to move my webpages to a web hotel anyway, so I decided on the latter. This gives me some more freedom, e.g. in developing the layout, but maybe it is not essential. The rest of the description concentrates on the technical aspects of choosing and installing the software.
  • How to decide on the software - In the article mentioned above there is a link to this blog dealing with technical aspects of blogging. Already too advanced for my basic needs, this blog initially made me despair that I would ever have the time or energy to pick up all the information needed. I noticed however what blogware some of the blogs I read use, and I tried to browse around for more information. I read about WordPress on their webpage and decided to use that for no other reasons that I had seen others using it, the blog mentioned above made some favourable remarks on it, and I could easily verify that the web hotel I use provided me with the required server side software.
  • Installation and Setup - This is really only interesting for those who are thinking of using WordPress, or maybe want to comment on my stumbling attempts. I followed the instructions provided by WordPress. The Famous Five Minute Installation had me scratching my head at the first instruction. OK I know what a database is (almost) but what exactly should I provide? I turned to the Wiki link provided. I followed the much more detailed instructions with the following observations;
      • Creating a database - My host provides me with web interfaces to phpMyAdmin and MySQL. I did not have authority to create a database via phpMyAdmin, so I used the MySQL interface instead. No need to fiddle with shell access or the command line interface. I tried to follow the examples in the instruction, but noted that my host prefixed the names I chose for the user and database with my username, so if I decided that my database would be called wordpress, it came out as username_wordpress. It is important to use the actual names provided by the host when editing the wp-config.php file. (I missed that in the first try, but understood what was wrong almost immediately thanks to the error message.) As I understand it now, creating a database is really creating a stub, or an entry point where the WordPress software can build its database, and for that it also needs a username and a password to have the privileges to do that. Hence name, user, and password are needed.
      Placing the files - In the examples given, the files are placed in either a root directory or a subdirectory. I use a subdomain - as you know http://nonserviam.uqbar.se. This is just like a subdirectory - the files are placed in the ‘root’ directory of nonserviam.uqbar.se, which happens to be a subdirectory to uqbar.se.
      Post-installation problem - It works! I can see it! But… ‘Sorry, you need to enable sending referrers, for this feature to work.’ was the message whenever I tried to post or delete a post, or virtually anything else. The Wiki documentation provided did not take me there - I still got the message above. Searching on this blog I found this post which resolved the matter for me.
      Language - This is mostly a swedish language site, so I would like to have the site displayed in swedish. Again in the Wiki documentation there is a link to WordPress in your language which I followed. The only snag here was that the swedish .mo files came in two variants differently named. I followed the example, chose the file that was named sv_SE.UTF-8.mo, uploaded it to the correct place and renamed it sv_SE.mo. Maybe it would also have worked to edit the WPLANG definition string so that it reads

      define ('WPLANG', 'sv_SE.UTF-8');

      but I did not try it.
      Theme selection - The default theme that wordpress starts with seems not to be internationalized. When I switched to the Wordpress Classic theme, all localization worked.
  • Emails - It is a good idea to set up a separate mail account to be used by the admin user. Notifications about comments and about the moderation queue are sent to this account.
  • Moderation - I have set this blog to be moderated - just to see what happens with the comments. I will maybe remove the moderation later. Anyhow, I will only be able to handle the moderation queue now on my vacation and later after office hours, so sometimes it may take a while before a comment appears.

    • That’s it! This is as far as I have got now, at the time of this post.