If you are a developer or designer, or both, you should have a blog. It’s too easy and cheap not to do.

Here is a short list of the benefits of having a blog:

1. It’s the easiest way to create an online portfolio that you can update quickly. No more editing HTML and redesigning pages every time you want to update your portfolio. It’s as easy as writing an email.
2. It’s a great way to create your own database of solutions to problems, tips, useful websites, etc. If you’re like me then you have a hard drive full of code and designs scattered all over the place.
3. It’s a fantastic way for employees to find you.
4. You get to interact with your community of developers or designers.
5. It makes you money.

If you are mainly a designer then a blog really isn’t suitable for showcasing your talents. But it is a nice add on. You can still have your site - myPortfolioSite.com - as your creative front. And then you can have myPortfolioSite.com/blog/ as your blog to help draw attention to the creative stuff you have done.

What you need

You’ll need a host that runs PHP scripts. They usually run in the neighborhood of $7 a month. I use one of the hosts recommended by Wordpress.org called Lunarpages.com. I’ve helped five of my friends set up Wordpress blogs with Lunarpages.com and haven’t encountered any problems.

Download and configure Wordpress - it’s all free - and install it on your host. That’s pretty simple and here are a few links to help get you started.

• Download Wordpress files.
• Installing Wordpress instructions: This really isn’t all that hard but if you get stuck you can always use the Install Wordpress for free team. If you signed up with one of the recommended Wordpress hosts then they shouldn’t have any trouble getting up set up.

You can go with free hosting from Wordpress.org but you won’t get total control over the customization options that are available if you self host. Plus your domain name would be something like: myPortfolioSite.wordpress.com. I’m sure you’d rather have your own personal domain name. Most hosts will give you a domain name for free as long as you host with them.

$dollars$

There are numerous ways to make money off your site. I use Text Link Ads here at polyGeek and pull in over a $100 a month for just a few little text links in my side bar. You can also go with Google Ads or others depending on how unobtrusive you want your ads to be.

Stats

Your host will probably have many built in applications for checking your site statistics. I look at those every now and then but my favorite is Google Analytics. You just need to sign up for an account and drop a little code snippet in the footer of your website. Then you’ll be able to see really cool graphs of the traffic coming to your site. I love looking at the Map Overlay to see people from around the world visiting my site.

Plugins

There are a vast number of plugins for Wordpress. Here are a few that I use:

• Akismet: this comes pre installed with your Wordpress files but must be activated. You’ll absolutely want to do that so that you don’t get overwhelmed by comment spam.
• Feedburner/Feedsmith: this is a service and plugin that help you track subscriptions to your RSS feed.
• Google Sitemaps: automatically creates a sitemap for you that Google can use to better index your content.
• Kimili Flash Embed: if you need to display Flash content - SWF files - you’ll need this plugin.
• Math Comment Spam Protection: Akismet won’t get all those pesky comment bots. This will help reduce the load even more.
• WordPress Database Backup: easy and essential and hopefully you’ll never need it.

There are many others that you’ll probably end up using but this is a good start.

One last thing: if you sign up then please post a comment below with a link to your blog. I’d love to keep track of what you publish.