setting up a writing blog

CTRandall

CTRandall

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I'm going to set up my own blog soon and I'm looking for advice.

I'm guessing it's wisest to pay a few £/$ per month for hosting, rather than going the free route. Is that right?

Any particular platforms people would recommend or warn me off of? It looks like Wordpress is the most popular but it also looks like some people use services like Bluehost to set up domain names. Can't that be done directly through Wordpress/Ghost/Blogger? Or are there other domain name providers you would recommend?

Thanks for the help!
 
I don't know why you'd want to pay for it when you could get it for free! Plenty of very successful bloggers use the free services and I've never looked down at any of them for it. Later when you're super-successful you can pick up CTRandall.com or whatever, but test the waters with free first. Most blogs never make it past their first year, so it's worth showing that you have the staying power first IMO.

A secondary benefit of free blogs is that they come with some amount of built-in audience. A few people have found my blog through wordpress.com for example. Those occasional readers ain't nothing.
 
I'd recommend starting with a free Wordpress account, and see what happens. If you ever want to move to your own website then it's usually very easy to move everything over.

No need to worry about domain names if you use [mysite].wordpress.com, but if you do register a domain name then make sure it's through a proper domain name provider, such as Moniker.com.
 
FYI:
I haven't gone the route of Wordpress; so, naturally, I made a free account and then spent about 6 hours(not intense but somewhat focused)setting up the bare bones.

J.L. Dobias

I have other websites to pull stuff from but wordpress is pretty easy and you might need a logo and an icon for your website. It's really easy to switch it later to a paid sight if you find it to be effective. I might have chosen poorly for my free template design; but that might just be more having to get better acquainted with it. Overall I think that it's a great way to start--getting the free site and practicing with setting it up.
 
Thanks for all the advice!

I went back and examined the websites I had read before posting and, wouldn't you know it, at least two of them received payments for everyone who clicked through to the paid blog sites. That'll teach me to look carefully!
 
Having your own domain yourname.com is better than using yourname.wordpress.com
In the long run your domain will be yours and you could have anything installed on it, WordPress (with any given theme you can find), any CMS or even custom code.
BUT...
The domain name is going to cost you at least $10 - $15 per year, or even more if you go with some weird domain extension. A .com domain will be cheap on goddady for the first year, then will go up to normal cost or slightly more than average. There is a catch here too, with the domain name, almost all of the names are already registered. You are in luck, ctrandall.com is still free.
Then it comes the hosting price which should be at least $5, but averages to $10-$15 per month for a hosting with database and decent bandwidth. Some of the hosting companies, gives you preinstalled versions of various software (like WordPress) and is a matter of clicking through a wizard setup to get it installed. Others don't have such options, which leaves you at the mercy of knowledgeable friends or you need to pay someone to install it (fees here can vary from $50 to $500).
There is also the hurdle of running a website by yourself. Depending on provider, it can shield you from attackers and infections or not. Most of the time this type of protection will cost more. If you run your own WordPress and you get infected the easiest solution for them is to take down your website. There is a low risk of hacking for websites with low traffic, but you can never know because nobody is hacking by hand today, they use bots who search for vulnerabilities and then infect the site automatically.
Bottom line when running your own website: you need knowledge and time OR money and time.

My advice is to go with yourname.wordpress.com for start (less choices on themes and customization but they take away from you all the above).
 
I would go with a free one first just to see how blogging works out in reality in terms of time and whether it sustains your interest. I have my domain name (janeoreilly.co.uk) though godaddy but wouldn't recommend their website builder as it is frankly awful so I use wix for that instead. I have a blog then through wix which is linked to the site, mega easy to update and use.
 
Done. I've set up a free wordpress blog and just started to tweak it (need to go through some of my wife's artwork to get a good header image). Hopefully I can get into a regular habit of keeping it updated. And I have a few ideas for some entertaining looks at "how-to-write" vlogs. Gotta get off my bum and move!
 
I'm glad you've brought this up, because I think I'll follow in the same footsteps. I've been looking over the best options for doing this very thing recently. Sound advice from everyone.
 
I bought my domain name years ago - jozebedee.com - and it was the best thing I did. Recently I had to move to hosting and that had a cost. I also decided to pay someone to design the site for me and am glad I did.

Anyhow, writing blogs. I have a good following these days. For three years my mum and about 3 others read it...
 
I bought my domain name and pay $19.95 a year for it. anyakimlin.com has been worth it. But paying for the hosting was a waste of money. I can use Weebly without it.

Until I decided my life was going in other directions and writing as a career wasn't for me, my blog had a reasonable following for an unpublished author. It took some work to get it but I think my stories sold it for me better than I could.
 
I have about 40 people on a mailing list I've never sent an e-mail out to. :/ I'm amazed people want to sign up in the first place, then I worry about clogging up their inboxes!

I must put that right soon (which will probably be May at the earliest).
 
WordPress is popular because it's simple, and so is Tumblr. Posterous is slightly less famous and is similar to the first two. When I was to set up my own blog I asked myself a list of questions:
  • do I want to install, configure and fix my blog all by myself?
  • do I need a unique theme?
  • do I need custom plugins?
  • will I mostly write long posts or cool short things would be more than enough?
  • am I willing to pay? (I wasn't)
 
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