Found this very long, but insightful piece on Blog systems compared, and using blog tools to manage a starter website. The key is being able to put you in control of your site- not some geek.

Bop on over to this informative article- it’s long, but useful.

Weblog Tools Collection » Blogging: The Not-So-New Trend

Probably thanks to MySpace’s confused contribution to the world, these days even “normal” people have heard of blogging. Blogging allows amateurs to freely publish information and manage sophisticated online, two-way communication with readers around the world.But, blogging isn’t just for geeks and aspiring musicians anymore. Businesses have jumped on the bandwagon and use blogging as a fluid way to gauge and manage customer sentiment.

Blogs also tend to be a compliment – and in some cases a complete replacement – to traditional online customer support.

So how can blogging help your business?
Use A Blog For Your First Website

While blogs are often only one aspect of a company’s web presence, I’ve noticed another pleasant trend: blogs as a starting point for businesses. Despite the lack of structure – or maybe because of it – blogging is helping expand website creation beyond its techie origins.

Blogs are making it easier for non-technical people to get involved.

read more…

Remember, once your site is built in a database, it can be transported into other more sophisticated site management tools easily- a hard coded site cannot. You also have the opportunity to deliver your content on cell phones- or change the look of your site with the push of a button- but best of all, you can get to the top of search if you’ve taken our Websitetology seminar.

While many bloggers are cashing in on paid advertising and affiliate fees, the options for setting up small shops is limited by “plugin” store solutions. WordPress is great for building community, the ideal way to target your customers, but when it comes to adding a simple solution you are limited to the three main options available now:
MicroShop
by Owen Winkler (RedAlt) which is currently down. It is the shopping cart I use on Websitetology. Current link: http://www.websitetology.com/wp-content/uploads/microshop.zip
Paypal or checks only, it has some issues with data entry in the phone field, and has limited tax, shipping, and notation options.

Note: June 08 This solution was pre WordPress 2.0, it’s highly unlikely that it still works.
WP-Shop
http://cregy.net/small-business-software/wp-shop/
Last time I installed this, there was no payment gateway. It was the nicest integration of the three, but without checkout, it was worthless. Since I haven’t tried to use it since June, I can’t tell you what the status is now.

UPDATE: June 08, this plugin seems to be abandoned.
WP e-commerce lite
http://www.instinct.co.nz/e-commerce/
We’re using this on www.londonbaystationery.com. It has no way of setting tax per order, or shipping charges. The only included gateway is PayPal, for a fee you can add authorize.net and dps.co.nz

UPDATE: Jun 09 This plugin broke again with 2.8. It’s been a constant headache.

We broke down and purchased the Shopp plugin http://shopplugin.net/ it works flawlessly with 2.8.

We also looked at e-shop, http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/eshop/ but, we failed to rename the product page, and were in limbo for a while. It requires a page per post, which may or may not be a graceful way to handle things.

E-commerce with a WordPress shouldn’t be that difficult. While most of these solutions are limited to using WordPress with a PayPal solution, the ability to use other payment processors like 2checkout.com or google checkout should be available. WordPress is the easiest way to build a community- so shouldn’t it be just as easy to sell to your community?
A more complex option is to build a ZenCart site and add a WordPress blog to it with this module:
http://zencart-module.s-page.net/index.php?main_page=product_info&cPath=2&products_id

JUNE 08: Another open source option that looks good for a cart is Magento: http://www.magentocommerce.com/features

There isn’t a WordPress module- or integration- but, it’s getting rave reviews as a well written piece of code.

There must be other shopping cart plugins out there- but this is what we’ve found. If you have any others, please leave a link in the comments.

UPDATE: Jun 09 found this link with 10 shopping cart tools for WordPress  http://speckyboy.com/2008/10/23/10-powerful-shoppingecommerce-plugin-solutions-for-wordpress/

UPDATE: Apr 8 2010: Here is a comparison chart of carts: http://www.briggs.net.nz/log/2009/09/13/warts-and-all/

Good News! Forget all these steps- here is an easy way to get iWeb sites onto your own server!

Get “Easy iWeb publisher” for free from Plyxim, here is the link: http://www.plyxim.com/

I haven’t had a chance to test it- but, I’m sure it’s got to be easier than all these step by step proceedings!

If there is one thing I haven’t been happy with in Word Press is its ability to manage a page of photos- so, for Mac users, I put together this little step-by-step instructions on how to use iPhoto and iWeb from iLife 06 to build a gallery page.

If you are looking for one reason to buy a Mac instead of a PC- the way iPhoto handles importing, managing, working with pictures from a digital camera is it. with the addition of iWeb it also gives you a great tool to build a photo page.

Here is how to do it- starting with the basics:

1. Connect camera- or card reader.
2. iPhoto 06 should open automatically.
3. Before you hit import photos- name the roll- adding a roll description.
4. Crop and name photos- the title will appear under each photo.
5. To organize them for the site- you can use the “Batch change” for both titles and contents.
6. Click iWeb option- choose “Photo page”
7. Close the .mac page (it’s Apple’s hosting service- and you own your own domain)
8. Choose a template that you wish to use just for the photo page. As far as I can tell- once you select this template- the only way to switch templates is to delete the page and recreate it from iPhoto.
9. You can change and edit items on the template in iWeb. I suggest removing the “include page in navigation menu” from the page menu.
10. Make title link back to your post: select the title text (starts out as the name of the album from iPhoto)- select the text- pick the link icon in the inspector (the link icon is the last icon on the right- a little blue circle with the swooshed arrow in it).
11. Select “enable as a hyperlink”
12. Make this a link back to the url for the post (you find this by clicking on the headline- and copying the url for the post).
13. Choose publish- here is where it gets a little hinky- iWeb wants to publish to a .Mac account. Apple hasn’t provided a way to publish to your own hosting solution (BOOOO!)
14. Instead – save it to your sites folder on your hard drive. Note: Subscribe buttons work only if you specify the site’s URL (address) in the dialog that appears when you choose File > Publish to a Folder.
15. Continue when you are prompted about Content rights (it is your content- right?)
16. Then open Transmit– or use the handy dandy free extenison for Firefox, FireFTP, and this is a little goofy- your first folder has a page called index.html and a folder (the site name)- open the site name folder- and you will have another index.html page and another .html file (the short title of the original iPhoto album) plus 3 folders- “images” “SlideShow_assets” and “Name of alum_files”-copy all 3 folders and one of the two .html pages (I prefer the one NOT named index.html) into a folder with a short name- like gallery – on your stuff (the server) and then the address to your page will be www.yoursite.com/folder_name/name.html (Where folder_name is the name you gave the folder – mine is gallery and name.html is the name of the iPhoto album- mine is faves.html)
17. Now – make a link to this page in the post- that you have the link back to on your title from step 10.

I know it seems like a lot of steps- but once you are done- you will have a sweet gallery page to look at- like this:http://blogosopher.com/gallery/faves.html

Note- we’ve tried a couple of WordPress plug in’s like Gallery– with limited success. I would really like iWeb better if it took the iPhoto comment info and put it under each photo- and would allow for alt tagging the photos as well.

If anyone has any better suggestions on how to do this- please share. Thanks.

(See beginning!- new software makes this easy)