Returning Renault Bears to a worthwhile life of daytime telly, eating jammy toast and surfing the internet.
Posts tagged blog
Get A Free Blog
Mon 16th Aug 2010
From time to time people have asked us how they go about starting their own blog. We usually point them in the direction of Blogger or WordPress.com where they can start their own blog free of charge. Both of these sites offer a chance for newbies to produce professional looking blogs of their own very quickly.
The only drawback to using any of these services is you have to use their layouts and themes and you cannot easily make your blog look just the way you want it. In the case of Blogger it is possible if you know some PHP programming and in WordPress.com if you pay a fee for the service, usually a few dollars a month.
This is where The Bears have now stepped in.
We are offering any of our Bear Friends (sorry, offer is open to Official Bear Friends only) the chance to start up and run their very own WordPress blog completely free of charge. The blog will be hosted by us but you can design your own artwork and choose a free layout theme for your blog.
There is no catch whatsoever, everything is free and will remain free for as long as we decide to run it. We are simply doing this so that others might start to enjoy blogging as much as we do. There is no catch!
Your blog can be on any subject you like. It can be about the things you do from day to day, or can be based around a hobby or pastime you enjoy. If you would like an example of what a blog can look like go and look at Granny’s Blog. Granny’s Blog is hosted in the same way as yours will be and will include all the features included on Granny’s and more if you desire.
Here are some examples of just what can be done with a WordPress blog…
http://tellerallaboutit.wordpress.com/
http://settysoutham.wordpress.com/
If you fancy becoming a blogger all you need to get started is tell us the following…
- Name. Your blog will require a name from which to operate. (e.g. Mary’s Blog)
- Layout Theme. If you search online, there are plenty of free themes available for WordPress. You can search for them using Google (just type in “free WordPress theme”) and once you find the one you like just tell us what it is called and where we can download it. We will do the rest.
- Artwork. This will be required if your theme involves a header imagine like the one we have used as an example above. If you are not very good with design or photo editing we can help you with this to get you started.
We are quite willing to help you set your blog up and help with the initial installation and artwork. We can also offer help with posting videos and photographs the first time you choose to do so. However, once your blog is up and running you will be the one who decides what to write about and what to include in your blog.
Unfortunately, we do not have the time to spend hours helping everyone write and edit posts and the day to day administering of your blog. Once your blog is up and running it will be your responsibility to maintain it. We can point you in the direction of online manuals and documentation but it is up to you to read it. We will try to help you if we can, but this will be when we have some spare time.
If you would like us to help get readers for your blog, then we can also give you a link from our own blog to try to get other Bear Friends interested. However, if you would rather keep it secret we can block anyone from finding it, including search engines like Google.
Blogging can be fun; we have all found that out over the years we have been running this blog. If you would like to experience it for yourself, just give us a shout and we will help get you started.
Latest On The Update…
Sun 25th Jul 2010
We have been using the Mystique theme for the blog for some time now and felt as if we needed a change. Not because there is anything wrong with Mystique but just because we felt like a challenge. After a great deal of soul-searching we decided instead of using a free theme, we would use some of our pocket money on a professional theme.
After we had stumped up the asking price ($32 from Themeforest), we were disgusted to discover that despite it looking good the functionality of it was crap. We were expecting a professional back-end even better than the free one from Mystique: we were disappointed because it was nowhere near the class of Mystique. In fact, we emailed the author of the new theme to tell him of some of the failings of his theme. He replied saying how good some of the design ideas we had given him were and that he would include them in his next update. We did not even think they were design ideas, we thought they were minimum requirements for any theme let alone a supposedly premier theme.
After spending half of the weekend trying to reprogram it to look something as we wanted it to, we have had to accept defeat. If you would like to look at it, try here http://renaultbears.com. We would be interested in your thoughts.
So we have given up on changing the blog, everything will be back to normal tomorrow.
Hope you have all had a good weekend!
Update…
Thu 22nd Jul 2010
The Bears will be working on upgrading their blog this weekend and so it maybe down for short periods. We hope to keep the down time to a minimum but the changes we are planning are extensive and could take some time to implement. Edward will be working flat out to get the upgraded site up as quickly as possible.
The plan is to make the blog more of a website than a weblog. There will still be a weblog updated daily but this will form just part of the new website. We hope to have a news and facts section as well as all kinds of information for people to browse at will.
We will still decline advertising to keep the blog clean and relevant, even though we have had more offers recently.
Feel free to chat away and leave comments as normal but the blog maybe down for short periods between now and the beginning next week. Be as random as you always are and remember…
Let’s be careful out there!
Latest Bear News…
Mon 12th Jul 2010
This past week has seen a few milestones passed on the Bear Blog. We continue to attract new members and the number of subscribers has now passed 160. This is great news and just goes to show, there must be bugger all on the telly these days! 
The number of posts on the blog has now passed the one thousand mark and the number of comments left by you has passed 20,000. All these figures show that you guys must like the blog because you keep coming back for more. Thanks! 
A little while ago the number of visitors to the blog passed the half million mark (it is currently at 520,000) and we have received a number of requests to accept advertisements. Some of the blogs we visit who do have advertising we feel get too greedy and the reason behind the blog gets lost amongst the adverts. For this very reason, we plan to continue to resist the temptation to make a couple of quid from the blog and carry on for the fun of it.
A few people were asking us yesterday for more information on our Musical Sunday featuring the one and only Tone Loc. Those of you who are into Rap and Hip-Hop said you liked the song but had never heard of him, which we found amazing. Tone Loc, or Anthony Terrell Smith to give him his real name, is an American rapper and actor. He had a couple of his singles back in the 1980s (which is properly why most of you have never heard of him), “Wild Thing” and “Funky Cold Medina” which we have featured previously. Unfortunately, for anyone who enjoys his rapping he has turned exclusively to acting these days where he has starred with such greats as Robert DeNiro and Al Pacino.
Latest Bear News…
Mon 5th Jul 2010
We are pleased to announce that things are back to normal today following our outage yesterday. We would like to apologise to everyone who tried to access the site only to find an advert for alloy wheels. We have forgiven our domain hosts for their mistake after they offered their own apologies for the mistake, which lead to our domain name not being renewed.
We had been planning to have a Musical Sunday yesterday but instead of posting it late when most people would have missed it, we decided to postpone it until next weekend.
The Bears were interested today to hear that a man has been fined £5,000 for “shill bidding” on eBay. This is where someone pretends to be someone else and bids against him or herself to drive the price up. We have often suspected we have been the victim of such practises ourselves but we are pleased to hear that eBay investigates these actions and takes legal proceedings against those found to be practising it. A spokesperson for them today said, “This practice is not only prohibited on eBay as it damages the integrity and fairness of trading on our site, but it is also illegal.”
Speaking of eBay, all is quiet on the new Bear front for now with no Bear auctions on the horizon. Razzi and I did nearly have a crash in Heswall last Friday when we passed a charity shop and thought we saw a Renault Bear in need of rescue. When we returned, however, we found it was not a Renault Bear after all. We will keep on searching.
We hope you are all enjoying the weather and do not forget people, let’s be careful out there!
Disaster Strikes
Sun 4th Jul 2010
Apologies to anyone who has been trying to visit our blog today only to see an advertisement for alloy tyres. We would also like to take back all the nice things we have ever said about our hosts JustHosts.
To cut a long story short, our domain was up for renewal yesterday and after we paid the £9.75 for the year, our host forgot we paid. We have spent today trying to persuade them that we did indeed pay the bill and get them to renew our domain so you can all continue to visit the blog.
Put in its simplest terms… Razzi had to stick 50p in the meter.
Normal service will resume tomorrow!
Latest Blog News…
Thu 3rd Jun 2010
The more observant amongst you may have noticed a new feature on the blog yesterday – the “Grannyism”. Just lately, we have been featuring tiny feats of forgetfulness by The Bears Granny. Because we do not have the space on a daily basis to feature Granny’s latest exploits we thought it would be a great idea to position them throughout the blog in their own little window. Because Granny tends to do crazy things more and more often, we also thought it would stop her from monopolizing the Bear’s Blog.
Just in case you missed Grannyism #1, it is positioned just below yesterday’s post.
It has been suggested that Granny should start her own blog but she refuses and says all the stories of her exploits are lies and exaggerated. However, when we ask her what is not true she does not seem to have an answer and dismisses it all with a shrug. Typical Granny behaviour trying to dismiss the facts!
Keep your eyes open for more Grannyisms as soon as they happen. We will keep you posted!
