When deciding on your blogging platform it is very important to carefully research and consider the pro's and con's of having a self hosted blog or one of the many free blogs available on the net such as - wordpress and blogger.
I always recommend going with a self hosted blog, if you don't now most likely you will want to have one later on and it will be a real pain in the rear to switch things over. All of your promotion, current readers, traffic, paid advertisement, incoming links etc are things to consider.
Let me start with some pros and cons of each.
Self hosted pros:
Complete control over the design/look/theme of your blog. More options available when it comes to monetizing your blog (more on this later) Blog would be on your own domain Ability to install different plug-ins and add tools etc More professional
Self hosted cons:
More expensive - Need to purchase domain, hosting etc. Need to install your own blog - It's not as complicated as it sounds though. There are plenty of good tutorials online that will walk you through the set up which took me less then 10 minutes the first time.
Overall with the self hosted you will have many more options and flexibility in the long run
Many of the "free blogging platforms" do not allow as much customizing for design or scripts etc.
FREE blog pro's:
FREE! Easy to set up Can generally be up and running within a few minutes. No cost for a domain (although you can have one with domain forwarding)
FREE blog cons:
Less customizing, not on your own domain, so your blog would look like noboss.wordpress.com
Limited on monetizing and paid to blog opportunities. Many of the paid to blog sites require that you have your own self hosted blog. And when using adsense and similar programs you need to install code. With the FREE blogging platforms they generally do not allow for you to customize scripts and codes.
So in the long run it all comes down to business. If you are 110% serious about blogging and you are going to be treating this as a business, then self hosted would be the way to go. Naturally you would want more control and the ability to customize you blog, change your theme etc. If you are just a "hobby" blogger then a free blog may be the way to go!
To get started with your self hosted blog follow these steps.
Register a domain at godaddy.com
Download wordpress at wordpress.org
Find a host for your blog, you can do a Google search or easier yet go to Kobweb.net Kobweb already has the required version of MYSQL so you would be good to go!
Wordpress.org has installation instructions to keep it simple!
To get started with a free blog go to wordpress.com or blogger.com and sign up for a free account and follow the on screen instructions.
Happy blogging!
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