I am surprised to hear you are spending time developing your own blogging tool when there are so many options already out there that are free – using one of these would allow you to concentrate on content generation and marketing rather than coding and dealing with bugs etc.

In any case, your project certainly sounds exciting and interesting – do keep us updated as to your progress.

Work “overload” has prevented me from posting here sooner.

Martin – a BIG thanks for the blog, and to everyone else, thanks for all the input. I am glad this blog came about before I was too far down the development road. These are my updated thoughts/ideas/comments for the development of expatHive.com.

Integrating Blogger / WordPress
After much thought, I have decided against this. Integrating & customising any such product is never straight forward. Upgrades can potentially be complicated if bulk customisation is required and so forth. My initial idea behind integrating such a product was purely based on not having to develop my own blogging backend … and to possibly gain a better search engine ranking. However, as Cody and Wok commented – this will not be the case.

Rss Feeds
This was just a thought I had – a means of providing fresh content to the website without having to develop my own blogging backend, as well as potentially gaining a better search engine ranking. However, as Cody and Wok commented – this will not be the case.

Forum
Adult, I agree. Developing a forum is a lot of work and will take a long time before it reaches a point where it takes care of itself. However, I think for the type of community I am looking to develop (Expatriates living in Portugal), having a forum is paramount – even more so than a blog. My reasoning is that this kind of community is built on information … Expats have a lot of questions and need answers. Questions such as “how to find an English speaking Lawyer in the Algarve”, “my outside water pipe has burst, who do I need to contact” and so forth. A forum provides a far better means of getting answers to such questions (in bulk) by “opening it up to the community”. A forum also provides a better means for users to search/find questions that may have been asked before.

It may be a lot of work, but for this type of community I think having a forum is paramount. Please, comments on this point are most welcome.

Blog
I have decided to develop my own basic bloggin tool. After all your comments about Blogger, WP and the likes, I decided to rather develop my own tool. This now gives me full control over both the bloggin tool and the data.

Update
So as it stands, I have developed my own bloggin tool. This will be used to provide fresh content to the site – my wife’s ramblings about life in Portugal as well as information she may deem useful to other expats living in Portugal and so forth. This will work alongside a forum I am currently customising and integrating. This (the forum) will provide the users with a means of communicating questions and answers relating to life in Portugal.

A lot of work? Yes, but hopefully the two working hand in hand will attract far more users to the community as well as generate a better search engine ranking.

Regards,

Hayden.

Michelle – I know that you can have your own domain name using Blogger, but it looks a little more complicated to set up compared to having your own WordPress installation.

I really don’t understand why the CAPTCHA is failing for you. There is only ever one answer and it is coded into the script. Hmmmmm…..

Ramana – I think it is important to get as much as possible spot on before launching. Once you are live, the last thing you want to do is start changing things around and confusing visitors. On the other hand, if you worry about getting everything perfect from the outset, you will never publish the site!

Woc – Thanks for your suggestions. I am sure Hayden will find them helpful.

Adult – I agree with your. Developing a forum and a blog is a huge amount of work. Sure, eventually the forum will take care of itself but it could take months if not years before it reaches that point.

1) Blogger is very similar to wordpress, i wouldnt suggest you set up a separate blogger website, but you can integrate blogger into your website, just like wordpress (there are advanced options), personally i use wordpress too but there is nothing wrong with blogger.

2) I dont understand why you would want to use RSs feeds, as google would have trouble seeing the content that is being show by the feed.

3) Number 3 depeneds on how you view your site, might be a good idea if you find a site, maybe you could add a forum ? social networking software ? have you looked into these ?

Woc

For people who just want a blog and nothing else, WordPress is great. I haven’t used it myself but I know a lot of people who have and it’s easy to use. But if you’re pretty sure from the start that you want to expand on the blog, I suggest looking at a more full featured CMS. My personal favorite is Drupal but there are others such as Joomla as well. Sure you can always start with WP and then stick on phpbb or vbulletin, but I think a unified solution is much nicer.

Michelle

PS: Martin: The captcha failed again. And I know I typed 3 because I hit the back button and it’s still there.

Cody