Add a Blog Into an Existing Website

If you already have a website an want to add a blog to it then you have several options.

Blogs are normally implemented using special blogging software/platforms like WordPress and  you will need to decide whether or not to keep your blog on a separate platform as your existing website.

There are several important considerations here:

• Moving a site to another platform can be very time consuming and can result in downtime and maybe loss of search engine rankings if done incorrectly.
• Large sites are difficult to manage using blogging tools.

Therefore if you have a well established site that ranks well in the search engines in is usually best to keep it as it is and add the blog as a separate entity.

If you do this then you will need to decide where you blog will be located. Here you have three options:

• Use a subdomain of your existing domain
• Use a subdirectory of your existing domain
• Use a link to a the blog hosted on another server

Using a Subdomain of Your Existing Domain

This my preferred choice and it is very easy to implement.

 All you need to do is to create a subdomain and install the blog software in the subdomain.

You will need to edit the blog template to link to your website and your website menu to link to your blog.

I currently use this format on this site site. Here is the blog- blog.build-your-website.co.uk and here is the site www.build-your-website.co.uk.

This option is the easiest to implement when the when the blog and website use different platforms i.e. the blog is WordPress and the main site is an HTML/PHP template site.

This has the advantage that search engines treat the blog and website as two separate sites which means that blog posts are only two levels deep and not three, and are therefore likely to get indexed by the search engines.

Use a Subdirectory of Your Existing Domain

I used to use this option on this site. I had a sub directory called blog and I  configured blogger.com to ftp the blog into this subdirectory. Below shows the configuration settings under the publishing options.

The advantage of this is that you don't need to create a new subdomain. Some hosts restrict the number of subdomains you are allowed.

However because the blog is part of the website it is already one step removed from the home page and so all of the posts become at least three steps removed from the home page.

It can lead to SEO problems as the blog grows if you aren't careful.

This option I now only recommend when you configure WordPress as the blog and website. See Building websites with WordPress.

Use a Link to a the Blog Hosted on Another Server

This option is used when the blog is hosted on a totally different domain name which is often because you are using a free blog host like blogger.com or Wordpress.com.

The problem is that the visitor sees two distinct sites as the domain names are very different. It also looks less professional.

In this case your site would be:

    Note: above is example only

Resources:

• Blog Hosting Options
• Starting a Blog