Free Blogger Hosting vs Free Wordpress Hosting vs Hosting your own blog

[Kernel Sanders]

https://www.blogger.com/start

Or

http://wordpress.com/

Or

http://wordpress.org/ (Hosting my own Wordpress blog)

Which do you recommend and why?

The reason i'm asking is that i'm looking to start a blog, and I hope to have a fair few hits in time :KS

What i'm worried about is things like frequent downtime, the blog failing if it gets any sort of traffic, or worse still, the whole blog being accidentally deleted/corrupted and me having to start all over again losing many blog posts in the process.

Am I asking too much from a free service like Blogger or Wordpress for the above? Or are they far more likely to meet my needs than if I hosted my own blog on my own virtual server?

Any help appreciated :KS

[billgoldberg]

Ideally hosing your own wordpress blog is the best.

But wordpress.com is great. I use it for my own blog.

It's far better than all the other blogging sites.

The only drawbacks to wordpress.com is that they don't allow advertising at all and they don't allow javascript.

--

The thing with wordpress.com is that your site is ranked very high on google. Almost all my posts are on the first or second page in google.

Wordpress.com has a very good uptime. They claim slashdot and digg don't even cause a spike in their traffic anymore.

In 6 months I have been unable to make changes to my blog (it was still visable to the rest) one time for 15 minutes.

Another thing I enjoy is that you get pretty detailed stats.
--

I suggest to you visit my blog to see what's possible (sig).

[geekygirl]

I use Wordpress for both my sites (see below in sig) Wordpress is very easy to get the hang of (even for a coding/HTML/css numpty like me :D ) and like the previous poster my sites get good results in Google (I only need to check my site stats for that!)

I have both my sites hosted by hosting companies, both are hosted free, and I don't need to have ads in there either (although I am experimenting with Google ads in my 'blog' site)

So you can get some webspace and if they have Fantastico its a one-click installation.

Unless you host it at home of course :)

I have only used the .com site for testing so can't really comment on that. And Blogger was way too restrictive for my liking.

[helliewm]

Wordpress.org on my own server. Actually some friends/close colleagues server. Anyone tried any other blogs such as typepad. Wondering whether to try something else???


Helen

[Kernel Sanders]

Thanks for the opinions guys! I'm wondering whether my virtual server will get killed with high usage though? I have 10GB of space and 500GB per month bandwidth. I'm not sure what connection it's got to the net, but i'm half expecting it to implode if anything I host gets dugg/reddited or remotely heavy traffic.

Am I being too harsh on my Virtual Server do you think?


I use Wordpress for both my sites (see below in sig) Wordpress is very easy to get the hang of (even for a coding/HTML/css numpty like me :D ) and like the previous poster my sites get good results in Google (I only need to check my site stats for that!)

I have both my sites hosted by hosting companies, both are hosted free, and I don't need to have ads in there either (although I am experimenting with Google ads in my 'blog' site)

So you can get some webspace and if they have Fantastico its a one-click installation.

Unless you host it at home of course :)

I have only used the .com site for testing so can't really comment on that. And Blogger was way too restrictive for my liking.

Sorry, it's probably me being dense, but are you hosting your wordpress blog yourself, or do you have a free blog at wordpress.com?

[Kernel Sanders]

:ks

[Barrucadu]

Am I being too harsh on my Virtual Server do you think?

Definitely. 500GB bandwidth will almost certainly be great for a long time, unless you have a stupidly image/flash-rich site (or host videos, or something).

[Kernel Sanders]

Do you think it would survive getting dugg, and traffic along those lines?

[Canis familiaris]

Do you think it would survive getting dugg, and traffic along those lines?

If you offload pictures to Flikr, Picture Bucket, etc. Downloads to Rapidshare, etc. and Videos to Youtube.com, then definitely YES.

Do you think this mirror of the famous tutorial would have survived if I had not offloaded as such?
http://amitech.50webs.com/installing/index.php.html

And guess what this mirror is hosted Toally Free. :popcorn:

[FuturePilot]

I use wordpress for my blog. I've only run into downtime once with them and it was only for maybe an hour while they were doing upgrades. I've never used Blogger so I can't say if it has any benefits over Wordpress. But hosting your own blog is the ultimate since you can pretty much do what you want.

[Babbage]

I think Wordpress is great, their whole attitude rocks, it's so in tune with the free software revolution. They prove you can give your software away for free, and make money providing it as a service.

There's another issue with hosted blogging though. If you read the terms and conditions they usually say something like: "you grant (blogging service) a non-exclusive worldwide licence to what you publish using (blogging service)" I don't like the idea of being an unpaid content writer on a hosted blogging service, and giving them a worldwide right to publish my work. Hosting your own blog means keeping control and not giving anyone else a licence to publish your work.

[FJGamer]

I use Blogger, just because it's the easiest to keep track of.
For functionality, it's ideal to use something more than a simple blog script on your own webhost. I have used forum software to integrate neat user functionality with a blog, but that was a little time-consuming, and I don't recommend it. Instead, find whatever scripts you need and compile them into one big website, and call it your blog.

There are a few issues I have with Blogger:
1. The way you customize the look of your blog makes web design a little more difficult.
2. Every time you redesign your layout, you lose any extra panels you added with the template editor.
3. Your profile is NOT customizable, aside from a few basic text fields and an avatar.
4. I was mistakenly confused for a spammer when I first registered, and it took them a week to set my blog back to public.
5. There is no forum community built into Blogger's website, and few visitors seem willing to sign up for an account just to leave you a comment, so you don't get as much of a community feel as you get elsewhere.

I have not used Wordpress, but I have installed it for a few people, and I can say I like the installation. It's very easy-to-use, and I honestly think the reason I chose Blogger was it used my Google account. Otherwise, I would have chose Wordpress or set up a blog system on my website... most likely using the Wordpress script.

[geekygirl]

Sorry, it's probably me being dense, but are you hosting your wordpress blog yourself, or do you have a free blog at wordpress.com?

No, I have hosting provided by a hosting company, but I have free hosting. I could put any type of site up on the space i have, I just like the ease of use of Wordpress.

I have used Wordpress.com free blog hosting in the past, but I prefer the total control I get with my hosting package, that way I can choose whatever theme I like and add extra's like Gallery and so on onto my webspace.

:D

[Kernel Sanders]

Just wondering whether anyone had any more thoughts on this? :KS

[Kernel Sanders]

It seems not :(

[Canis familiaris]

You haven't decided yet?

[Ms_Angel_D]

Hey I can't vote, I do host my own blog but I use Joomla for it.

[Canis familiaris]

Hey I can't vote, I do host my own blog but I use Joomla for it.

Your blog layout is awesome.

[Ms_Angel_D]

Your blog layout is awesome.

Thank you very much :D

[Polygon]

hmm i thought i posted in this thread

I use a wordpress.com blog, and the good thing about it is that google LOVES IT

like, less then a week after i posted an entry, its already on the first page of on google if you search for it. If you search for "bitpim, linux" then you should see my article on like the 8th entry down.

[Nevon]

I would definitely try to find a web hotel that you like and then just host your own wordpress blog there. That way you get almost complete control over everything, and you don't have to agree to the wordpress ToS.

My "blog" www.morning-hair.com is hosted at 000webhost.com and they're great. I highly recommend them if you decide to get your own hosting.

[Kernel Sanders]

Yay! Activity! Thanks guys! :KS

Is there that much trouble with the wordpress.com blogs btw? I mean in terms of their terms of use. Do they have a reputation for deleting blogs or something?

From what i can tell, a major downside with Wordpress.com is the lack of decent themes :(

[stmiller]

Wordpress FTW. The many themes, plugins, community out there for Wordpress is simply amazing. Blogger is horrible, in comparison.

(There are TONS of wordpress themes out there. Ever typed 'wordpress themes' into google? )

Wordpress.com blogs are ok to start with, but if you really get into wordpress, you will want to pay for hosting, or do your own on a home server.

With 1and1.com (only $4/month) I have a wordpress blog for one of my sites. It's my own, and I'm free to install whatever plugins, customizations, and other stuff. I have like 150GB of webspace with the hosting, and you can do email for the domain and everything.

So it depends on how deep you want to jump in! I would say start with a free wordpress.com blog and go from there.

[Kernel Sanders]

Thanks :KS

[sujoy]

if you can buy a domain, get it hosted somewhere professionally, nothing beats joomla/mambo like CMS, except offcourse if you are a web-designer yourself

i however, just use blogger

[billgoldberg]

Yay! Activity! Thanks guys! :KS

Is there that much trouble with the wordpress.com blogs btw? I mean in terms of their terms of use. Do they have a reputation for deleting blogs or something?

From what i can tell, a major downside with Wordpress.com is the lack of decent themes :(

Their terms of use are OK.

They will delete blogs if you violate the terms, that's normal.

Having ads is not accepted, so if you have them, they'll delete it.

That being said, you can buy upgrades (they cost virtually nothing) if you want to hack the template you use and they might have such an upgrade that will allow ads in the future.

The themes on wordpress.com aren't superb looking, but there are a few decent ones. I think mines looks pretty good. Nothing fancy, but very readable and clean looking.