Need to Know Blog

Written on January 6, 2008 – 5:12 pm | by peconi | (No Ratings Yet)
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In the last article I wrote about What’s a blog and how to start one.

Now the question is which way to go, a blog hosted by the blog makers themselves, or hosted by you - on your own server either shared or dedicated.

This is a tricky question. The easiest solution would be to simply go ahead and sign up for (mostly free) on-line blog. Blogger, WordPress, MSN Spaces all offer free hosted solutions. This comes in very handy for a number of reasons:

1. You pay nothing. It’s completely FREE!
2. Setup is a breeze, you will be done in 5 minutes or less.
3. When your blog starts to gain traction you will not have to worry if the server will crash from all those visits from Digg; you will be most likely on-line and unaffected.

There is one problem with this choice:

1. You will not have much control over how your blog looks like. While many offer a bunch of themes, there may be no way to upload your own designs or upload your own plugins.

If you choose to host your own blog, being it on your home server (not recommended), or on a shared or dedicated server from some web hosting provider, you will gain:

1. Ability to fully customize your blog
2. Chance to install any and all plugins you desire
3. Your own domain name for your blog (quite important for some people)
4. Ability to have multiple web blogs as well as other web services (a fully featured web site for example, web forum, photo album, etc.)

Furthermore, with custom hosting, you have to be prepared for:

1. A hassle of configuring the databases, file permissions, etc. for the blog (if your hosting provider does not offer "one-click" installation option) [DreamHost, my PeconiHosting, etc. do offer 1 click installations]
2. A hassle of keeping your blog up-to-date by upgrading to the new software version when it comes out
3. A set amount of bandwidth your blog can utilize each month (which can be a problem at a later time)
4. Another bill you have to pay: Web hosting bill.

As you can see, there are pro’s and con’s on each solution. The choice also depends a lot on the platform you choose. Some do not even offer both solutions so you will be pretty much stuck.

Personally, I prefer hosting my blogs on my own server since I have a complete control over it. I can make changes, test different things, upload themes, plugins, media, etc. It gives me more freedom - and I’m all about that.

If you are satisfied with what the blogging platform of your choice offers though the free on-line based services - then you should go ahead and sign up for that. You will be running in no time and have time to concentrate on what matters - blogging - not configuration.

I know that this post does not give you a definite answer to the question, but I sincerely hope it shines some light on what you can expect in either situation.

You might also be interested in reading:

• A previous post about blogging
• Paul Stamatio’s post about similar topic: http://paulstamatiou.com/2006/05/14/how-to-start-blogging/

P.S. Paul’s blog is also powered by WordPress

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