There are many differences between having a blog/site on a free blog service and having it self-hosted – the best and easiest platform for a self-hosted blog is WordPress.  I’m going to explain the basic differences between the two and what you need in order to self-host your blog/site.

 

Free Blog
Free blog services create a blog for you that lives on their website/server – basically they give you a bit of their real estate to have your own little area where you can happily blog away.

 

Free blog services include places like:
blogspot.com
blogger.com
wordpress.com
(not to be mistaken for wordpress.org which we’ll get into in a little more detail below)
myblogsite.com
livejournal.com

 

The Good: It’s free – and we ALL love free and they are easy to use.

 

The Bad: They can’t be customized.
For example: Most sites created on free blog services don’t have a RSS feed (a way to subscribe) or a way to sign up for updates via email – how are you supposed to keep in touch with the people that want to!  Honestly, if a blog doesn’t have a way that your readers can receive updates why bother writing posts? No one’s going to know when you add some awesome and interesting content even if they wanted to.

 

There aren’t as many options for having a sign up option for a newsletter/free report, a button for a product or promotion, or some other tidbit that you want in a prominent position on your blog/site.

 

Exactly how many blogs on that same free blog service have the same theme/template as your blog – we don’t want to look just like everyone else!

 

The Ugly: The traffic and visitors that come and read your awesome blog posts don’t belong to you, it’s theirs… and that’s just not good business!

 

They have hard to remember domain names – it’s long and convoluted because they have to fit your blog name and theirs – too much!

 

WordPress

 

WordPress is a very powerful and popular blogging platform.  It’s popular because it’s easy to use and the blog platform script itself is free. The charges associated with having a self-hosted blog/site are minimal.

 

Minimal Costs = Credibility for you and/or your business

So while you don’t pay for WordPress (the blog application) you do pay for two things in order to self-host your WordPress blog/site:

 

1. Your domain name or website address ($8 and up – per year)
Buy a domain name – instead of having a domain name of http://www.ReallyCoolStuff.myblogsite.com you can have a domain name like http://www.ReallyCoolStuff.com and THEN (within your website hosting, my next point) you can have an email address of admin@ReallyCoolStuff.com – how’s that for credibility?!  Honestly, I don’t know many people that take a free site too seriously when their main site is hosted with a free service and you can tell just by the domain name if it’s a free service based blog/site or a self-hosted one.  People want to take you seriously – help them do that by investing in a domain name.

 

Domain names cost anywhere from $8 and up (per year) depending on your website address (i.e., .ca domains are more expensive then .com ones).  A really reputable place to purchase a domain name, I recommend (and receive no monetary compensation for mentioning):

 

http://www.domainsite.com

 

There are tons of other places to purchase domain names, ask around, you’ll get some great recommendations. Owning your own domain name is just that… you own the web address.  Now you need a place to PUT your site…

 

2. Website Hosting ($5 and up – per month)
It’s a place to host the files that create your website.  You know how the files on your computer take up space on your hard drive?  Well your website is basically made up of a bunch of files so we need a public place to put those so that it shows up on the world wide web.  Website hosting companies give you a little spot on their server and you manage your site via a link and login that your web host provides once your account is set up.  This is where you set up your email addresses and manage the files for your website.

 

Website hosting costs anywhere from $5 a month and up (per month).

 

I provide hosting at less than $5 a month – I’m a reseller and affiliate of HostGator – of you can get hosting directly from them (through my affiliate link).

 

Once you have a domain name and website hosting – you’re on your way to having a self-hosted WordPress blog/site.

 

After you’ve secured both a domain name and hosting you have two options:

 

1. Install WordPress yourself – if you’re not afraid of techy stuff and can follow step by step instructions you can download and get instructions on how to install WordPress by visiting http://www.wordpress.org – keeping in mind that you’ll then have to learn how to install themes/templates and plugins.  If you can master installing WordPress then installing themes/templates and plugins will be a piece of cake!

 

2. Find someone that can install WordPress for you – there are a ton of people that do this type of service, including me – contact me for more information.

 

You also might want to customize your theme/template. In order to fully customize your header, sidebar, footer and the site’s look and feel you’ll need to know what you’re doing as it involves some scripting (html, php, etc.) and some image editing. This is an initial set up type thing… you only do it once so it might be best to hire someone to make over your theme.