Chapter 3
In This Chapter
Choosing a domain name for your blog
Identifying a good web host
Deciding between hosted and nonhosted software
Getting your blog software in place
If you're serious about turning your blog into a visual masterpiece, you're likely to choose a blog software package that you install on your own web server. Hosted solutions are great, but you run up against the limits of customization quite quickly.
In this chapter, you can find information about choosing the right software for your situation. If you pick blog software that you need to install, you also need to purchase a domain name and web hosting platform where you will install your software.
Prepare yourself for strange new technology jargon while you explore what makes blogging exciting, frustrating, confusing, and rewarding — blogging software.
Clearly you are reading this book because you want to start a blog. But before you get too much further, you need to deal with the single most important decision of your blogging career: the name of your blog!
Your blog's name should tie closely into the domain name, or web address, that your visitors use to access your blog. If possible, your blog's name and URL, or domain name, should match exactly so that it's easy for readers to find you. For example, my personal blog is called Resourceful Mommy and the domain name I purchased is www.ResourcefulMommy.com
.
After you have purchased a domain name from a URL registration service, you will likely choose to also pay for web hosting so that your blog software has a place to live on the Internet. Another option is to redirect your domain name to a free blogging service. This option is covered in depth in Chapter 4. In the following sections of this chapter, I walk you through the basic details of a purchased domain name and web hosting service.
As mentioned previously, a domain is the address (or main URL) that people type in their web browsers to get to your website. Think of a blog's domain as functioning much the same as an address of a house. Each house on a street has an individual address. When someone searches for your home address on Google, he or she finds a specific number and street name that defines your home's location. If you search for a website by using a search engine, the website address you find is the domain name or URL.
You can use any available, or not currently used, word or phrase as your domain name. You can make your domain name a company name, a nickname, or your favorite food group. For years, professional web designers and developers have been saying that all the good domains are gone, which is far from the truth. After all, new websites and blogs are launched all the time, and many of them have great, memorable domains!
For an example of a great domain name, check out Melanie Nelson's blog Blogging Basics 101 (www.bloggingbasics101.com
), which provides new and seasoned bloggers with a plethora of blogging resources (see Figure 3-1).
Think up a phrase or sentence that says something about you and your blog as a starting place. Write your topic keywords on sticky notes and then move them around. That trick may lead to something great.
What exactly does a domain do for you? It has several plusses:
Your domain should represent your blog's name and purpose, although at the end of the day, there are no hard and fast rules. Here are a few quick guidelines that you might want to follow. Try to choose a domain that
Registering a domain is a straightforward process. First, use a domain registrar to buy your name. After you own the name, you just need to point your new domain at your web host. This process basically involves telling your domain registrar which web server your website is on; your web hosting company or domain registrar gives you the information and tools to make it all work.
You can use many domain registration services. The choice really comes down to the domain management interface — the tools that you get to manage your domain. Some management screens are incredibly difficult to work with. Finding a host that has a clean and easy-to-use interface makes a world of difference when you're updating or making changes to your web domain. Be sure to shop around, as well. The annual fee for domain registration varies widely, and for the most part, the price differences don't equal a difference in what you get.
You can choose to register for your domain for a single year or for multiple years at a time. Typically, registering for multiple years earns you a small discount. If you choose to register for only a year, you need to renew the domain in a year (assuming that you want to keep your website going). Registration services also allow you to choose an auto-renew option. Many domain registration companies also offer web-hosting and e-mail packages.
Visit any of the domain registrars in the following sections to check whether your domain is available, and then register it.
GoDaddy is a popular web host and domain registrar that provides a long list of web services, including domain hosting, web hosting, and e-mail address hosting. It has a good reputation and is easy to contact if you require assistance. Domain prices vary, but typically start at $12.99 for a year's registration.
To register a domain with GoDaddy, follow these steps:
www.godaddy.com
.GoDaddy returns a page indicating whether your domain is available.
If your domain is unavailable, use the Search for Another Domain text box to try a new name.
Network Solutions is one of the granddaddies of all registrars. At one time, it was one of the few places you could register a domain. Services are varied and flexible, with a variety of available options. Domains are available for as little as $2.99 for one year of registration, making Network Solutions an affordable option.
This domain registrar offers domains starting at the very low price of $3.98 per year and provides customers with a variety of payment options, including PayPal. Namecheap has grown in popularity recently owing to low pricing and good customer service.
Hover promises to simplify the domain registration process for users and is known for its highly accessible customer service team. Domains start at $15 per year.
With a domain in hand, you can turn your attention to web hosting.
If the domain is your address, web hosting is your actual house on the web. Your web host provides an online location for your blog's software, graphics, and other files. This location is known as your blog's web server. When people type your URL into their web brower, the web server provides them with access to your blog.
Your primary concern when selecting a web host for your self-hosted blog is to find a web host that meets all the requirements of your blog software. Most blog software uses a LAMP (Linux/Apache/MySQL/PHP) web server, a mix of several kinds of web server technology that is ideal for running dynamic websites such as blogs:
The preceding four technologies are considered the bare minimum that most blogging packages need to function. But you should consider these requirements, as well:
Running out of disk space is an easily solved problem: Most web hosts allow you to add disk space when you need it for an additional cost. Check with your web host to find out what it charges for additional storage.
After you purchase your domain, you should be able to pick a web host just as easily. But the reality is that web host offerings are all over the map, so you need to do your research, ask for recommendations from friends and colleagues who have websites, and compare the details of what different hosts offer. Remember to also look into the web hosting provided by your domain registration site. This may save you money and will also streamline the management of your blog.
When you find a web host that interests you, check out the packages offered. Many web hosts provide a handy comparison chart that you can use to quickly compare pricing and features, as Nexcess.net (www.nexcess.net
) does in Figure 3-3.
The following sections help you get started with your web-hosting search by discussing three top web-hosting services.
GoDaddy is a popular web host — and domain registrar — that provides a long list of web services. Its smallest web-hosting packages start at around $3.99 a month as of this writing, but this price changes periodically.
For a new blogger just starting out, I recommend the Economy Plan. It includes 100GB of disk space and unlimited bandwidth, in addition to daily backups and 24-hour phone and e-mail technical support. You can receive discounts if you sign up for a year or more at a time. If you anticipate creating more than one site, consider selecting the Deluxe plan, which allows you to host unlimited sites for just a couple dollars more each month.
Doteasy offers a wide range of web-hosting solutions for bloggers, including hosting. Doteasy offers 24-hour e-mail technical support. Blog-friendly web-hosting options start at $1.95 a month — the cost of the Basic Hosting package, which includes 100MB of disk space and 1GB of bandwidth per month. Upgrade to the Unlimited plan for $3.95 a month and get unlimited disk space and bandwidth.
Hostgator is one of the most popular web hosts used by bloggers. Even its smallest plan includes unlimited disk space and bandwidth and begins at $3.96 per month. Hostgator also offers an included web builder, making it easier for new bloggers to get started quickly.
Another web host that is popular with the blogging community, Bluehost plans also offer unlimited resources and site builder software, and they start at just $3.95 a month. Technical support is available via both phone and live chat, and dedicated server upgrades are available should your blog traffic grow to need this feature.
After you've made the decision to host your blog on a self-hosted web platform (alternatives are discussed in Chapter 4), you need to choose the blog software that you'd like to use. Choose wisely, grasshopper, and watch your blog software grow while you add more bells and whistles. Pick poorly, and be faced with the ultimate chore: migrating your blog from one blog software package to a better one. You can do this transfer, but you can't do it easily. Spend the time to find out about the available blogging tools and the functionality they provide now so that you can save yourself a lot of headaches later.
First, you need to recognize that all blogging platforms aren't created equal. Of course, blogging software packages, whether they're managed by you or by paid web-hosting technical staff, all share the same or similar functionality that you need for a typical blog. But each software package was designed with very different goals in mind.
Unlike software that you install on a desktop or laptop computer, blogging software requires a server environment to function. This server is provided by the web host you selected earlier in the chapter.
Bloggers can use either of two kinds of blogging platforms:
You don't need to think about how the software is managed, just as long as it's there the next time you want to post something. Many bloggers consider this setup the deal of the century. One popular hosted solution is Blogger (www.blogger.com
), which I discuss in detail in Chapter 4.
Extra bonus: If you choose hosted software, you don't have to worry about web hosting — the software company is providing that service for you! See the section “Understanding Hosted Blog Software,” later in this chapter, for a more in-depth discussion of this option.
But beware! The content on hosted blogs is technically owned by the hosting site and not by the blog author . . . you. If content ownership is more important to you than ease of use, hosted blogs are not the right option for you.
Social networks allow you to connect with current friends and make new ones while sharing photos, videos, and text. They've exploded in popularity in the last few years, and many of them have added a blogging tool. I cover how blogging fits into social networking in Chapter 18.
www.seriouseats.com
), a blog that covers food news from all over the blogosphere, uses Movable Type, a blogging solution that you install on your own server.Although hosting your blog through your own web host is a bit more difficult than creating a blog on a hosted platform, available blog software (that is often free!) can make the process nearly as easy to manage. If you love a challenge or want all the bells and whistles, consider hosting your blog yourself. Later in this chapter, the section “Understanding Blog Software That You Install on Your Own Server” explains the details of how non-hosted blog software works.
Many of the hosted services available to bloggers offer a basic blogging package at no cost. A great number of the non-hosted blogging software packages are also free, but the web server that you need to install them on most definitely isn't. How much money you can commit to your new blog can help you figure out what platform you should acquire.
Most blogging packages include a variety of options. Some options are designed to trick out your ride, making your blog into a thing of beauty and delight. Some options are really less optional by definition and more a necessity. Good blogging software must have the following five features:
I highly recommend two other features, although not all bloggers use them:
www.amysfinerthings.com
) uses categories, called topics here, to sort blog posts; Figure 3-4 shows the categories in the horizontal navigation bar above the blog posts.Categories are high-level organizational tools. For example, a food blog might have posts sorted into categories like Vegetarian, Dessert, Main Dish, and so on.
Tags are like keywords that you might use when doing a search on a search engine website, and they tend to be more specific than categories. A blog post on a food blog might use categories as I describe in the preceding bullet, and then tag individual posts with more specific terms, such as chocolate, hazelnut, and brownie. To differentiate between categories and tags, think of categories as describing a group of blog posts, and tags as describing individual posts.
You can implement a number of cool toys on your blog:
Trackbacks can also be a source of spam, and as a result, they're not as important in the blogosphere as they used to be. So although they're nice to have, if the blog software package that you want to use doesn't offer trackbacks, don't automatically eliminate that software from consideration.
http://chocolateandzucchini.com
) uses one form of a CAPTCHA, as shown in Figure 3-5.Hosted services take a whole lot of responsibility off the blogger. The blog software company manages the data, software, and web hosting; the blogger manages the content. Some services, such as Blogger, do it all for free, whereas other services, such as TypePad, charge a monthly fee to run your blog. Yet other services, such as WordPress, offer a level of free service with the option to upgrade when your blogging requires a little more power. Hosted blog software allows you to make someone responsible for the entire gauntlet of technical tasks that don't excite you.
An upfront cost of zero is very attractive to new bloggers. If you want access to blog technology and have a limited budget, free looks just about perfect. Not all hosted software is free, but most of them generally have quite reasonable costs. A hosted blog that charges a monthly fee is still a minimal investment, on par with other inexpensive hobbies.
But free or inexpensive isn't the only upside to hosted blog services. They really take the complication out of starting a blog. For the technophobe, a hosted solution is ideal because you have very few technical issues to worry about. Hosted services take care of
Hosted solutions are also generally quicker to set up than is software you have to install on your own server, so you can start blogging sooner when you choose one of these solutions. Plus, should you choose to migrate your blog to a self-hosted server in the future, free software is available to make this process possible.
Updates on hosted blogs are generally free, and the software is available to the end user 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. Sounds like a really good deal, huh?
Before you sign yourself up, be sure you understand the tradeoffs that come with using a hosted blog service. Ultimately, you don't control your own blog. If the company goes out of business, takes servers down for maintenance, or decides to change its offerings, you're pretty much stuck with the results.
A free hosted solution, for example, might suddenly decide that it should start charging; one that already charges can always raise its rates.
Most hosted solutions let users make some modifications and tweaks, but you can install only a limited selection of plug-ins and extras. In many cases, the level of customization is quite limited. With hosted blog software, that ubiquitous WYSIWYG (what you see is what you get) acronym is a double-edged sword: You can't actually do more with less.
Make sure to read all the fine print for the host that you want to use! You don't want to run into legal restrictions that mean you can't actually use your blog the way you want to, and you definitely don't want to suddenly find your blog missing if the hosted software company decides you're in violation of its rules.
In the following sections, you can take a look at some of the most popular hosted platforms to see which might be the best fit for you and your new blog. These blogging software packages have been around for quite a while and are regarded as some of the best that the blogging community has to offer.
Blogger is the quintessential hosted blogging platform. Started in 1999 at Pyra Labs, Blogger weathered the rough Internet waters at the turn of the century to become the most well-known hosted blogging platform. The Blogger service became incredibly popular, and eventually, Google purchased it. Since then, Blogger has introduced many new features and remained one of the premier blogging platforms. Blogger has many features that allow bloggers to publish multiple blogs:
In 2005, the popular WordPress blogging platform launched a hosted service, in addition to software that you can install on your own server. WordPress.com, shown in Figure 3-6, offers a clean, easy-to-use interface, and bloggers tend to see it as more flexible than anything else on the market. Now that WordPress.com has added new functionality and additional themes, you can set it up very quickly.
In short, WordPress.com
TypePad was launched in 2003 to great fanfare. It allows you to do more than just blog; it was one of the first blogging platforms to offer the capability to create static content pages. TypePad pricing starts at $8.95 a month and ranges upward, depending on the services that you include. TypePad also offers a 14-day free trial for new users.
TypePad offers
Tumblr, which was purchased by Yahoo! in 2013, is a fun and really easy-to-use hosted blogging service — and it's free. Tumblr blogs are a little different from other major blogging platforms in that it is really easy to re-post material from another Tumblr blog to your own blog, so sharing is a big part of the Tumblr experience.
Tumblr offers:
If technology freaks you out, you can make life easier by using hosted solutions, but bloggers who require more flexibility than hosted solutions offer may choose non-hosted blogging packages. Configuring software to your own tastes and requirements can really improve the overall quality of your blog, making it more attractive to readers and ultimately more successful.
Choosing a non-hosted blog isn't a plug-and-play solution. Unfortunately, choosing to install blog software, rather than to use a hosted service, means that you need a whole bunch of other technical services to make it all work.
If you use non-hosted blog software, you're in full control. You can do just about anything to the software after you install it:
The first stumbling block you discover when installing your own blogging software is . . . installing your own blogging software. Somehow, you have to get the software files onto your server, run the scripts, modify the code, and generally muck about in the ugly innards of the software. This process can either be simple or a complete nightmare, depending on your technical savvy and the complexity of the blog software package that you choose.
Of course, all software requires some level of maintenance, and most web hosts don't handle software upgrades and tweaks. Be prepared to handle those requirements when they come up by doing them yourself or finding an expert who can handle them for you.
Using non-hosted software has some other downsides as well:
If you're ready to make the leap into the deep end of the blogging pool, the following sections give you recommendations for a range of well-respected non-hosted blogging tools.
Since 2003, WordPress has provided a solid platform for new and experienced bloggers who want the control of installing blog software on their own computers. Many bloggers say that WordPress is the easiest blogging platform (aside from hosted blogging software) to set up and configure. I cover installing and using WordPress in Chapter 5.
Here are some of the highlights:
Movable Type is the grandfather of all installable blogging platforms. Released in 2001, it quickly became one of the most popular blogging software packages, for geeks and pundits alike. Movable Type was the first blogging software that permitted contributions by multiple authors, and bloggers highly regard it for the many ways that you can leverage it to create easily updateable websites and blogs.
If you're serious about looking at hosting your own installation, Moveable Type is a strong contender. Movable Type offers
Pricing varies, but the basic commercial installation is $595, and you may qualify to use the free Blogger license if you are an individual blogger and not setting up a blog for an organization or business.
Back in 2001, a company called pMachine released a blogging software package called pMachine Pro. pMachine Pro quietly hatched a following based on clean interface, solid performance, and flexibility in both design and layout. From that success, pMachine built the content management system and blogging software ExpressionEngine, an exceptionally powerful platform.
Today, pMachine (now known as EllisLab) supports all kinds of sites by using ExpressionEngine, which it offers in both commercial and personal flavors. As is Movable Type, ExpressionEngine is highly regarded by web developers because it offers great blogging tools, but it's flexible enough to be used to develop all kinds of websites — not just blogs.
ExpressionEngine users have
ExpressionEngine's commercial license runs you $299.95, the nonprofit/personal version is $149.95, and there is a Freelancer license for smaller-presence websites for $99.95.
After you purchase your domain and web hosting, you can get into the nitty-gritty technical task: installing your blog software. To get started, look for installation instructions on your blog software company's website. Each blogging package has a set of instructions for doing the job yourself and details about hiring company technical support to do the job for you.
Unfortunately, the steps that you need to take to install a particular blog application vary dramatically from software to software, so I can't give you detailed step-by-step directions. Each blog software package has its own particular requirements for installation, but the general process follows these steps:
To make your installation experience as trouble-free as possible, watch out for the following common problems:
Sound like gibberish? The truth is that almost anyone can use blogging software, but only quite technically advanced computer users can install it themselves. If you're a web designer or developer, you may be able to install the software yourself. If you aren't technical but want to be, this project gives you the chance to really get your hands dirty.
However, if tech stuff makes you cringe, you can investigate having someone else install the software. My main advice is to find a professional, which you can find among the following: