Blogs are one of the best ways of getting your opinions known online, or on the other hand you may wish to setup a corporate blog that you can post important news regarding your products and services on so that your customers are able to keep track of any changes.
There are many blogs around the internet all of which are dedicated to different topics and those blogs that have the largest readerships can be highly influential as well as being of high value because of the revenues that can be generated through the placements of online advertising.
There are many different blogging web applications and platforms available for use as well, with the main choice for you to make being whether you wanted to go for a self-hosted solution that will involve your own web hosting account, or for a hosted solution such as those provided by Blogger.
A self-hosted solution is the best route to go if you wish to make the most of a blogging application because you will be able to modify the operation of the application as you wish if you want to add additional features through the use of plugins/extensions and themes.
Furthermore, a self-hosted solution will also allow you to expand your blog as you wish without any hassle as if you reach your limits with the amount of disk space and bandwidth that you have used up then you can always purchase extra resources from your web hosting provider; this type of flexibility will allow you to grow your blog substantially.
What should I look for in a blog web hosting plan?
You should review several different features of any web hosting plan that you may be looking to choose for the purposes of blog hosting to ensure that you choose the best possible web hosting plan for your needs. The main features for you to consider include:
- Disk space – The amount of disk space that is provided with a web hosting plan is an important aspect to consider if you are looking to host a blog because blogging platforms can take up a large amount of disk space when self-hosted and that is before you have even begun adding content to your new blog – most web hosting providers are generous with their assignments of disk space meaning that it is easy to get good value for money, but you should still do your research to guarantee that you get the best deal going – it is important to have a large amount of disposable disk space available when running a blog because as well as the disk space that will be taken up by your chosen blogging application, any additional themes or extensions that you add will take up additional space as will any multimedia content for your posts that you choose to host locally
- Bandwidth – As well as disk space, you will want to have a good amount of bandwidth available to use so that you are able to receive a good number of visitors to your blog without the need to upgrade your web hosting plan just yet – bandwidth is simply a measure of the amount of data that is transferred between your website and client computers each month and obviously the more visitors you receive, the more bandwidth that you are going to be using – there are other factors that can also dictate the amount of bandwidth that your website uses up, such as the amount of multimedia content that you use within your blog posts as using large amounts of videos and images will increase your bandwidth usage
- Script installers – Mmany shared web hosting plans will provide you with access to a script installation application that will allow you to install a number of open source web applications into your web space with a few clicks – if you haven’t worked with web applications before then installing one manually can be fairly daunting because you will have to setup the backend database as well as set the relevant permissions to ensure that the application is able to read and write files to your web space properly – applications such as Softaculous and Fantastico aim to simplify this process by carrying out all of the complicated tasks for you, leaving you with a ready to use blog installation.
What other considerations should I make with blog hosting?
There are also other considerations that you should make with blog hosting if you wish to make the most of your new blog and wish to get the best readership possible; such considerations include:
- Localized hosting – if you wish to make the most of your blog in search engines then it is recommended that you choose hosting that is local to your target audience as to ensure the highest position possible in search engine rankings for the keywords that matter to you – SEO is one of the most important parts of building up a good readership as you want your blog entries to appear in search engines as this is probably one of the main ways in which people will find your blog, with another being links from others blog and websites
- Blogging software – when going for a self-hosted solution, you will need to choose the blogging application that you wish to base your blog on – there are many different blogging applications available for both Windows and Linux web hosting plans, some of which are open source and others that are commercial – you should make your choice based on the features offered by each platform because some may be more expandable than others whilst other applications may have a better support unit which may be vital to you if you are new to setting up web applications.
In conclusion, a blog hosting plan will offer you the features and resources that you require to establish your first online journal, whether it be for personal use or to promote your business’s interests to customers in a new way. As well as carefully choosing a web hosting plan that will suit your requirements, it is important for you to be confident of the blogging application that you choose.
