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Ask YC: Company Blogs

6 points by mwmanning ↗ HN
I've been thinking about the obligatory "blog" link that goes on the front page of a new site. I don't know if I should roll my own simple blogging system (my site is RoR) or use some canned engine that has more overhead, but is tested and reliable. What do you guys think? What has worked for you in the past and what are the pros and cons of each?

22 comments

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tlrobinson
WordPress (and others?) is perfectly good. No point in wasting time reinventing the wheel (unless that's your kind of thing).

Throw together a template to match your company website if you want.

bprater
Wordpress. Good developers create, smart developers reuse.
Hexstream
I contest. Sayings will only get you so far.

Would you disagree that plenty of smart developers create and plenty of good developers reuse?

airhadoken
GPP's phrasing seems to be non-mutex such that it explicitly does not say that, e.g. "smart developers do not create"

Maybe a more encompassing way of stating the saw would be "while a good developer can create what is required, a smart developer will use what is provided"

dkokelley
He's saying "Don't reinvent the wheel."

Use what's available when you can, as it will save you time and money. Make what is not available already.

pchristensen
All saying aside, this guy isn't even sure he wants to blog. Unless he's selling blogging software, his time would be better spent working on his product, marketing, etc instead of rolling his own blogging software.

Wordpress is so easy to setup that it's probably taking me longer to write this comment than it would be for him to setup Wordpress.

boucher
Wordpress has become the defacto standard in blogging systems. I can think of only very few scenarios where someone would want something that they couldn't just use Wordpress for.

Not to mention, with the large user base it has, you can get things like plugins and themes to customize your site without doing a lot of work. Plus, the template system is easy enough that writing your own custom theme should be a piece of cake.

dkokelley
Whatever you do, I would suggest putting it on your own site (a sub domain, like blog.yoursite.com) instead of a hosts (like companyblog.blogspot.com). It just feels more professional that way. There's a higher level of quality compared to the generic feel of a hosted blog.
dshah
I'd agree. If you're going to go to the trouble of writing a blog, you should own and control the domain.
aaroneous
For this sort of application I always recommend a hosted blogging service (wordpress.com, tumblr.com, blogger.com, etc) so that if something affects your servers, you still have a way to communicate with your clients//community.
dkokelley
Good point. Both arguments (mine regarding hosting your own blog, and yours) are quite valid.

I assume this means linking to it on your site. But if your server goes down, your users won't be able to get to it anyways, unless they have your blog address memorized or bookmarked.

Your site should never be allowed to go down for long, unless something major happens, in which case a backup plan is ideal. I would host my own blog, and if my server does go down, redirect the domain to a stable site with a brief explanation of what's going on, and then when every thing's back to normal post about it in the company blog.

lacker
Users will be able to find it, because if your blog is on a different domain, it will probably be somewhere on the first page of google results when you search for your company.

I would just keep the blog somewhere like wordpress because they will have a more fully functional blogging engine. Don't spend your time managing your blog software, spend it making your product better.

dkokelley
I guess the best way would be to have blog.yourdomain.com redirect to yourblog.bloggingwebsite.com.
brlewis
That's good reasoning, and is what I would have done, until I realized that I'm competing with blogging platforms almost as much as I'm competing with photo-sharing sites.
edu
I would use blogspot and a custom subdomain. As aaroneous said the blog will keep up if your servers go down, and also you will save headaches and time that you can use on growing your product.

The only problem I've with blogger is their template system, I simply don't like it.

ivankirigin
We made a blogspot blog in about 10 seconds. http://tipjoys2cents.blogspot.com/

I'm going to roll my own semi-blog that will be a bit different style.

With comments by disqus, almost any home brewed site can act like a blog.

PStamatiou
Maybe it's just me, but I don't take Blogger blogs seriously, at _all_.
ivankirigin
Why not? The text I want to publish gets pushed out to the page.

Extensibility of other platforms means little to me, as the more interesting features I'd need to implement myself.

webwright
Hosted wordpress has worked out for us. Customization is limited-- and no JavaScript widgets of any kind are allowed.
wallflower
This may be off-thread to some but I believe it is very applicable - content not the platform gives the blog value to your customers and customer developers.

For a great example, read http://blogs.smugmug.com/don/ (one of my favorite blogs in terms of technical and personal communication)