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Choosing A Blogging Platform - Self-Hosted or Free-Hosted Blog | How to Start a Blog Series #7

When choosing a blogging platform, first you have to consider whether you want to pay
for hosting a blog or use a free hosting blogging platform.

Web Hosting Service. 

Paying for web hosting means paying for a data server space in order for you to be able to store all of your blog’s digital data files that are associated with your blog contents which include all your blog posts’ data files, text documents files, photos and images files, music and audio files, video files, etc. Think of a data server being similar to your computer’s hard drive, being a virtual memory storage, with the capability to store your digital or computer files. The main difference between your computer’s hard drive and a remote data server is that your desktop or laptop computer’s hard drive memory is a private and standalone memory storage unless you have it connected to a network with file sharing capability. With all the private personal files stored in your computer hard drive, you can’t just let the world have access to it, do you?

On the other hand, a remote data server will function as a web host that is capable of storing digital files just like a computer hard drive but you can easily access such files through the internet because you can set it up to connect to the world wide web (WWW) network.

The decision whether you have to pay for a web hosting service monthly or not depends on your answer to the question, do you want a self-hosted blog or a free-hosted blog?

Self-Hosted Blog. If your answer to the question above is self-hosted blog, then one very popular blogging software or platform that is capable of supporting a paid hosting blog is WordPress at WordPress.org website. To have a self-hosted blog using WordPress, you need to find a service provider that offers web hosting service (as explained earlier in this chapter). But before you avail such service, you need to verify that their web hosting server supports the WordPress software or blogging platform. If it does, you can then install WordPress software in your hosting account so that you can go ahead and start working on setting up your blog. Some web hosting companies may already have integrated the WordPress blogging software in their system, if this is the case then you just have to enable or initiate connection of the software within your web hosting control panel (customer account) in order for you to get started setting up your blog.

Free-Hosted Blog. If your answer to the question above is free-hosted blog then a very popular blogging platform that offers free-hosted blogging capability is Blogger at Blogger.com
Blogger is a web-based blogging platform which means that you don’t have to install any software in your computer in order to setup or maintain your blog. All you need to do initially is sign up for a Blogger account (which will be discussed further in a later chapter) in order to have access to the platform. While log-in to your Blogger account, you will have the ability to setup and create a blog
(which will be discussed further in a later chapter). Since the Blogger platform is a web-based platform, you need an internet connection to access the platform in order for you to setup and create a blog, post a blog post, or maintain your blog.

With free-hosted blogs like the ones provided by Blogger, you don’t need to avail a web hosting service and pay for a monthly fee for it. With free-hosted blog, your blog contents’digital files will be hosted or stored for free in a remote data server owned by Blogger.com

Difference Between WordPress.org And WordPress.com You might be wondering what is the difference between the blogging platforms available at WordPress.org and WordPress.com?
As explained earlier in this chapter, the blogging platform available at WordPress.org is capable of having your blog being self-hosted.  On the other hand, the blogging platform available at WordPress.com is similar to Blogger in such a way that it allows you to have a free-hosted blog and you can obtain a free generic domain name for your blog with format YourChosenBlogName.wordpress.com To be totally transparent, I, personally, never used the free-hosted blogging platform at WordPress.com. One deciding factor for me not to use it was due to the fact that I will not be allowed to monetize the blog like I could with a Blogger blog. Although, I didn’t plan to monetize my blog right away, I wanted to have the option to monetize later on if I want to do so in the future, which I could by using Blogger. For the remainder of this book, I will primarily focus on discussing about Blogger.com (not WordPress.com) when talking about free-hosted blogs.
Now that you have a general idea regarding what is the difference between a self-hosted blog (like WordPress at WordPress.org) and a free-hosted blog (like Blogger at Blogger.com), you are left with a decision to make. 

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