Facibus On Blogging

Do you use a blogspot.com, wordpress.com or some other free blog? A lot of people do - and there is no shame in doing so. They are:

• free,
• easy to set up - one click template changing and no worries about where to FTP which files,
• easy to use - just post, no sweat, and
• easy to maintain - Blogger/WordPress does all the hard upgrade work for you.

In other words, you don’t have to be your own pHp/MySQL guru and system administrator before you’ve even started posting. That’s why they are suitable for beginning or casual bloggers - much of the fuss has been removed, and all that is left is the important stuff - getting quality posts out.

Let me reinforce the point that I can see no shame in this whatsoever - if you are content to blog for the rest of your life in this way, more power to you - you are out there doing it, and posting.

For some people, the free blogs aren’t enough. Some of the reasons for looking at an alternative to free blogging are:

• extensibility - if you are mad keen on having exactly the template/theme/layout (call it what you will) that you want, you may need to explore the freedom that a self-hosted blog offers,
• making money - there is a certain amount that you can do in placing Google ads into a blogspot blog, but if you want to pursue other money-making ideas (like third-party ad brokers) then you will need a better setup, and
• notoriety - while not easily separable from making money, having a higher index ranking (such as Google PageRank or Technorati rank) relies heavily on brand reinforcement (in other words, the effort you put into promoting your blog name and associated domain name).

Basically, its all about control of your blogging environment. If you need a lot of control, self host. If you don’t, then you may well be forever happy with the free options.

Over the next little while I’d like to take you through some of the joys and pitfalls of moving from a blogspot-like setup to a self-hosted blog. Topics that need to be covered are:

• defining your needs,
• deciding on a domain name,
• finding the right blogging platform,
• finding a hosting provider and transferring your domain name to them,
• installing the blog software,
• tweaking the blog,
• Migrating content from your old blog, and
• Promoting the changed domain name to keep existing readers (and get new ones).

I’ll get at least one post in this series out every week - they’ll be titled and tagged “Get a real blog” for easy reference. If you want further information at any time, leave me a comment and I’ll work it into the series.

Oh, and the title of the series comes from the George Thorogood song “Get a haircut and get a real job”. Free blogs are real blogs too, I just love that song