The most essential technical infrastructure needed to start your blog

While a blog is all about sharing ideas and content, you simply cannot ignore the technical aspects. It’s like making a Jurassic Park movie without dinosaurs. So, make sure that you should have the right technology and tools to manage your blog. It isn’t complicated but many bloggers make the wrong choices that affect their blog quality and give it an unprofessional look. So, we have compiled a list of the right technologies that form the base of an awesome blog. As a bonus (for reading our article) you would also find some performance-enhancing tools and tips:

CMS (Content Management System)

Sites like gadgetmaniac.in also use CMS. They have described CMS as refers to content management systems. Here you manage your content- posting, editing, publishing your content, or reviewing the contents submitted by other authors on your blog. Consider it as a notebook to write down your content, reviewing it, erasing mistakes, and mentioning details like date, title, etc.

You present your notebook only when you are fully satisfied with your work. The same way you work on CMS to create well presented awesome content and press the publish button only when you are satisfied. There are different CMS available but most of the bloggers (almost all the top bloggers) use WordPress CMS due to the ease, presentation, convenience, and scalability.

Major qualities of a good CMS

•         Easy and quick content editor
•         Intuitive Core functionality
•         Scalable design
•         Mobile friendly
•         Simple user management
•         Compatible with plugins
•         Supports third-party integrations

 Self-hosted domain

It simply means having yourblog.com instead of WordPress.yourblog.com which sounds so unprofessional. So you need to buy domain names and hosting packages that don’t need huge investment. Registering your domain is easy and very cheap and buying a decent hosting plan is also not expensive. The domain name is the address of your site while hosting are the services/resources (space, RAM, etc,) required to store and publish your website.

Salient features of a good domain name

•         Short, relevant, and concise
•         Memorable
•         Easy, straightforward, and traditional spelling (tech.com instead of tec.com)
•         DotCom extension
•         Niche-Relevant/Brand-specific
•         No hyphens or numerical figures

Note: Total cost of domain and web hosting can vary depending upon your plan and web hosting company. To keep things economical you can buy a shared hosting plan as they are the cheapest options available and if you purchase from a reputed organization it works really well.

Good Design

You need an SEO-friendly appealing design that matches your niche. It is very easy. Just purchase a WordPress theme from the online marketplace and start placing your content at appropriate placeholders in the layout. So, you can independently create awesome web design with a simple drag and drop process. There is another, a better option for bloggers- page builders.

Page building tools like Elementor empower you to create a unique design for each web page of your blog. You get more extended control over each element and section of the page. You can delete, add or edit any design element as per your wish. Moreover, you can either opt for ready to use layouts for quick publishing or create your unique page design from scratch through a drag and drop process using friendly tools.

Salient features of a good web design

•         Compatible with mobile devices
•         Easy and quick navigation
•         Organized Information
•         Properly formatted content (even for skin reading)
•         Fast speed
•         Responsive design
•         Well guided design structure
•         Retina-friendly

 Plugins

Plugins refer to portable digital capabilities for your WordPress site. They help you add extra functionality to the site and facilitate different tasks. For instance, you can use SEO-plugins like Yoast to optimize your content for better visibility on search pages or opt for FormBuilder to quickly build professional looking forms without touching a single line of code or going through any technical complication. 

Now and then you may come across many raw materials for writing- useful links, innovative ideas, trending keywords, etc. Many bloggers are not careful to take them seriously but you are too smart to commit that silly mistake. So, organize all such resources in a single convenient place that you can access anytime, anywhere. Digital options like MS OneNote or Dropbox Paper are the best solutions for that. As soon as you find the time, gather a few matching ideas and corresponding raw materials. Prepare a quick first draft that you can expand or modify later on. This way you would be able to cash in maximum ideas that come to your mind. 

Salient features of  a good plugin

•         Logical Functionality
•         Solid Coding
•         Tested for speed and security
•         Positive user experience
•         24X7 reliable customer support
•         Periodical updates to meet the latest guidelines

Bonus…

Along with the above essential technical requirements to produce your blog you would also need to ensure that the blog performs fairly well. Here are a few tools for that:

Digital storehouses for random creative ideas and work

Now and then you may come across many raw materials for writing- useful links, innovative ideas, trending keywords, etc. Many bloggers are not careful to take them seriously but you are too smart to commit that silly mistake. So, organize all such resources in a single convenient place that you can access anytime, anywhere. 

Digital options like MS OneNote or Dropbox Paper are the best solutions for that.

A/B Testing Tools

As a new blogger, you are not sure if a specific content or strategy would work. Sometimes you may have two different plans of doing the same thing (say creating landing pages) and need to choose the right one. Go for A/B split testing.

Tools like Optimizely make things easier for you. It allows you, for instance, to randomly show two different landing pages to the audience and compare the results side by side to see which landing page attracts more conversing. So, you can keep the landing page that attracts better conversions. 

Loading speed

Pingdom is a great speed testing tool that tells you about your site loading speed. All you have to do is to open the site and enter your URL in the search box. Press enter and it will show you the loading speed across different browsers. It allows you to take quick action on slow loading instances and accelerate the speed.

While Pingdom provides you a quick report about the loading speed, you need a detailed report on what’s causing the site to run sluggish. For that, you can use PageSpeed Insights from Google. Depending upon diverse page speed parameters the tool gives a specific score to your site (out of 100). It allows you to check loading speed for both mobile and desktop devices. 

The results also contain useful information and insights on how to improve your page speed. All you need to do is click the arrow that says Show how to fix and you would see valuable advice on accelerating your page speed.

Conclusion

If you wish to enjoy a good reputation as a blogger, you need to invest in decent infrastructure. Right from web hosting to content management systems everything plays a vital role in determining the overall personality of your blog. So if you wish to earn a steady income and enjoy a good reputation as a blogger you should be prepared to invest in a good blogging infrastructure.