BECOME A BLOGGER: FREE BLOG SITES VERSUS SELF HOSTED

ByGnomeAngel

Time to start!

Now you’ve had a bit of a think about your name and how you’re going to host your new blog it’s time to get started on creating it.

I’ve collated some great links on how to start your Blogger based blog here:

I’ve collated some great links on how to start your WordPress.org based blog here:

  • The Blog Builders – Blog Set Up – Video Tutorial or Screenshot Tutorial (Be warned, this tutorial is based on setting up your blog via BlueHost (a hosting service provider) so if you want to go with another provider you may need to use another tutorial – although the principals are the same.)
  • About Technology – 10 Steps to Start a Blog with WordPress.org – this is a great list as it goes through from registering a domain to formatting your look and feel of the blog to writing content.
  • Michael Hyatt – How to Launch a Self-Hosted WordPress Blog in 20 Minutes or Less – another great one as it’s both video and written. It is however also aligned to BlueHost so it may be a little different if you’re using a different provider.

I know that when you compare the two that starting on a free hosting site seems like the easier option, and it is (sort of), but trust me if you do a little bit of work to get your self hosted blog set up you’ll feel like you conquered Mount Everest – all you have to do is follow the steps and if you get stuck contact your host provider and ask them for help. In my experience they’re always really helpful and want you to have the best experience possible.

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10 Comments

  3. Feedly only showed the first page of this post, so I was all set to tell you the story of when I had to introduce myself to about 30 people as ‘warthog’ after an ill advised name choice. But then I discovered the rest of your post… And it was great.

    1. Yes, sorry about that – for some reason the page aggregation doesn’t work as a feed. Works on bloglovin’ but everything else is cactus. Trying to find a fix for it. (It’s on my to-do list.) Will need you to elaborate on the “warthog” incident please. 🙂

    1. Hello! Thanks for the link – have been over and checked it out and added you to my bloglovin’ feed so I can keep up with all your amazingness.

  5. having had a read of this you’ve half convinced me I need to move to self hosted and use wordpress but I don’t want to lose all my work and stats so I don’t know if it’s worth it. hmmm

    1. Hello! You can import really simply from blogger to wordpress once you’ve made the move. Not all your formatting may come across, and some images may not be transferred, but the content will come across. If you’re using google analytics (and if you’re not you should be 🙂 ) you won’t loose your stats – you just put the same code you have on your blogger blog into your wordpress blog. The brilliant thing about wordpress is there’s millions of tutorials (and video tutorials at that) available that can help you with almost anything and when that fails there’s a tonne of groups/forums that can help too. Not to mention if you put a call out on twitter for help heaps of people will volunteer advice and fixes. The internet is a most wonderful place for helping. 🙂

  6. Angie that was great,real lesson about blogging. Just few days ago I swapt from Blogger to WordPress. So much easier than Blogger. Or maybe I was problem,what ever I tried to do it didn’t work…hm. Then I read and compere blogs and decided to switch to WordPress. It is few days now that I’m using new blog and still have things to organise but I’m happy.
    Thanks Angie:)

    1. Hi Zehrina – I’m so glad there was useful information in this post for you. I hope you love using wordpress as much as I do, it’s so great being able to customise and tweak. I loose hours playing with the site. Let me know if you need any help with anything, happy to help where I can. 🙂

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