Blog Hosting Options

 Many first time bloggers choose to host their blog on a free blog service like blogger.com, but that is not the only option available and probably not the best.

There are three options main blog hosting options available:

• Hosted Service with Subdomain
• Hosted service with own domain
• Own domain and hosting

Hosted Service with Subdomain

This is the most common option and the easiest to implement and usually completely free. It is the service offered by blogger.com and using this as an example. Your blog name is a subdomain of blogger.com meaning it will look like this:

yourblog.blogger.com

and your blog pages are located on the blogger.com servers.

There are many blogging services of this type some free (blogger.com and wordpress.com) and some carry a small charge (Typepad).

Hosted Service with own Domain

This is the one I use with blogger.com. Blogger.com gives you the option of storing your blog on their servers or transferring it to your own server. To use this option you need both an existing domain name and a web hosting provider.

I use this website and publish the blog in a subdirectory. I own the domain and host and so if blogger.com stops tomorrow I still have my blog but I would need to find a new way of managing it.

The second alternative is to host the blog on the blogging service but use your own domain name. This means that you must purchase a domain name and then point the domain name at the blog.

This option is offered by Typepad and Dave Taylor has a good article that shows you how to re-direct the domain name.

Own Domain and Hosting

 To implement this option you need to purchase a domain name,  hosting package and blogging software.

You can get free blogging software. Wordpress being the favourite and used by many of the top bloggers and it is the one I would recommend you use.

 However if you do, I would also recommend you choose a hosting provider that offers Wordpress blog as an option, as it is already installed and you will only need to activate it. (like BlueHost and 1and1 UK)

If you already have a host but it doesn't support Wordpress by default then you will need to:

• Check that your hosting package supports MYSQL and PHP

• Download the Wordpress software and upload it to your host, and install it. This can be a nightmare or really easy it just depends on the host and the MYSQL/PHP combination they use. See installing Wordpress on Windows as a guide

Web www.build-your-website.co.uk

Resources:

• Incorporating a Blog Into an Existing Website
• Starting a Blog