Another reason for me to set this blog up was to learn WordPress. I’ve worked with Blogger in the past and found it pretty simple… maybe too simple. For a more robust solution WordPress is the way to go. You can literally have a working blog up in less than 5 minutes!

Of course that is as basic as it gets. If you want the blog to match your theme it takes extra work. Most web sites that add blogs after they are established seem to have a “close enough” attitude. The design/color/fonts/etc. are close enough to the original site so there isn’t an extreme amount of “culture shock” but it doesn’t integrate very well as a whole.

Close enough isn’t good enough for 14th Colony. I wanted a seamless integration and I think I got it. But if you notice something is off, please let me know!
I also had to figure out how to integrate plug-ins. There are thousands to choose from. The WordPress community is truly amazing and selfless in this regard.
For those that want to know the plug ins installed so far are:

List Authors which does exactly what it sounds like. Yes there will be more people than just me posting here and if you are interested, throw me a line.

Akismet spam stopper.

Dan’s Avatar Thingy which worked like a dream after 3 other similar plug-ins didn’t deliver as promised. Highly recommended!

Head Meta Description which you can’t see but the spiders can.

Posts by Author which I thought looked like a good way to get the viewers more connected with new writers. It adds the “last 3 posts by…” links after each article.

Google Sitemaps essential for getting your content into Google and it is completely hands-off once installed (and installation was easy, too).

Simple Tags for Technorati.

WP DB Backup. Seemed like a very good idea.
Chunk URLs which makes really long URLs short and nice looking. Since one of the topics covered here is search engine optimization I figured cutting down on the long clutter of SE URLs would be a good thing.

Sidebar Widgets. Note to future WP developers - install this one before you alter your template! But well worth the extra effort.
What plug-ins do you have installed that are “must have’s”?

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