Pregnancy Journals

Image by photosavvy via Flickr

I looked today, and on WP’s page, there are currently 14,685 free – FREE WordPress Plugins and 184,588,323 downloaded.

Wow, can you imagine how many of those plugins could help you customize your online Pregnancy Journal / Blog?

If you go to the WordPress Plugins page you’ll be able to do a quick search on all the plugins that are available.  I entered “Pregnancy” and came up with 4 automatically:

1. Baby Countdown Timer WordPress Widget

Keep track of your pregnancy and allow family to keep track with this pregnancy countdown timer. It will count down the days to your due date , show a progress graph and details on your baby’s weight and size. MORE BABY WIDGETS: http://tripletsmommy.com/category/widgets

You simply input your due date (one time) and follow the simple directions to place the widget on your blog sidebar. The widget does the rest! We designed this widget to fit nicely in the sidebar of most blog designs.

2. Countdown Clock

Display a countdown clock configured to an event of your choice. Select the date, title and event text on a choice of countdown designs, colors and sizes.

• Colour choice for texts and background
• A range of clock layouts, background pictures and animations
• List of preset events like Christmas, New Year, or Summer
• Fully customize your own countdown; choose event texts, date and timezone
• See the full range of events and designs at mycountdown.org

3. Ovulation Predictor

This plugin displays functional ovulation and due date predictor. It can be used from women to check their future fertile time and due date.

4. KB Countdown Widget

Ever wanted to track a pregnancy, or the time until the next elections, or your baby’s precise age, or something else that will surely fascinate all your readers? Maybe you even wanted a cool bargraph showing how far you’ve progressed between two dates? Introducing KB Countdown, which does just that. You give it a start date, an end date, or both.

That’s just the beginning… Check out plugins for videos, picture galleries and stuff.  Can your free Pregnancy Blog do all that?

Technorati Tags: Pregnancy Journal

Image by Adriano Gasparri via Flickr

Ok,

In my last post, I was just trying to explain why I use WordPress for my online Pregnancy Journal. WordPress is gaining popularity as one of the best open source platforms for it’s ease and use. Check out this article WordPress winning 2011 Critter Open App Software of the Year.

WordPress was created in 2003 by and for a community of writers.  It’s an open source platform which means there are hundreds of people working on the platform to improve it, either by providing code to enhance its features (via Plugins) or streamlining the product itself.  The platforms morphs into what is needed and used by the community that uses it rather than by some corporate boardroom trying to think up ideas on how to make money.

WordPress started as just a blogging system, but has evolved to be used as full content management system and so much more through the thousands of plugins, widgets, and themes, WordPress is limited only by your imagination. (And tech chops.)

Best of all, it’s completely free!!!  This is why I changed my Pregnancy Journal from Blogspot.com to a WordPress platform and I haven’t looked back since.  I’ve been able to do tons of things and am unlimited to what I can imagine.  Try it, you can create a pregnancy journal or pregnancy book or blog – start with a free account.  Then when you think you want to own your own content and are ready to customize your Pregnancy Book – create one.  It’s so easy and I have a free Ebook that will help you set up your first Pregnancy Journal in 5 easy steps.

Check out the free EBook to your right!  See you on the other side.

Cover via Amazon

WordPress is a great platform to create your online Pregnancy Journal. I’ve been using WordPress for over 3 years now and love it.

Free Blogs vs. Owned Blogs

Just at the top of my head, there are 4 big reasons for not using a Free Blog platform and using one where you purchase your own domain.

1. Ownership:  You want to own all your content.  This is extremely important since you will get to keep and want to keep everything you’ve written.  If you use a free content platform then when and if you violate one of their terms, you may be able to be taken off without much notification.  I’ve known some people who’ve had their sites taken down for violating some rule.
2. Control: You want to be able to add and control everything on your website.  This means, knowing and understanding your analytics.  Also means adding plugins or applications to your platform.  Most free blogs provide a standard set of tools or themes.  Your blog is limited to what is offered.
3. Custom Tailor:  Not all blogs are created equal.   Depending on what you want to use your blogs for, you may not want to include certain features and exclude others.  WordPress is an open source platform allowing people to create plugins and share it to the public.  Plugins are like mini-software applications created by people who wanted to tailor their WordPress blogs which they then offer to the WordPress community for free with minimum or no support.  There are hundreds of these free plugins for you to peruse and use to custom tailor your Pregnancy Journal.
4. Monetization:  You can make money from your blog if you want.  There are several ways to do this, which can be discussed in a different article.  Free blog services make money off your site.  They may add annoying advertisements on your blog. That money could be yours if you owned your own WordPress site.  Many bloggers make money adding advertisements to their blogs.

How to set up your Pregnancy Journal using WordPress:

1. Purchase a domain:  a domain is the name for your site.  Check out the following sites to purchase domains.  It’s easy and costs only $8-$10 per site for a year.
   1. www.Godaddy.com

   
   

   2. www.namecheap.com
   3. www.BlueHost.com
   4. Hosting:  Host your website.  Your website needs to be hosted on a server that is connected to the World Wide Web.  This allows people to find your website through your URL address.  Hosting is simple and inexpensive.  You can find the following Hosting sites that I’ve used and other Bloggers use.  These hosting services offer some of the best support.
      1. www.BlueHost.com
      2. www.Hostgator.com
      3. Install WordPress:
         1. Once you’ve added your domain or URL to your web host server or provider, you will be able to log into your back end server which is called your Cpanel.
         2. Under Software of the Cpanel, you will see an icon for Fantastico Delux or WordPress.  If you are using Hostgator it will be Fantastico, if you are using Bluehost, it will be WordPress.
         3. Click the icon and it will walk you through installing your WordPress software in minutes.
         4. Customizing your Journal:  This is the fun part.  Here are some great plugins I’ve used to customize my Pregnancy Journal, and best of all, they are free.
            1. Baby Count Down Timer:  Keeps track of your pregnancy and counts down to your due date.
            2. WP Statistics:  gathers information on your readers such as how many views per day, which posts were viewed most often.
            3. Grand Flash Album Gallery:  allows you to upload unlimited numbers of pictures for slideshows, galleries and albums.
            4. Post to Twitter:  allows you to integrate your blog with your Twitter account.
            5. Absolute Privacy:  turns your blog into a fully private site and you control who has access to your journal.
            6. iPhone or Android WordPress:  allows you to blog on the go instantaneously with your iPhone or Android.

5.  Add a post:  Now you are ready to post your first post and start documenting your beautiful precious journey with your Pregnancy Journal.

If you are interested in learning more, go to my webpage at www.epregnancyjournals.com.  You can grab a free Book which goes into explicit details on how to install your plugins, and things to consider before choosing a hosting provider.

If you are in the process of Getting Pregnant, or you’re a Pregnant Woman, or Having a Baby – you’ve thought about documenting your pregnancy.  This can be done through the traditional pregnancy journal or scrapbook OR if you want something more interactive with more functions, you should consider online Pregnancy Journals.  Online Pregnancy Journals are more interactive, making it easy and convenient to track the milestones of your pregnancy along with your everyday moods, thoughts, ideas and discussions about the baby that’s in your Womb. You can even make your Pregnancy Journal public so friends and family members can share and interact with you on your wonderful journey.

WHAT’S A PREGNANCY JOURNAL?

So what is an online Pregnancy Journal?  It’s a way to document your thoughts (i.e. like a journal) but online.  Some people use a blog site as a way to do this.  There are actual free blog sites (such as blogspot.com and wordpress) you can research so you can create your online journal.  You can also create your own blog site such by purchasing your own domain and hosting it with a WordPress theme.  I will provide more information about creating your own WordPress blogs in another posting.  Here, I’d like to discuss what features you’d want to look for in your Pregnancy blog or Journal.  So if you are looking to create an online pregnancy journal, what types of features should you look for?  I’ve researched a vast amount of features that you’ll want to review:

WHAT FEATURES SHOULD I LOOK FOR?

1.  Advertisements on site?  Do you want your journal to be free of advertisements?  If you sign up for a free online account, you may not have a choice.  If you do have advertisements on your site, wouldn’t you want to make money off those advertisements?  If you own your own site, you’ll have the ability to include this or exclude it.

2.  Password protection and Other security features:   Passwords should be mandatory on all sites.  Be wary if you sign up for an account without one.  Other security features you should look into are privacy features.  Do you want your site to be private?  If your site is not private, then search engines will have access to your site and it will be searchable and indexed into Google’s vast web forever.

3.  Guestbooks:  This feature allows or requires guests who enter your site to sign up so you know who’s visiting your site.

4.  Approve comments: This feature will allow you to view all comments on your site and approve them before they go on to your site for everyone to view.  This feature is great when you want to protect against spammers or control comments that you don’t want others to see.

5.  Use pictures/codes and other social media on your site like Facebook and Twitter: This feature allows you to upload pictures through your Facebook account.  It may also allow you to feed your updates from Twitter into your site as well if you want to connect them.

6.  Visitor Counter:  This feature will provide a count of how many people have visited your site.

7.  Site rankings:  This feature allows you to determine your rank in comparison to other sites.

8.  Birth statistics: You can have a feature that allows you to have a separate page announcing your baby’s birth statics?

9.  Email alerts: This feature will alert your subscribed visitors that you’ve added a new post.  It’s great for those who are following your blog daily so they don’t need to check when  you have a new post added.

10. Update your site via email/phone?  This feature should allow you to add a post via email or through a phone applicaiton instead of going through the website itself.  Both iPhone and other smart phones now have applications with specific blogging applications that  allow you to do this.  However, free journals will not have this application.  This is a great way to update your journal as many smart phones have video and cameras, to take pictures and videos on the go and then post them immediately.  So many times I’ve thought about posting something that happened instantenously and forget to do it later b/c of timing.  This is an amazing application and tool you’ll want to consider having, especially if you ahve a smart phone.

11. Advanced HTML Editor:  This feature will allow you to edit posts or applications through an HTML Editor.  Ok, if you have any insight or knowledge into HTML, this would be helpful.  I have a minute amount of knowledge and know only enough to get in trouble, but sometimes, with this ability, you can find ways to actually include other plugins or apps or features you may not have the ability to do otherwise.

12. Quizzes, polls: Do you want to create polls and quizzes to your readers?  I’m not much of an interactive journal blogger myself so this feature has not really been useful to me.

13.  Pdf copy of your site: This feature will allow you to create a pdf copy or disc copy of your site.  There may be times when you no longer wish to continue updating your journal.  You’ll want to create a soft copy or a hard copy either to print out and save or it makes a wonderful present to share with your child when they are older.  \

14. Links to other sites: This feature will allow you to create a list of links that you use daily or often to share with friends/families.

15. Personalized web addresses?  This feature allows you to pesronalize your journal.  For example, if you are using blogspot. your web address would be www.blogspot.com/your web address.  If you want to own your own domain you can do that by purchasing one.

16. Photos/galleries/videos:  This feature will allow you to upload photos and videos and create galleries from them.  Of course this is the diamond we all want.  Many web pages limit your ability to download photos and vides… why?  B/c tit costs money to host large caches of memory.  Most websites will give you a max of 200 photos and no videos.  If you own your own domain and host it yourself, you can have unlimited amounts on your page.  Isn’t this what you want?  I suggest that if you are planning on keeping your online journal from pregnancy through to early childhood and beyond, you’ll have not only tons of vidoes and photos… you’ll reach that limit really early on!  So it’s most important to want to pay for  your own domain.

17.  Music:  This is a rare feature that will allow you to upload music on your website.  Music and video files take up a lot of memory and are therefore limited with most services.  However, if you own your own domain and create a WordPress Blog with your own hosting, you can add anything you want.  You’ll have at least 2 Gigs of memory for a limited cost of $8.99/month for hosting and you can add all the applications that WordPress has – WordPress has over 300+ plugins that are free.

So these are some of the wonderful things I’d consider when creating my Pregnancy Journal – I’m sure there are even more.  If you’re interested in creating your own, let me know.

Technorati Tags: getting pregnant, Having A Baby, Pregnancy Journal, Pregnant Woman, Womb