Remote Blog or Self Hosted Blog?

So you’ve decided to blog, but aren’t sure whether you should
host the blog yourself or sign up for a free service like
blogger.com. It’s a dilemma that many bloggers face. There are
pros and cons to both, which makes the decision difficult for
many. Neither is perfect, and neither is for everyone.
Fortunately, you should be able to make the best decision for
you if you are armed with adequate knowledge of both. In this
newsletter, we’ll go over services like blogger.com and others,
plus software that allows you to host your own blog. We’ll also
go over the pros and cons of each. After reading this, you will
know which is best for you.

Who offers free blog hosting?

Many sites offer free blog hosting. Among them are Forumer,
Blogger, BlogEasy, Aeonity, BlogThing and Blogates. A quick
search for “free blog” on Google reveals many possibilities.

What software can I use to host my own blog?

Like free blog hosting, there are many possibilities for
software that makes hosting your own blog easy. Most of them are
free to use. These include:

WordPress(the most popular software)
Apache Roller
Blosxom
Geeklog
Textpattern
LifeType

There is also blog software which you can purchase for use on
your site. These include:

Community Server
Movable Type
Radio UserLand

One negative about using software and hosting your own blog is
that the process can often times be complicated. You have to
download the software and install it to your server, which
doesn’t always go easily. It’s particularly hard for those who
don’t have a lot of experience installing things on servers.

Why should I remotely host my blog at a place like Blogger?

Places like Blogger allow you to host your blog there. It’s a
good option for many people.

The Pros

• It’s easy to set up and maintain a blog. You don’t have to go
through the trouble of installing software and configuring it to
work on your server. All you have to do is sign up for an
account and start posting.
• It’s friendly for beginning bloggers. Sites that host blogs
offer good tutorials on how to make your blog postings, so that
even someone who is completely new to the concept of blogging
can do it easily.
• Most blog hosting sites are completely free to use. There is
no need to pay for things like a domain name and hosting.
• Monetizing your blog is easy. Rather than having to manually
put HTML/Javascript codes on your blog to manually set up things
like AdSense and Pay Per Click advertising, you can select an
option on most blog hosting sites that does much of the work for
you.

The Cons

• You don’t have as many options to customize your blog.
Remotely hosted blogs are admittedly somewhat limited in terms
of what you can actually do on them. You have to stick with what
is provided to you in terms of look and features.
• The URL you get is always yourname.BLOGSITE.com. You don’t get
to have a custom domain name like YOURNAME.com. This can
possibly hurt traffic to your blog.
• Blogs hosted on free blog sites don’t look as professional as
self hosted blogs.

Why should I self-host my blog?

The Pros

• You have more options and more flexibility. You are able to
tweak the blog to your liking.
• Your URL is your address for your blog. Rather than having go
to where your blog is hosted to read it, they can read it right
from your site.
• The ability to make your blog look professional. Blogs that
are hosted on sites of their own tend to look a lot better than
those hosted on free sites.
• More space for your blog. Free blog sites usually place a
restriction on how much space you have for things like photos
and music. By hosting your own blog, you are able to use as much
space as you need.
The Cons

• There are sometimes problems with setting up blog software to
run on your site and server. If you aren’t experienced when it
comes to working with mySQL, the process will be hard.
• Updates aren’t as easy to post.
• You have to manually set up programs to monetize your blog.
However, if you are good with HTML/Javascript, this shouldn’t be
too hard.
• You have to pay for your own hosting and domain

As you can see, there are pros and cons to both. Which should
you choose? Well, it depends on who you are and what you intend
to use your blog for. If you intend to use it for business, then
a self-hosted blog is the best idea. If it’s a personal blog,
then a free hosted blog will probably be fine for you.

Closely examine all of the pros and cons mentioned above.
That way, you’ll be able to make the best decision for you!

Len Hutton