Starting a Web Blog

Starting and maintaining a blog is probably one of the simplest solutions available to building your own web site. Blogs are used for all kinds of reasons — from maintaining a daily diary to full blown business ventures. The success of blogging is due mainly to its ease of installation and content maintenance, providing built-in tools writing content, creating RSS feeds, pinging, soliciting user feedback and comments, just to name a few. The success of blogging is typically based on a passion for the subject matter, leading to frequent updates, which, in turn, helps build credibility. Credibility is an essential ingredient for a successful blog.

To get started with blogging software you'll have to decide if you want to use free blogging software that is already hosted or install your own blogging software. Here are some of the issues with both approaches:

FREE Blogging Software - There are services available where you can simply signup for a blog. When you signup you are assigned a URL where you can sign in to manage your blog. This is a great approach for someone who simply wants to test the waters without incurring expenses.

Unfortunately, free blogging platforms do not allow you to assign your own domain name. You can, however, choose a sub-domain such as myblog.blogspot.com. Also, you have no control over the software or servers on which the blogging software is hosted. If you decide to move your blog to your own domain later, you could lose some, if not all, of your readers as well as all of your earlier posts.

Some possibilities for FREE blogging are WordPress, Blogger, and Yahoo. Simply create a new account, follow the online directions, and you can have your own blog running within minutes.

Host Your Own Blog - Another, more viable, option is to purchase a cheap hosting plan on which you can install WordPress or some other blogging software. A cheap hosting plan will cost you around $35 a year. With the site management tools you get with your hosting account, its a snap to install WordPress on your own domain name. The benefits of having your own domain name is more than worth the cost of a cheap hosting account. Additional costs will include domain registration, which will typically cost you around $9-$22 per year depending on the registrar you choose.

Just need WordPress? Choose our WordPress Hosting Plan. You get a hosting account with Wordpress already installed. All you need to do is sign-in and you can be blogging within a few hours.