Domains And Hosting

It can be tempting when you first start your blog to put it on a free site. After all, it’s still a blog available on the internet, so why pay more than you have to set up? Free blog services are fine if you’re a hobbyist, but they have major disadvantages that can make your life much harder as a professional blogger. 

Free sites, in general, don’t rank as well in search engines as paid domain names. They also don’t give you as much control over your design, making the page look unoriginal and less professional. Some free services also run their own ads on your website, limiting your chances of making ad income.

Domain names

A domain name is your address on the internet (the part of the site that goes between “www” and “.com”). A new domain name can be claimed through a variety of different online services. A domain that has been registered may not be off limits; some people will buy domains to re-sell them though these are often far more expensive options.

It’s not expensive to register a new domain name—doing it with GoDaddy can cost you as little as $10 a year, and other services offer domain registration in the $20 to $40 range. Some domain names are more expensive than others. 

For a while when the first internet business boom was happening, investors would buy domain names with the intent of reselling them at a higher price, with some going for thousands or even millions of dollars (sex.com sold for $13 million in 2010, the current record; investing.com sold for $2.5 million in 2012). The bubble on this industry has burst, however, and even the most in-demand domains have seen their prices fall back down to earth.

If possible, your domain name should match the name of your blog. It doesn’t have to; once you own your domain name, you can put whatever you want on that site. Matching the web address to the blog name, though, will give you more name and brand recognition and make it easier for readers to find you. 

Think of some words and phrases related to your niche and your perspective on it. Once you’ve found a combination that you like, check if it’s available through an online registration service. Generally speaking, single-word titles (especially those related to popular fields) are more likely to have been purchased by a domain investor and to cost extra money to obtain. 

Let’s use the example of the vegan comfort food cooking blog from chapter 1. Cooking and vegan are common words that are likely to be already used or, at least, to have been purchased by an investor. Think about the next level of your niche, then—the comfort food angle—and brainstorm possible combinations. 

Two and three word combinations are less likely to have been used already. With a little creativity, you can find an open domain name that relates to your niche and is more quirky and memorable than “VeganCooking.com.”

Hosting

Once your blog has a domain name it has an address, but it doesn’t yet have a home. The files associated with your site will need to be hosted on a server so that your viewers can access them. There are many hosting sites out there. Many places that register domains also offer hosting services, which is convenient, though you should make sure the site has the services you need before signing up. Blue Host is a common hosting site for WordPress bloggers who are transitioning to a self-sufficient site.

The most important thing to consider is how much web traffic volume you can have on a particular hosting site. Bandwidth limits won’t matter when you’re first starting your blog, but if you hope to grow your traffic quickly, you shouldn’t set yourself up for failure by choosing a server that’s too small. A lot of hosting sites offer different tiers of packages at different rates depending on your traffic needs and make it easy to upgrade down the line. 

You can typically pay for hosting month by month and while you usually get a bit of a discount for buying more time at once, paying monthly can let you try a service out if you’re not sure whether or not it will work for you. Moving hosts can be a hassle but isn’t as costly or difficult as changing domains would be; you can change your mind in the future without affecting your reader’s ability to access your pages.

When you’re first starting out, the cheapest option is often a shared hosting account. Prices can start as low as $1-$2 per month. Sites that offer this option include iPage, eHost, and In Motion Hosting. Research the hosting site before you sign up. Are they reliable, or do you see users complaining about their service? You can also check around with other bloggers and see what hosting sites they use.

Site builders and CMS

You’ve got a domain name and a host where the files associated with it can live. Now all you have to do is make your blog and transfer it to the host—and if you’re not a technically-minded person, this can be very intimidating. 

The level of involvement you want to have with the creation of the page code on your site will determine which kind of site editor or site builder is best for you. People use these terms in different ways, adding to the confusion.

A web editor gives you the most control over your page’s design, but also requires some knowledge of HTML and CSS, and probably also things like JavaScript, PHP, and Perl for the kind of components most people want on a blog. The most basic web editor is a plain text program like Notepad. Plain text programs will require you to write all the code, but are the cheapest and most straightforward option. 

Web editor programs like Dreamweaver and KompoZer have a visual interface for the user, making the website building experience more similar to designing a Word document than to writing computer code. 

Once you’ve designed your pages with a web editor, you still need to get them onto your host’s server using an FTP (File Transfer Protocol) program. Both the FTP program and the web editor will need to be installed on your computer, and you have full control over their use—the primary advantage of using this method.  

An online site builder is similar to a website editor except run entirely online instead of through your computer. Site builder services are provided by larger web hosting companies (such as GoDaddy) though often for an extra fee. The online site designer will have a similar interface as a web editor like Dreamweaver or KompoZer. Since you’re building your sites directly on the host, though, you don’t have to worry about uploading them with an FTP program, and you can use any device to edit your website, not only one computer with the software installed.

Even if you’re using site editing software or an online site builder, basic knowledge of at least HTML and CSS will be very helpful in making your site look and feel the way you want. Even if you don’t know how to code them, you should understand what they do and be able to interpret them when you see them.

A Content Management System (CMS) is a piece of software you install directly on your web host (not your computer) that streamlines the addition of necessary site features like tags and categories for pages, search and archive functions, or forums and comment sections. 

When you use site builders or site editors, each of these features will have to be added manually, which can be incredibly time-consuming even if you are a web coding expert. Content management systems also make it a lot easier to redesign the look of your overall site.

CMS software does take up space on your server and websites run with a CMS use more RAM and CPU than those made by a site editor. On high traffic days, this could mean your pages are slow to load or could cause problems with resource limits if you’re using a shared server. 

You also don’t get quite as much creative control over the features and design elements of the page as you would designing it completely on your own. The main advantage of CMS software is that it lets you focus on the content. You don’t have to worry about fixing lines of code or manually adjusting your pages when you decide on a new layout—meaning you have more time to work on the important things.

There are several blogger-specific CMS programs on the internet, many of which you can use for free. WordPress is probably the most common. I know what you’re thinking—isn’t WordPress one of those free blogging sites? It can be (WordPress offers free blog hosting), but you can also download it as software and install it on your domain. 

It’s certainly not the only product on the market, though; take your time and carefully consider what features you’ll ideally need. Just like with changing domain names, changing CMS software can be a headache and a half if you have to do it down the road.

Blogger success story: Ruhul Amin

Ruhul Amin is the founder of Tips and Tricks HQ, an Australian-based blog aimed at educating other bloggers about WordPress and other technical aspects of blogging. Not only is his site impeccably designed and very successful, but it can also be a valuable resource for new bloggers who aren’t so sure on the technical side of things. 

Amin stresses the importance of a quality domain name in his posts, and has a few tips for readers: use keywords, make it easy to remember, and keep it short. Amin advises, “It is important for a visitor to get an idea of what the website is about just by looking at the domain name…if [visitors] can’t remember the domain name then you run the risk of losing potential traffic.”

One more tip from Amin: remember that you can use hyphens between words in domain names if it helps with the overall readability as he does on his site (www.tipsandtricks-hq.com). Not only can this make the name of your blog clearer to visitors, but it can also be a way to get the perfect domain name if the un-hyphenated version was purchased.