The Writer's Pulse

I get a lot of spam comments on this blog. Luckily, the awesome WordPress plug-in Akismet catches and murders the vast majority of them, but that doesn’t stop the spam-bots from trying. You have to give them that much credit. Read the rest of this entry »

WordPress is one of the best blogging platforms you’re likely to find. It’s free, it’s easy-to-use, it’s incredibly customizable. Still, we don’t all have the time or the motivation to design our own themes for WordPress, so we rely on the skills of others.

Here are my top three websites where you can download free, quality WordPress Themes. Read the rest of this entry »

Pillar posts have become quite the cliche out there in the blogosphere, and they’re very easy to pick out: they’ll be relatively long, informative, and more often then not they’ll consist of numbered lists of useful tips or resources. Most of the time, a pillar post will extensively cover a solitary topic, explaining, in detail, how to go about doing something in particular.

But let’s face it: their main purpose is to drive traffic to your blog. Am I right? Read the rest of this entry »

According to the Committee to Protect Journalists, Burma is the worst country in the world for bloggers:

The government, which shut down the Internet altogether during a popular uprising in 2007, has the capability to monitor e-mail and other communication methods and to block users from viewing Web sites of political opposition groups, according to OpenNet Initiative. At least two bloggers are now in prison. – 10 Worst Countries to be a Blogger

Other countries on the list include Iran, Cuba, and China.

This just highlights how lucky many of us are when it comes to sharing our thoughts, political or otherwise, on the Internet.

How do you feel about the list, and Internet censorship in general?

In How To Be A Blogger: Part I, I discussed the basics of starting a simple blog. For this post, we’re going to take a look at the next logical step: finding a good web host and registering your own domain.

The importance of a good foundation

You might be wondering why I didn’t talk too much about hosting and domain names in the last post, but I have good reason for that.

I figure, when you’re starting out, your first blog is going to be a test run. I’m not sure how many first-time bloggers go straight for some big-name, highly branded blog, and I honestly don’t think that’s the best way to start out.

You need to learn the ropes, so to speak.

There are, of course, benefits to snatching up a domain and getting your own hosting right from the beginning. These benefits have a lot to do with search engine optimization (SEO) and general ease-of-use, but it’s really not that difficult to make the transition from novice to advanced blogger.

You can go about it two ways: take what you’ve already created with you, or start again using the foundation of knowledge you’ve obtained to make something even better.

The next step (preparing for the move to self-hosting & your own domain)

Disclaimer: you don’t need hosting or a domain to have a successful blog. In fact, you may want neither, if simply because you’re not concerned with branding or SEO or all that marketing mumbo jumbo. You can do very well without them. But I think it helps to have a solid domain name, and the freedom of self-hosting is invaluable.

Getting a domain

Registering a domain name is as simple as finding a good registrar and paying about ten bucks. Some cost more, others perhaps a little less. There are several registrars to choose from.

However, you should do your own research. I’m very hesitant to recommend any services, because they all have their strengths and weaknesses. Check out the registrar reviews at ConsumerSearch and Regselect, and be sure to poke around at the respective registrar websites before you make any decisions.

If you want to see a full list of registrars, visit the official list of ICANN-Accredited Registrars. Yes, there are a lot.

There is, however, one thing you should never do: never purchase your domain name and your hosting from the same business. There are multiple reasons for this, but to put it simply you want to maintain control of your property. The domain itself is actually more important than your host, and if in the future you decide to change hosts, having your domain registered elsewhere will make the process that much easier.

For some good resources on getting a domain name, check out:

• How to Register Your Own Domain Name
• Beginner Tip: “How Do I Get A Domain Name?”

Finding a web host

Choosing a good host is a little more complicated than just reading some reviews and comparing services. There are certain things you have to look out for:

• Overselling. This occurs when a web host sells more resources than they can actually provide, under the assumption that most webmasters or bloggers will never use that “unlimited” amount of bandwidth and disk space.

  In the majority of cases, this is true, and that’s why most hosting packages place you on what is called shared hosting — your website is hosted on a single server along with potentially hundreds of others.

  Every “cheap” host oversells, so just remember that if you see a hosting package that seems too good to be true, it is. Choose the hosts that are at least somewhat realistic when it comes to the allocation of their resources.

• Pricing. This is tied to overselling. The lower the price and the greater the features, the more likely that the host will fail you if and when you ever become popular enough to use those features. Again, they promote those outlandish amounts of bandwidth and storage under the assumption that you’ll never use them.
• CPU. What’s the one thing that ends up shutting down your website if you ever breach it? CPU. The CPU policy of most hosts can usually be found in the fine print of their terms of service, and it basically means that, if you use content management systems or other software that use php and MySQL databases (say, WordPress), you need to be careful about the number of plug-ins and widgets and Ajax add-ons you use. They all perform queries on the database, and in turn use up CPU resources.

  There are ways to circumvent this problem (for example, the WordPress Super Cache plug-in), but it’s something that you should always been mindful of. Typically, using more than 25% of your server’s available CPU for more than a few minutes will net you either a warning or a suspension, and that’s why more popular websites will require dedicated hosting. For the starting blogger, this isn’t necessarily an issue, but definitely check the host’s record for how they handle CPU usage.

Now, I’m of the mindset, as far as hosting goes, that something that works for me might not work out for you, so again I’m hesitant to personally recommend any web hosts. However, there are several websites and forums that I’ve always found very useful, and if you’re looking for a host, you could do worse than to check out the following:

• Web Hosting Geeks
• Cnet Reviews
• Web Hosting Reviews
• Webmaster-talk – Web Hosting Forum
• Webmaster Forums – Web hosting, Dedicated Servers and Reseller Hosting forum

Transition

Once you have a domain (hopefully one that matches your name, and which in turn describes your niche) and a host, it’s time to make the transition from your free host to your paid host.

If you plan on just starting over, great: take everything you’ve learned and keep moving. If, on the other hand, you’d like to keep your old posts, WordPress allows you to import posts, categories, and tags from other blogging software. In my experience, it’s a very painless process, but I can’t attest to other blogging software.

In the next and final installment of How To Be A Blogger, we’re going to get into what it really means to be a blogger. We’ll cover blog promotion, what you should (and shouldn’t) focus on, and how to persevere in a blogosphere full of thousands upon thousands of competing blogs.