The technical side of blogging

Choosing a web host can be a confusing process. Do a search for web hosting on Google, and you get hundreds of hosting review sites and advertisements by web hosts. How does one pick a good web host / internet service provider (ISP)? This is the process I went through when I moved from Blogger to a commercial host.

1. Determine your needs and price point. Web hosts offer a variety of service levels at different price points. The most pricey option is a dedicated server, where you have a single computer running only your website, and using the entire internet bandwidth specified. The least pricey option is a shared hosting plan, where tens or hundreds of websites share one computer. This option typically runs from $3-$10 per month, and is more than sufficient for most beginning bloggers. (If your website gets less than 10 thousand hits a month, its a beginner’s blog with minimal bandwidth requirements. If it gets 100 thousand hits a month, it is a serious blog which may require a more expensive plan. If it gets 1 million hits a month, you’re running a professional website which requires a dedicated server.) Almost all plans now advertise unlimited bandwidth and storage; this is largely false, as both bandwidth and storage costs money, but you’re unlikely to run up against the unofficial limits if you’re just running a blog. Most plans offer unlimited number of email accounts, which is important to many people who want to create email accounts for their family and friends. The plan must offer WordPress (for blogging), and preferably Perl (for scripting) as well. I looked for plans that offer unlimited subdomains (good for testing out various blogs) and unlimited MySQL databases (required for multiple installations of WordPress for different blogs). Aside from these requirements, the rest are mostly just gravy. Based on price and requirements, decide on a few web hosts that pique your interest.
2. Check the webmaster forums. Search for the web hosts you’re interested in on webmaster forums. Any web host will generate some complaints, but look for consistent complaints from a large number of webmasters, suggesting a real issue. Examples of webmaster forums include Digitalpoint, Web Hosting Talk, and Webmaster World. Ignore the comments and ranking given by the the large number of web hosting review sites. They are mostly useless because they favor the web hosts that give them the largest commissions for refering customers.
3. Check the Better Business Bureau. Lastly, check the BBB for any complaints against the web host. You are looking for a long operating history (at least 2 years), and a maximum of 1-2 complaints a year. BBB will detail the date of the company’s inception. Some web hosts treat their customers badly (and since webmasters are in the publishing business, they tend to complain, loudly), and then register a new company name every few years to avoid the stigma of their old name and lure a new batch of customers.

My research, as stated above, revealed several web hosts that were recommended by many other webmasters and had reasonable plans. These are

• Hostmonster
• Hostgator
• JustHost

I went with Hostmonster because it has all the features I wanted, a long operating history (since 1996), and has been widely recommended. So far, I am very satisfied with this company.

Are you trying to choose between free or commercial hosting for your blog? When I first started blogging, I went with the free Blogger, because it was the easiest option. Initially, I just wanted to blog for family and friends, and Blogger was ideal for that. On Blogger, you do not have to learn about the technical site of maintaining a blog, and can simply just blog. Furthermore, Blogger is owned by Google, and now allows users to post Google Adsense ads as well as other affiliate ads on Blogger blogs so that you can monetize your blog. In addition to Blogger, there are many other good free blogging sites, such as WordPress.

However, as I started to explore the commercial side of blogging with advertisements and affiliates, I found Blogger to be more and more restrictive. Initially, I was frustrated that I could not place advertisements and graphical elements where I wanted. The final straw came when Blogger’s robots flagged my blog as a spam blog, accusing me of using programs to automatically populate my blog. While Blogger said that I could request a human review (which I did), this only results in my blog being unlocked for a short time before Google’s robot locks it back down again. I could only post a blog entry after manually unlocking it every time, and worse, I could not post any new advertisements on the blog, or on any of the other blogs registered to me. This was when I decided to leave for a commercial paid hosting site. Since then, I have found paid hosting to be a pleasant experience. While I do pay monthly hosting fees, these are typically extremely modest, and easily covered by my modest income from advertisements. There is a bit of a learning curve, but nothing too difficult. Furthermore, you get to choose your own domain name, and the domain belongs to you forever, and you can keep that name and the reader base that you have built up even if you change hosts. To summarize, I think that the choice between blogging with free or paid hosting comes down to the following points :

• If you just want to blog for your family and friends, and are not concerned with making some money from your blog, or with owning your own domain name, then free hosting is for you. It is the simplest route to blogging.
• If you do not want to learn the rudimentary HTML and background knowledge required to administer and maintain a website, then go with a free hosting service. Conversely, if you are a control freak and would like to control every element on your blog, then a paid host is the way to go.
• If you are artistically-inclined and would like to construct a beautiful blog, then you need a commercial host. Free hosts typically place severe constraints on the placement of your page elements which will restrict your creativity.
• If you want post advertisements on your site and making a small amount of money from your blogging effort, then you definitely should go with a commercial host. The key advantage of owning your own domain name and thus being able to take your reader base wherever you choose to host your site is very important. Furthermore, if you host your blog on a free server, they can always change their policies at any time, potentially banning you from your own blog. This cannot happen if you pay to host your own site, and diligently back up your blog. Even if your commercial server bans you (which should not happen unless you’re doing something contrary to their terms of service), you can always choose another host, keeping the same domain name so your readers can still find you.

Many bloggers do not realize that commercial hosting can be very cheap and affordable, equivalent to the cost of one night at the movies for an entire year’s worth of hosting. If you are willing to post a few advertisements on your blog, then it is relatively easy to cover the cost of your hosting. In my next article, I’ll review several commercial hosts that I’ve used or considered.

Why it comes to blogging, there is an abundance of software platforms to choose from. This is one of the first decisions that a blogger who wants to run his own site must make. To make this decision, I have extensively researched many of the currently popular platforms. All the platforms described below require MyPHP, MySQL and the Apache on your server to work.

WordPress

WordPress is the most popular platform today. It is open-source and available for free. It is probably the easiest platform for the non-technical blogger to pick up, and is renowned for its ease of installation. Because of its popularity, there is an enormous amount of documentation on the web which should help you solve any problem you encounter. WordPress is also designed to accept plugins and widgets which extends its capabilities, and there are a LOT of plugins available. In addition, WordPress also accepts themes, which are basically web design templates which can be applied to your content, instantly changing the way your website looks. There are many freely available themes on the web that you can download and try out. WordPress also generates XHTML compliant HTML code, and search engine friendly permalinks. The main drawback of WordPress is that it is designed to run only one blog. Running multiple blogs require an entire new installation of WordPress for each blog, as well as a new MySQL database, which may present a problem if your web host limits the number of databases you can create. Another more minor problem is that the default WYSISYG editor that comes with WordPress leaves much to be desired. However, there are plenty of excellent third-party editors.

Movable Type

Movable Type is a commercial blogging platform by Six Apart. It once had over 90% of the blogger market, but has since been wildly eclipsed in terms of user base by WordPress. In 2007, Movable Type was open-sourced and is now available free, but only for personal use. For commercial/education/non-profit use, you need to buy a license. In terms of functionality, it is very similar to WordPress. However, Movable Type has fewer plugins and themes than WordPress, and documentation on the web is also much less. The key advantage that Movable Type has over WordPress is that it is able to run multiple blogs off a single installation. In the end, for a single blog, I preferred the more widely supported WordPress over Movable Type, although it is a more difficult choice if you are running more than one blog. Also, I may one day decide to turn my blog commercial, and the terms of the Movable Type license may prohibit this.

ExpressionEngine

EE is another commercial blogging platform which is supposed to have a richer feature set than WordPress or MT. However, I would never know this, since EE is NOT open source and only the basic “ExpressionEngine Core” version is freely downloadable. The full version costs money. The deal killer is that the free version of EE prohibits any advertising on your blog.

B2evolution

A close cousin of WordPress (they are derived from the same parent code), b2evolution is also open source and free. B2evolution also supports skins, which works basically the same way that themes work for WordPress. Unfortunately, there are far fewer plugins and skins availabel for b2evolution compared to WordPress. On the many forums I visited, it seems that many b2evolution users eventually abandon it for WordPress because of the greater diversity of plugins and themes. The main advantage of b2evolution over WordPress is that it supports multi-blogging.

Joomla

Technically, Joomla is a Content Management System (CMS) used for many large corporate and university websites. It is actually able to do much more than WordPress, with the ability, for example, to host forums and other interactive services. Joomla is also an extensible system, with templates available for any kind of website you want to run. For example, there are templates for a restaurant website, a forum, or a calendar. With this power comes a steeper learning curve. Joomla definitely requires a deeper knowledge of HTML code compared to the above-mentioned blogging platforms. While there are several blogging templates for Joomla, it seems that most bloggers abandon Joomla in the end for another more specialized blogging platform, because there simply isn’t much support for the blogging among the Joomla community. If you just want to write a blog, and do not want to do stuff like host a forum or a web store, then you will probably get more done in a shorter time if you stick with a specialized blogging platform instead of a CMS.

Drupal

Another CMS platform, Drupal is actually more powerful than even Joomla, but is also more difficult to learn. Joomla has a larger user base and more modules than Drupal. For stuff like event calendars, shopping carts, forums and multimedia, Joomla has more modules and is better than Drupal. The creators of Drupal are more programming-oriented, and Drupal produces cleaner HTML code and is much more SEO friendly than Joomla. For blogging, if you must go for a full-fledged CMS, I recommend Drupal over Joomla because Drupal produces search engine-friendly links out of the box, and generally produces better code which is more friendly to search engines. A key advantage of Drupal over Joomla is its ability to host more than one website at once, while a separate installation of Joomla is required for each website.

Final decision

I finally decided to go with WordPress. If you just want to run a single blog, WordPress is a no brainer. It has a user base that is probably 2-3 times that of the nearest competitor, so support is just so much better. If you want to run a few blogs, then WordPress is still the answer. If you want to run 40 blogs, then you may want to look into a true mutli-blog system. One option is WordPress Multi-User (WPMU), the much less well-supported version of WordPress which natively runs multiple blogs. Of course, there are also Movable Type and b2evolution. In general, I find the CMS platforms too cumbersome for just running a blog.

I began this blog to record my experiences in setting up and running a blog. I have been running a few blogs for about a year now, and have learnt a lot along the way. It has been really fun, and I have decided to set down the knowledge I have gained so that others may also benefit. Because there are already many websites describing the journalistic and business aspects of blogging (that is, how much and how often to write, how to attract readers, how to earn revenue etc.), I have decided to focus more on the technical and software aspects, which I find are relatively under-covered. Hopefully, along the way, I will gather some readers who will also share their experiences with me.