another blogging question.........

By Wordpress software, we just mean the whole shebang of PHP scripts and everything included with Wordpress. All you have to do to use wordpress with your own domain is simply upload the files to your server and run an installation script that essentially just creates the necessary database tables for you.

I use Wordpress on my site (see sig). It's simple enough and does what I want, and it's fairly easy to customize. Most other options will have similar setup procedures.

Try them both out. b2evolution you can have it installed and running within about 5 minutes after downloading, doing a quick run through the installation instructions and creating a database. It's that quick and easy. It'll give you the chance to run through the backend and see what you think. There are three sample blogs already installed for you to play with (can be deleted later). They even have a Russian language pack.

I've never ever tried b2evolution, but I am intrigued. Wordpress does have their step by step 5 minute install, but really it is more like 3 minutes 17 seconds, it is so simple. That gives you an out of the box fully funtioning bone stock blog. Even a blind, def, and mute turtle could do it!

That's exactly why I tried Wordpress first. Just be warned, the darn thing will not run on Windows IIS. Spent a day on it and even posted at their support forums, and never got an answer how to make it work. If you run it on a Windows server, you'd better be running Apache. It did install. It just didn't work. Wouldn't display the theme and all kinds of errors.

Honestly b2evo installed just as fast and worked perfectly right off the bat on IIS, which is one reason I'm so fond of it.

gotta say, guys - this is the first time I've felt like a total girl on this forum everybody knowing all about servers and php and databases and whatnot..... and here I am, total damsel in distress. might as well be blond

Don't have to worry about that! I'm too cheap to buy an IIS license, actually I'm flat broke.

@celandine---The best way to learn all this stuff is to just do it. Once you get yourself a good test server (basically a pc with apache/mysql/php) install phpmyadmin and that takes care of the monotonous database stuff with an easy to use web browser interface. And doing administration stuff is something you have to do to fully comprehend, so just reading about it and remembering it isn't good enough. Experience is worth it's weight in gold.

true dat.
it isn't something I plan to do tomorrow, but in the near future I hope I can actually set up a server - simplest possible hopefully - and start messing with all that stuff. at which point I'll probably be tugging at your sleeve again for help

till that fateful day, though, let's just see if I can set up a blog that works.............. I think ATNO's right - I'll just try out both options and see how it goes............

Yeah, celandine you should start messing up.

The best way to learn is to break something, because you will learn more by fixing it than you will by simply operating it.

Oh I'm sure it will come to that as soon as I start trying to set up a server

That motivates me to break a server I'm using now.