Blog at homepage or in .com/blog/ folder? Your thoughts?

[Holistic Star]

When setting up a blog what do you think are the benefits of having the blog on the index page as opposed to having it a folder.

e.g. steve's blog is at www.stevepavlina.com/blog/
and www.stevepavlina.com is his welcome page

whereas other blogs I have seen are at the index page. e.g. at www.<namehere>.com and then they have an About page explaining about themselves. www.<namehere>.com/about.htm

The reason I am askin is that I have set up my new blog at the index page, however I'm thinking about shifting it to a /blog/ folder and having some welcome info and video clips on my homepage.

2 questions:
1) What are your experiences of the difference?
2) Given that I've already set it up, will it be difficult to make the switch. Im using bluehose and wordpress.

[Gene]

Originally Posted by Holistic Star

When setting up a blog what do you think are the benefits of having the blog on the index page as opposed to having it a folder.

2 questions:
1) What are your experiences of the difference?
2) Given that I've already set it up, will it be difficult to make the switch. Im using bluehose and wordpress.

When setting up a new site I install WordPress in a sub directory called blog and redirect from the root directory to the blog sub-directory. If I later wish to ad a separate landing page or a forum it is easy to stop redirecting to the blog directory.

[AdamF24]

I always read that it was best to install wordpress into your root folder. Either way, newer versions of wordpress allows you to create a page and make it your homepage. You can then create another page and easily make it your blog page, all while having your wordpress blog installed in the root folder.

[Holistic Star]

Oh thanks Adam

I've installed it in the root directory. Are you able to tell me how I make a page my home page? Can I still use my wordpress theme for it? How do I make the rest of the blog move to .com/blog?

Thanks

[AdamF24]

As I said, you need a newer version of Wordpress do this, but you don't need the latest version to do it (I'm using version 2.2x).

Anyway, here's what you do:

Go to your WP-Admin page

Click the "Manage" tab then the sub-tab "Pages"

Create a page titled Blog and leave the page context blank. By default the page url will be .com/blog (since blog is the page name)

Create another page and call it whatever you want if you want it to be your homepage

Next, click the "Options" tab, then click the "Reading" subtab.

Under the "Frontpage" area it will give you options on how to display your latest posts and what will be your homepage. By default the front page is your latest posts. However you have the option as seen in that are to select "Static page".

Select static page and for "Front page" (your homepage) select whatever page you want, such as your "About" page. For your "Posts page" select the page you created called "Blog".

Now your site will have your homepage as your "About" page and your latest blog entries will show up on .com/blog.


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If you have any questions just reply to this thread

[Lil Chris]

Originally Posted by Gene

When setting up a new site I install WordPress in a sub directory called blog and redirect from the root directory to the blog sub-directory. If I later wish to ad a separate landing page or a forum it is easy to stop redirecting to the blog directory.

I agree, furthermore if you want to add a forum just do a /forum subdirectory, you can do this with anything else beyond a blog (like a store, knowledge base, etc...) allowing you to utilize other technologies for other parts of your site other than just using that CMS (wordpress, drupal etc...) for the whole site, it keeps everything nice and tidy...

[Patricia]

I would definitely have the blog in the root directory. The more levels into the domain you put the blog, the worse it is for SEO - or so I've been told, even though I don't know much about SEO myself. Like it's already been suggested, use the WP feature that allows you a static home page if that's what you want. But keep the installation in the root directory.

I have 2 blogs that I started under a /blog directory thinking that "at some point in the future" I might want to have something different in the root directory. I regret having done this, more often than not you end up not needing the root folder for anything else and it just goes to waste - unless you already know that you do want the root folder for something else. Don't "save it" for a possible future use if you bought a domain for a blog.

My newer blogs are all in the root folder. Much, much better.