Self Hosted WordPress Blog vs Free Blogging Sites
This is part 1 of my WordPress & Blogging series. In this post i will share with you the basic concept of blogging & also explain in brief to frequently asked questions that i receive in emails, on twitter & via comments such as:
- What is a blog?
- What is a self hosted blog?
- What is WordPress?
- What are the advantages of Self hosted wordpress blog vs free blogging sites?
- How can i get a self hosted blog? How can i get started blogging?
So without further ado, here it goes.
What is a blog and who is it for?
In a few words, a blog is a website. However unlike traditional forms of coding & languages used on static websites such as HTML a blog is more dynamic & can be a combination of different coding languages. Even after that HTML is everywhere inside the codes of the blog, in most cases alongside PHP & JAVA. So if you know a little bit of HTML then you can pretty much modify your blog easily.
In more detail a blog is your gateway to express yourself. It a dynamic website that can be easily updated, manages & configured. Blogs or as they are traditionally known as web logs are for everyone. Yes i mean everyone, be it corporates or small business, full time blogger or a work at home mom. In the current scenario many people from around the world are using blogs, for almost any purpose you can imagine, be it a fan site for a celebrity, a personal diary, a way to earn a living, a log for development activities or a simple way to update the world about your life. If you want to share something, write something or make money online then blogging is for you.
What is a Self Hosted blog?
Now that you know what a blog is, its time to understand the difference between a self hosted blog versus a blogging service. You might have noticed many online services that help you create your blogs easily, some of the well known services are live journal, blogger.com, wordpress.com, type pad, etc. All these sites allow you to create a blog without going through the hassles involved in installing blogs, plugins, modifying the blog, getting web hosting, domains etc. Basically they provide you free blogs on their own site. But like everything else that is free, free blogs have their limitations. One of the biggest disadvantage of the using these services is that the blog you are running, is actually ‘NOT’ yours. I will explain this more in detail later.
On the other hand there are self hosted blogs, which are complete stand alone websites [blogs] that does not depend on any sort of 3rd party services whatsoever. Yes, self hosted blogs do need a backbone and that backbone is the platform they use. A self hosted blog platform is nothing but a blogging CMS (Content Management System). Examples of these systems include wordpress.org (notice it’s not the same as wordpress.com), type pad, b2 evolution, movable type, joomla, durpal, nucleus etc. In a few words, these platforms let you control your blog in any way you want. And if you think having a blogger.com blog with a .com domain name, then please let me tell you that your blog is still not a self hosted blog.
What that means is that you need to ‘host’ the website (blog) on your own server, with your own domain name using a blogging platform, CMS, Script whatever you wish to call it. That is what a self hosted blog actually means. Because your blog is not ‘hosted’ by a 3rd party like blogger.
What is WordPress?
By now you would have already got an idea about what wordpress really is. But in order to avoid any confusion i would like you to note that the wordpress platform ( wordpress.org) is actually the same platform which is used on wordpress.com, it is a self hosted version of wordpress, just like blogger. Now lets get back to wordpress CMS. WordPress blogging platform is first of all Free, it is the single most platform in the world that has a dedicated team which is continuously updating it & providing new features, along with hundreds of other individual developers that provide plugins, add on’s, themes, etc.
WordPress is advance in every sense & is feature filled. In fact self hosted wordpress have a huge advantage in terms of SEO and that is a tested & proved fact. On the other hand wordpress.com is just like blogger (or blogspot) which is yet another free blogging site. Now that you know what wordpress is, lets get to the part you’ve been waiting for.
Advantages & Disadvantages of Self Hosted WordPress blog vs Free Blogging Sites:
15+ Advantages of having a self hosted wordpress blog:
There are many advantages of having a self hosted blog rather then a 3rd party hosted blog. Here are the advantages of having a self hosted wordpress blog. (Note: These are also the disadvantages of not having a self hosted blog or using free blogging sites)
- Quality Content: Having a self hosted blog means self hosted content. Your content have a better chance of being indexed & starting a self hosted blog shows your seriousness about the topic you are blogging for. This would be seen as a quality content blog by the search engines.
- Advanced Communication: Self Hosted Blogs gives you the advantage to explore opportunities when it comes to communicating with your prospective clients or visitors. You can have your own email IDs admin@yourdomain.com which also builds trust and shows professionalism. This however would not be possible in free blog unless of course you were using a domain and email forwarders. You can also add modules that allows you to organize events, contests, engaging content for your visitors, etc. This again is not so possible with free blogging sites.
- RSS Feeds: Self Hosted wordpress gives you an upper hands when it comes to content syndication with its built in RSS & ATOM features. Not all free blogging sites provide RSS features as extensive as wordpress. Self hosted blogs gives you the ability to provide email & RSS subscriptions as well as pull in your RSS feeds to your social sites such as twitter, linkdin, facebook, etc.
- Total Control: With self hosted blogs you are in complete control, in contrast to free blogging platforms this could be a huge advantage if you are an avid blogger. You get total control as its your web hosting, your domain & your platform (since you are the admin). You also don’t have to worry about bandwidth limitations, hosting space, etc. Imagine if you were using free blogging sites and had built a complete blog with active visitors & lots of content & one day all of a sudden you realize your blog was shut down, closed, deleted. No matter what was the reason, you take this risk when you opt for free blogging sites.
- Ease of Use: WordPress blogging platform is as easy as it gets. The navigation of wordpress dashboard is extremely user friendly & with so many resources available online regarding wordpress & everything related to wordpress you can easily get used to a self hosted wordpress blog. Well the most important part is, you don’t need any coding experience in order to update, modify or improve your blog. This might not be the case when it comes to free blogging platforms.
- Community: Getting yourself a self hosted wordpress blog also means that you are joining a very large wordpress community. Even if you were to say free blogging sites also have communities, i would say their community is limited to the ‘site itself’, for example wordpress.com community is limited to wordpress.com since all the blogs are on that one single domain. But if you are using wordpress self hosted platform you a bigger community & that means more ways to grow your network & build reputation.
- Clean Coding: WordPress & many other self hosted blog platforms are developed by professional developers and have valid & verified coding. This means that what ever site you run using these platforms you will always be on the safe side because you will never have a coding problem, you are also free to edit the codes to modify & suit your needs. This again is not the case when it comes to free blogging platforms.
- Promotion & social media: You can easily promote a self hosted blog since its a separate web identity. You can add sharing tools, plugins and easily promote to twitter, facebook, digg, etc. Being independent is always better when it comes to credibility, branding & of course making money.
- User Friendly Interface: Self hosted wordpress sites can easily be customized, giving you the option to make your site as user or visitor friendly as possible, without all the cluttering or bad navigation. In fact the recent wordpress updates gives you the ability to add new navigation menus easily without depending on your theme for it.
- Plugins: WordPress has a huge collection of plugins contributed by the wordpress community developers. Most plugins are free & you can find a plugin for adding almost any functionality to your blog. There are also some paid or premium plugins that offer certain features but they are usually not listed on the wordpress plugin database.
- Endless supply of Themes & Design Options: Design of a blog is very important and could give you the edge over other bloggers. Modifying designs of a blog or finding free themes for free blogging services can be hard, if not impossible. WordPress has a themes database where you can find free themes. There are also many individual theme developers providing paid themes, some of which are really elegant & amazing. Self Hosted WordPress also provides you the ability to change or Edit the CSS of the blog or almost anything you can imagine. You can also find some free premium wordpress themes.
- Affordable:Self hosted blogs are free, but you still have to pay for domain names, web hosting, premium themes & plugins, etc. However self hosted blogs are always preferred over free blogging platforms due to the branding & professional factor. And to be honest wordpress hosted blogs are affordable to a small business or even to a stay at home mom because the hosting & domain charges are minimal compared to the advantages you get.
- Secure & Easy to fix: If you ever encounter problems with a free blog then your blog is as close as dead, however with wordpress hosted blogs you have hundreds of hours of security feature coding, thousands of support articles & the ability to create complete back up of your sites & upload them any time via FTP!
- Branding & Reputation: Having a unique domain name & look gives you the reputation and branding edge over free blogging sites. Self hosted blogs are easy to brand & build as a reputable blog. Free blogs are regarded as free and you can’t expect to build a company or a brand on a free blogging service, can you?
- SEO: This by far is the biggest reason why wordpress is so popular. WordPress self hosted blogs due to the simple & clean coding, instant content updates and great features gives you a bigger advantage when it comes to Search Engine Optimization. Search Engines love dynamic & continuously updating content, wordpress is exactly built on those concept. Better SEO = more visitors, which is better any day when compared to a dead, traffic less free blog.
- Making Money: Yes that is right, if you want to make money blogging then switch to wordpress self hosted blogs. You have the ability to monetize your site, put on advertising such as ad-sense, banner ads, pop up ads, sell your site for a profit or even rent it. You definitely cannot do that on free blogging sites. Why? because some of them force their ads on your blog, some will simply not allow you to put any sort of ads on your own blog! In fact you end up making money for these free blogging platforms when you use their services, so choose wisely.
Disadvantages of self hosted blogs:
There aren’t many disadvantages to self hosted blogs, and the few that are depends purely on your situation.
- Complicated Set up: If you don’t know how to follow simple instructions or are completely new to the web and have no tech knowledge then setting up a self hosted blog can be a denting task. However there are guides that can make this easy, but obviously it will take time. Free blogging sites are easy to set up since they provide the same set of themes, plugins, etc. All you have to do is create an account and your ready to go.
- Cost: If budget is your problem or you don’t even have $100 or so to pay for web hosting & domains for up to a year, then self hosted blogs are not for you. Yes, there are costs but they are really worth it compared to the advantages you get. And of course you are not limited to a blog when you have web hosting & domain, you can do anything you can imagine!
- Updates: Some self hosting blog platforms are hard to update, however wordpress blogs can be updated with a click of a button. So this is quite not a disadvantage unless you are using other self hosted blog platforms. Its a lot more complicated if you don’t know what your doing.
- Hosting Issues: Having a bad host can ruin it for you & your blog. Some free & paid hosting services have downtime issues or the type of content you post, etc. But if you are paying good & sign up for a reputable hosting company like Hostgator then this shouldn’t be a problem.
How can i get a self hosted blog? How can i get started blogging?
Finally now that you are aware of the advantages of having a self hosted wordpress blog. It is time to get started on blogging. The answer is really simple & a 3 step process:
- Get Web Hosting: I recommend HostGator Personally, because i use them myself (even this blog) & have had no issues in past 2 years. They also have unlimited bandwidth & space along with various features, the most important one is being able to install wordpress with a few clicks. Check out HostGator & their prices here. If you do plan to go with them then take the hatchling package as that is the most cheapest one & good for start ups. I personally use the baby package since i have more then 1 sites hosted with them. (Use code : SJRECOMMENDS to get 25% off)
- Get Domain Name: A good domain is important. Registering a domain should be cheap as compared to web hosting, most domain names cost around 7-10$ per year (.com/org/net) while a .info can cost as low as 2$. I usually register my domains with GoDaddy, sometimes with name cheap. Check them out.
- Install WordPress, Themes & Plugins: Hostgator provides fantastico installer, which makes it easy to install wordpress on your site in a few clicks. You can do this directly from your hosting CPanel account. You can get free themes & plugins as mentioned previously. If however you want more advanced & great looking themes then i recommend elegant themes. I personally use one of their themes for this blog & their themes are really great & absolutely cheap, they have more then 40+ themes for as low as 50 cents a theme.
TIP: If you register at Hostgator, then use the coupon code 'SJRECOMMENDS' to get 25% of your package. Along with that, feel free to get in touch with me if you need any help with blogging, i will try my best to help you.
Of course there is more to blogging then the above mentioned 3 step process. However i think this post is already long enough so i will leave that for my next post.
Final words:
Switch over to self hosted wordpress or any self hosted blogs if you are serious about blogging. And if you found this article useful then please share it! I would really appreciate if you shared it anywhere you want as a way of repaying me for the information. Don’t forget to follow me on twitter @sameerjoad & subscribe to my feeds to keep receiving more informative articles form me.
Till then take care & wishing you great success,
SJ
5 Responses 
Leave a Reply 
If you are serious on blogging, use self-hosted.
That’s my opinion anyway.
Please help me…I am having a nightmare. I have just set up self hosted but have little clue. You said that wordpress has RSS built in? How do you know where and what this is and how do your readers click to subscribe? I used feedburner when i was with blogger and it was so easy. How do I know how many people have subscribe and how can i get them to do this via email? Totally lost. Please help.
Hi kerry
I assume your talking about wordpress.org? Well it has RSS like every other blog and readers can bookmark or use a Feed reader to subscribe directly from their browsers. Also you can set up an individual feed using Google Feedburner and deliver your blog via email to your subscribers. I use both since some of my readers prefer emails and others do not.
You can continue using feedburner, just set up your feeds using your RSS from the wordpress blog, example mine is at http://sameerjoad.com/feed/rss/ (you can use this address and continue with feedburner on a self hosted blog. Good luck!
Cheers…but how do I find out what my rss is and display it on wordpress like you have?
All the blogs have similar RSS structures, so your RSS feeds should be located at http://yoursite.com/feed/rss/ or yoursite.com/feed/rss2/
Just put those 2 links in your browser and see if a bookmark or a feed portal pops up. Use this address and set up a new feed on your feedburner via email delivery. You will give get a short html code for the subscription form, copy paste this into a ‘text’ widget to your blogs sidebar. (It should be under appearances ->widgets of your wordpress dashboard) Rearrange it and any extra images if you want to, this should show up the form everywhere on your blog just like mine.
Hope that helps.
[...] that backbone is the platform they use. A self hosted blog platform is nothing but a blogging CMS (Content Management System). Examples of these systems include wordpress.org (notice it’s not the same [...]