Starting a Blog for business value is one of the hottest new tools a marketer or business professional can utilize for promotional value. Your business purpose Blog provides an opportunity to connect your your public in a manner that has not previously existed in the marketers toolkit.

Is it a blog strategy or other model of online marketing tool you seek for your personal, professional, or corporate use. Does your blog have legs? No, we don’t mean is it a Frog… we want to know if you’ve got a blog concept that has marketing, publicity, or high traffic value.And, just where do you take your concept if you Blog turns out to be a great success? Well, first of all don’t knock a good thing. If the Blog is generating high traffic then you’ll be able to use it to promote other mediums, Web sites, or related value content. So let’s talk about just what those other media or business purpose offerings.

First, what is “High Traffic”? It’s not good enough that you’ve got 5,000 eyeballs looking at your blog website every month. They’ve got to be interested in the content you’re providing to the extent they bookmark or return to your site. This also includes the visitors option to receive your Blog RSS (Real Simple Syndication) feeds. High traffic with no return visitors means your visitors aren’t getting what they expected based on your title or advertised description of what your Blog covers. You can always use web stats to see how many people bookmark your blog site and the number of return visitors and visits. A few great posts with corresponding publicity and traffic are a great start but you’ll be looking for 5,000+ visits for a B2B business Blog and over 10,000+ visits for a B2C business Blog before you can leverage your Blog site for real business & promotional value.

What is a “Blog Design” anyway? Blog design controls the entire presentation of your blog brand. Sure, you can start with a simple and free blog template for your design and you’ll find many locations offering free blog themes or templates. Your blog theme gives your blog character and the right level of professional or personal branding to make your blog unique to your blogging purpose.

Many people start their blog with a free blog theme or even the default blog design presentation. A “blog theme” or “blog skin” which is the same thing as a “blog template” are the files and graphics that make up the template page structure for the presentation of the blog. The blog is actually run dynamically from a database. So instead of making new pages on your site each time you post to your blog, the blog cms (content management system) utilizes the blog template to present your pages and data.

You can easily change the blog design anytime by installing a new theme or template. Most blogging platforms allow you to change your theme with a few clicks. For non-hosted blogs, you’ll just need to ftp your new blog theme files to your server and enter your blog administration to select and install the new theme and any additional options for presentation. Your blog design also accommodates your “blog widgets”, a more modern feature of the blog template that allows you to quickly add html and third party script to run the interesting elements of the blog sidebar like social tools, photo gallery links, advertising, and much more.

As your blog matures you’ll likely want to hire a blog designer to create a blog theme or design that is specifically unique to your own blog. If you begin to make significant revenue with your blog, you’ll probably want to have a blog designer give you a fresh look and style updates on a regular basis.

One of the most popular features of a blog is the ability to quickly change the blog design. When you do settle on a blog theme or design, or if you have created your own blog design, be sure to ask for honest feedback. Some of us just don’t have an eye for that perfect design and there are plenty of talented designers that could easily make your blog look great with a little creativity and an understanding of your blog theme concept and goals.

WP 2.1.6 – WordPress Version 2.6.1 Blog Update Available. You should also take advantage of the mailing list to stay informed about the WordPress.org upgrades.

One recommendation we have for your upgrades is to affirm that you must always make sure you have backed up your files and database.  For that one time a year that something goes wrong you will be happy to know you have a full backup.  Just think of it as the periodic backup copy you plan to keep in another location anyway and save it to a DVD.  If you don’t know if you’ve backup up your database or not – well, then you haven’t.  Since some WordPress upgrades will also upgrade the database, please do this before you need to start over.

We typically unzip the wordpress distribution into a new local folder and then add to that clean folder our config file, theme, plugins, and any other file required.  Once the proper files are moved over (instead of saving per the normal wordpress upgrade instructions and then a server delete) we can delete ALL the files on our server and re-upload just the new set.

Remember the first steps are very important:

Overview of the Upgrade Process

1. Backup your database. Read Backing Up Your Database for a detailed explanation.
2. Backup ALL your WordPress files in your WordPress directory. Don’t forget your .htaccess file.
3. Verify the backups you created are there and usable. This is essential.
4. Deactivate ALL your Plugins.
5. Ensure first four steps are completed. Do not attempt the upgrade unless you have completed the first four steps.
6. Download and extract the WordPress package from http://wordpress.org/download/.
7. Delete the old WordPress files on your site, but DO NOT DELETE
* wp-config.php file;
* wp-content folder; Special Exception: the wp-content/cache and the wp-content/plugins/widgets folders should be deleted.
* wp-images folder;
* wp-includes/languages/ folder–if you are using a language file do not delete that folder;
* .htaccess file–if you have added custom rules to your .htaccess, do not delete it;
* robots.txt file–if your blog lives in the root of your site (ie. the blog is the site) and you have created such a file, do not delete it.
8. Upload the new files from your computer’s hard drive to the appropriate WordPress folder on your site.
9. Run the WordPress upgrade program and follow the instructions on the screen.
10. Update Permalinks and .htaccess. Update your Permalink Structure and merge the custom rules, if necessary, into your .htaccess file.
11. Install updated Plugins and Themes. Please review the list of Plugins that work in Version 2.6.1. Check for Theme Compatibility with 2.6.1 and ask your Theme author for any new version.
12. Reactivate Plugins
13. Review what has changed in WordPress.

Source:  These detailed instructions based on WordPress 2.6.1 are found at WordPress.org

Thus we modify step 7 of the details wordpress upgrade instructions:

7) Delete the old WordPress files on your site, but DO NOT DELETE…

Instead, we have already copied all files and have both all old blog files and new blog files in a separate directory on our local drive.

We copy the following files from that backup locally to the new blog folder.  This modification just prevents us from picking folders to delete on the server and also leaves us with a full development version of the software that could be run locally to test plugs or perform design changes to the theme before changing our live blog.

These are the files moved:

* wp-config.php file;
* wp-content folder; Special Exception: the wp-content/cache and the wp-content/plugins/widgets folders should be deleted.
* wp-images folder;
* wp-includes/languages/ folder–if you are using a language file do not delete that folder;
* .htaccess file–if you have added custom rules to your .htaccess, do not delete it;
* robots.txt file–if your blog lives in the root of your site (ie. the blog is the site) and you have

A full copy of the pre-update files exisits in case anything is missing or doesn’t go just right.  If you have command line access you know the upload will be a snap.  Even a standard FTP of all the files will only take about 10 minutes.

WordPress Upgrade Note:  Step 7 indicates to delete the WordPress files on your site.  Yes, you are actually deleting all the files EXCEPT those mentioned so that you have a completely fresh install.  Look over the files if you have any questions about what is being replaced and what should not be replaced.  Fortunately, the config file in the new WordPress version will have the name sample attached to it so even if you accidentally upload that file it should not kill your blog.  Again, our recommendation is you put a full copy to your local computer, touch up the new version with the files your are told not to delete, then delete all files on the server and upload the full blog site replacement.  If you dont’ understand this process, please just follow the normal upgrade routine.