Here’s a common question I get by email: “I already have a website and I want to add a blog onto the site. How do I add a blog to my existing website domain?”

This process varies based on the blogging program you are using. So in this tutorial, I’ll focus on the WordPress method for adding a blog to your site. In the next lesson, I’ll show you how to add a blog onto your website using Blogger. The integration processes with these two programs are completely different, so it would be confusing to cover them both in one article. Let’s tackle the WordPress method first.

Adding a WordPress Blog Onto Your Website

WordPress is a self-contained blogging program. This means that you will need to download the entire program from the web, and then upload the files onto your web domain / server. But there are also some preliminary steps between the downloading and uploading process, and this is where a lot of webmasters go astray. You also need a MySQL database to run a WordPress blog on your website, so we will talk about that as well.

To add a WordPress blog onto your site, you will need to perform the following steps (at a minimum):

1. Download the most recent version of WordPress from http://wordpress.org/download.
2. Set up a MySQL database through your web hosting account. Depending on who you use for web hosting, this might be a very easy step. Most of the big-name hosting companies allow you to create a database at the click of a button.
3. When you set up your MySQL database, make a note of the database name, the user name, the password, and the host URL. You’ll need these things when you configure one of the WordPress files (prior to uploading the files to your server).
4. Next, you will need to open the WordPress file called “wp-config-sample.php” and enter the MySQL database information I mentioned earlier. When this is done, save the config file.
5. Next, rename the file you just edited to “wp-config.php” (by removing the “-sample” part from the filename.
6. When all of that is done, you are ready to upload all of your WordPress files to the directory where you want to blog to reside. If you plan to add the blog onto your existing website, you would simply create a new sub-directory / sub-folder for the WordPress files. For example, if your website domain is www.MyGenericWebsite.com … you could put the WordPress files in a folder called “blog.” So the full URL for the blog would be www.MyGenericWebsite.com/blog.

Here are some detailed instructions on how to configure and upload the WordPress blogging program onto your website. But don’t let these instructions scare you. Much of the information is about building a MySQL database from “scratch.” And, as I’ve said, most big-name web hosting companies allow you create a database just by clicking a few buttons.

Once you have all of your WordPress files uploaded to the sub-directory where you want to the blog to reside, you will need to finish the install by running the initial diagnostics. This sounds complicated, but the WordPress program does all of the work for you. All you have to do is call up a particular URL for the install page, and the program will do the rest. Ultimately, if you give you a “success” message that lets you know you are done.

Congratulations! You’ve just added a blog onto your website by installing the WordPress blogging program. Now you can choose a theme for your new blog, customize it as needed, and — most importantly — starting publishing great content for your audience. Here are some blogging ideas to get you started.

Related Articles:

• How Do Blogs Work?
• Blog Hosting on WordPress

According to his website, Mike Van Bergen is an Internet marketing veteran. In truth, he steals articles from other people and passes them off as his own work, in an attempt to make himself seem like an expert. It’s an ugly example of online copyright infringement — a despicable practice that has gotten completely out of hand in recent years.

Many people feel powerless to stop online copyright infringement, and so they just throw up their hands and say, “What can I do?” Well, I’m going to tell you what you can do. And I’m going to use Mike Van Bergen as a real-life example.

The Van Bergen Story of Copyright Infringement

I publish a lot of articles online, using websites like EzineArticles.com. And from time to time, I like to see where these articles have been published online. So I’ll take a unique sentence or phrase from the article and Google it. It’s an easy way to see how well your article marketing program is working. What does this have to do with online copyright infringement and Mike Van Bergen, you ask? We are getting to that.

A couple of weeks ago, I did this Google process with one of my articles, and I was shocked to find that some guy named Mike Van Bergen had stolen my work. He just grabbed the article from one of the distribution websites where I had published it, took my name off the byline, stripped away my author bio at the end, and added his own name and bio, claiming the work was his own. Then he published it through ArticleCity.com. Long story short — my article is now all over the Internet with Mike Van Bergen as the author. It’s a classic (yet disgusting) case of online copyright infringement.

Here’s a guy who claims to be an Internet marketing expert, to the point of charging people for his “wisdom.” But in reality, he is nothing but a content thief. I work hard to create helpful articles on a variety of marketing topics, and he steals this one without a second thought.

What to Do About Copyright Violators

I have had it with people like Mike Van Bergen … people who think it’s okay to steal other people’s work and pass it off as their own. So I am launching a crusade through this blog and several others to educate people about online copyright infringement and what they can do to stop it. You can help me in that goal by linking to this blog post. This will help it rank well in search engines for the phrase “online copyright infringement.” That way, whenever somebody looks for information on the subject, they’ll find this blog post … and they’ll know just what to do about this despicable behavior.

Now, I’m no lawyer. So I don’t plan to get into the legal details of copyright law. But I will tell you this. If you write content and publish it online (such as an article, for example), and somebody takes that content and passes it off as their own work, then they’ve committed online copyright infringement. They have broken the law and violated your rights.

So don’t let them get away with it!

I’m sure there is some legal recourse you can take, and you can learn all about it on the U.S. government’s copyright website. But I myself have little faith in such a bureaucratic process. Instead, I’m going to tell you how to really get the attention of those content thieves, while operating entirely within the law.

Step 1 - Give the Thief a Chance

The first thing you should do is give the person a chance to correct their mistake. This works for me about 99% of the time. I will send an email to the webmaster and inform them that the content is mine. Most will say, “Oh, sorry. I had no idea I was doing anything wrong.” And they’ll proceed to remove or correct the copyright infringement content. Of course they know better. Everybody knows stealing is wrong. But the point is to give them a chance to fix the problem.

I wrote to Mike Van Bergen when I found he had been passing my work off as his own, and I got the following response: “Sorry Brandon. I’m fairly new to the world of internet. Didn’t realize I had done wrong. I have removed the articles from the blog.”

See what I mean? Everyone pretends they didn’t know stealing the work of others was wrong. That’s like telling a cop, “Sorry, officer. I honestly didn’t think there was anything wrong with stealing this digital camera from the electronics store. I’m fairly new to the whole shopping thing.”

I wrote back to Mike Van Bergen and told him that the article was published in several places online (aside from his blog), and that he needed to correct the problem.

He responded by saying: “I’m sorry to say that I can’t spend the time looking for these on other sites because I do work at a full time job.”

Incidentally, I also work a full time job, but I still find time to write my own material, instead of resorting to online copyright infringement and stealing the work of others.

So here we have an example of an infringement scenario where you have to take things to the next level — negative publicity.

Step 2 - Publicize the Copyright Infringement

The worst thing you can do is ignore the problem. If you do that, the content thief will keep on stealing content from people … including you! So in those cases where you know the name of the copyright violator, you can publicize the act online as I have done here. Keep it legal though. You can’t make any false written statements about the person, because that constitutes libel (which is a crime). But you can certainly explain what the person did to you, and you can do it in the most public way possible.

I certainly don’t enjoy taking an hour out of my day to write this blog post about Mike Van Bergen and online copyright infringement. But I knew that if I didn’t do this, there was a good chance Mike Van Bergen would continue stealing content from people, possibly even me.

Step 3 - Contact Website and Blog Hosting Companies

If you still haven’t gotten the person to correct their online copyright infringement issue (or if they publish an anonymous website or blog), you can contact their web hosting or blog hosting company. I often find cases of content theft on blogs published on the Blogspot.com domain (Blogger). There is a “Flag” button at the top of these blogs, and you can use it to alert Blogger / Google that the person is practicing online copyright infringement. I strongly encourage you to do this when it’s just. If a blog gets flagged repeatedly for violating Blogger’s terms, it will be banned / canceled.

If it’s not a blog but a regular website, you can do a Whois search to find out who owns the domain, where it’s hosted, etc. In some cases, you won’t be able to find out who owns the site, because they may have a private domain registration. But you can almost always find out where the website is hosted. I would contact the web hosting company and tell them the person is violating your copyrights with the stolen content, and I would provide documentation / links to back up your claim. Web hosting companies do not like customers who create problems for them, so there’s a good chance they’ll send a warning to the website owner.

Don’t Just Let it Slide!

I hope Mike Van Bergen and I have taught you a valuable lesson about online copyright infringement and what you can do about it. The important thing is that you do something about it, as opposed to throwing up your hands and saying, “Oh well.” Bad behavior left unchecked will always be bad behavior. So it’s time for the responsible and ethical webmasters of this world to join together and fight the growing problem of content theft.

Help Me Spread the Word

If you found this blog post helpful and/or inspiring, I encourage you to link to it as a recommended resource on copyright infringement. This will help increase the visibility of this article, which in turn will help us stem the tide of content theft!

Legal Disclaimer: I make no other claims or assertions about Mike Van Bergen, other than the fact that he has violated my copyrights as an author (and admits to doing so).