Choosing a Blog Host Platform
I’ve talked on the About page about what I want to do with this blog, but I had to make a few decisions when I was setting up about how I was going to do it.
The first decision was whether to use a blogging platform or to get it hosted. I have gone for a hosted option. This is because
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I have control over the domain
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I want to run other domains (for email especially)
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It is cheap anyway
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I’ll probably want to do more with it over time
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It’s not that hard
Control over the domain
Having control over the domain means that I can continue to use TryHud.com anywhere I want, and I’m not dependant on a platform to support it, and I can choose to use the best of whatever applications and tools that I want. I didn’t do a lot of analysis over what options existed around Blogger, WordPress.com Windows Live Spaces or whatever else because I pretty quickly decided that I didn’t want to find out limitations and be stuck.
If I find a limitation with everything under my control I can move or adjust my setup as I require.
Ability to run other domains
My personal email address is a hotmail address. There isn’t much wrong with that (It doesn’t look very professional, but that is not the end of the world, and Windows Live Mail is a pretty good application so I have as control as I want for now), but it means that I am dependant on Microsoft’s ongoing support and that is not necessarily a great position to be in. I am now able to add another domain name, hook up an email account and access it from whatever application I choose. I can also set up different addresses for different purposes to manage spam etc, I’ll expand on that another day when I get around to it. I have to think of another domain name first.
It’s Cheap Anyway
One of the big advantages of the blogging providers is that they are free. There are plenty of hosting providers out there for sub $10 per month (plenty sub $5 per month too, I’ll get to that in a post or two later ion this series). I can afford this reasonably comfortably so being free is not a huge benefit compared to a low price. If things were more expensive it may have been different.
I’ll probably want to do more with it over time
At the moment I’m just writing a bit, I’ll start playing with templates and layouts soon and it is an interest. I don’t expect it to turn into any sort of income, but if things happen I want to be able to take advantage of any opportunity that may come up. If there are going to be ads and affiliate links on the site, I’d rather the money to come my way than somewhere else. As I say, I don’t think that it will.
It’s not that hard
This stuff is designed to be pretty easy to do, so getting started is easy and you can add layers as you go along. You don’t need a complete solution as you find your feet, the next level up is still pretty simple.
So having a self-hosted solution will give me the flexibility to do what I want doesn’t cost me much, and I’m in control. Done.