Embedding A Blog Into Your Site

[Illustrious 0]

I'm wondering if it is possible to embed a blog (wordpress, if possible) into the contents of your site. For example, I was looking at David Choi's website and I thought it was pretty cool how his blog was implemented into his site.

http://davidchoimusic.com/david-choi-dog-snoopy/
http://davidchoimusic.com/category/blogs/

I was looking to find out how to do something like the two links above. I want to know how to implement a blog inside a website (not having a seperate directory for a blog) keeping the same visual theme for both the site and the blog.

[wutske 0]

Actually, that is not so hard to do if you don't have a website yet. What you need is a CMS (Content Management System) like Joomla, e107, Drupal or Wordpress.
A little explanation:
what you see on David's blog is rather straightforward to do:

----------------------------------------			  {header}----------------------------------------			  {links}----------------------------------------						   |					  						   |					  	{content}			  |   {right_menu}						   |					  ----------------------------------------

What you see between the code tags is some kind of pseude code for the page layout, usually defined in a php page. The lines represent the actual layout, made with div's or a table of something. The {tags} tell the CMS what is supposed to be placed inside those divs/cells.

The {content} tag is probably most important as the CMS will put all your blogposts (usually called newsitems in a CMS) there.
The Bio, photos, videos pages from David's blog are either static pages (just pure html) or plugins which are available for the CMS.

Hope this explains a little bit about creating such a site. Just remember, you'll need to know something about html, php and css because if you want to make a site with a custom layout and a custom theme (tough there are many themes/templates which you can download and use, how you put the content in the theme is completely up to you as it's usually pretty straightforward to do with a CMS).

[mahesh2k 0]

One more way to do things is by making blog installation on another folder and getting feed on frontpage. But in order to parse feeds i guess you need some external parser for HTML pages. Instead of all this it is better to get one CMS and then use the layout the way you want.

[Illustrious 0]

Actually, that is not so hard to do if you don't have a website yet. What you need is a CMS (Content Management System) like Joomla, e107, Drupal or Wordpress. A little explanation:
what you see on David's blog is rather straightforward to do:

----------------------------------------[tab][/tab][tab][/tab][tab][/tab]  {header}----------------------------------------[tab][/tab][tab][/tab][tab][/tab]  {links}----------------------------------------[tab][/tab][tab][/tab][tab][/tab][tab][/tab][tab][/tab][tab][/tab]   |[tab][/tab][tab][/tab][tab][/tab][tab][/tab][tab][/tab]  [tab][/tab][tab][/tab][tab][/tab][tab][/tab][tab][/tab][tab][/tab]   |[tab][/tab][tab][/tab][tab][/tab][tab][/tab][tab][/tab]  [tab][/tab]{content}[tab][/tab][tab][/tab][tab][/tab]  |   {right_menu}[tab][/tab][tab][/tab][tab][/tab][tab][/tab][tab][/tab][tab][/tab]   |[tab][/tab][tab][/tab][tab][/tab][tab][/tab][tab][/tab]  ----------------------------------------

What you see between the code tags is some kind of pseude code for the page layout, usually defined in a php page. The lines represent the actual layout, made with div's or a table of something. The {tags} tell the CMS what is supposed to be placed inside those divs/cells.

The {content} tag is probably most important as the CMS will put all your blogposts (usually called newsitems in a CMS) there.
The Bio, photos, videos pages from David's blog are either static pages (just pure html) or plugins which are available for the CMS.

Hope this explains a little bit about creating such a site. Just remember, you'll need to know something about html, php and css because if you want to make a site with a custom layout and a custom theme (tough there are many themes/templates which you can download and use, how you put the content in the theme is completely up to you as it's usually pretty straightforward to do with a CMS).

Thank you for your reply. I believe that I am starting to understand how implementing a blog into an existing website works. I'm still a bit confused about what you mean by using a CMS to implement a blog. Is it possible to implement the blog strictly into the content tag or do you have to develop an entire new theme for the CMS blog?

[tansqrx 0]

I personally use WordPress (wordpress.org) for my website blog (http://forums.xisto.com/no_longer_exists/). Read the installation instructions thoroughly before you install and you shouldn’t have any problems. Xisto provides all of the databases and resources needed so you will not have to contact Xisto - Support at all. I have installed WordPress in a folder called “blog” in my main HTML folder as shown in the “/blog/” extension of the web address. You will be instructed to download the WordPress package to your own machine, extract it, and then load it onto your Xisto server (usually FTP). The instructions will tell you what address to use to access the setup page. Follow the setup wizard instructions, delete anything it tells you to, and your done.The hardest part for me was to create a template that fit in with the existing website style. I have a custom navigation bar at the top of the page and a custom footer that shows up on every page that had to be recreated for the WordPress template. I also changed the layout, fonts, and colors in the PHP and CSS files to make the template have the same look and feel as the other parts of my site. I started out with the default template and made extensive changes. Another option is to use one of the many free WordPress templates made by others and then customize them. I found the CSS and PHP to be fairly straightforward to customize but it will still take several hours to create something unique if you are not well versed in CSS or PHP.

[Illustrious 0]

I personally use WordPress (wordpress.org) for my website blog (http://forums.xisto.com/no_longer_exists/). Read the installation instructions thoroughly before you install and you shouldnât have any problems. Xisto provides all of the databases and resources needed so you will not have to contact Xisto - Support at all. I have installed WordPress in a folder called âblogâ in my main HTML folder as shown in the â/blog/â extension of the web address. You will be instructed to download the WordPress package to your own machine, extract it, and then load it onto your Xisto server (usually FTP). The instructions will tell you what address to use to access the setup page. Follow the setup wizard instructions, delete anything it tells you to, and your done.
The hardest part for me was to create a template that fit in with the existing website style. I have a custom navigation bar at the top of the page and a custom footer that shows up on every page that had to be recreated for the WordPress template. I also changed the layout, fonts, and colors in the PHP and CSS files to make the template have the same look and feel as the other parts of my site. I started out with the default template and made extensive changes. Another option is to use one of the many free WordPress templates made by others and then customize them. I found the CSS and PHP to be fairly straightforward to customize but it will still take several hours to create something unique if you are not well versed in CSS or PHP.

I realize that developing your own wordpress theme is difficult. I have absolutely no idea how to start developing a theme so what I was really wondering is if it is possible to use ANY blog CMS (not limited to wordpress) to embed into the content <div> if your site. I think someone this similarly to what I was looking for at ChamberHymns.com at the blog section of the website. I don't think he uses a CMS or anything though. What I am looking for is a comment section, rating system (5-star system, thumbs up/thumbs down, etc.), etc.