How to start a blog?

This blog will mostly focus on the technical aspects of a successful blog. As a first post it seems to be appropriate to take a look at the general "how to start a blog?" question. You basically have two options: the "do it yourself" way, with more freedom and more work, and the "Let Them Do The Work" way with less flexibility but less resource needs too.

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"Do It Yourself"

If you decide to do the blog maintenance yourself, first you'll have to find a blog software to use. Some major players:

Once you have your candidate, select a web hosting provider, with the following services:

Lots of hosting solutions already include a preconfigured blogging software, this might ease your choice. Regardless, be careful when selecting a hosting provider, switching a hosting company is a something you don't want to do once you're all set up. Besides the obvious price factor, you should take a look at how much of bandwidth and traffic you get, and what happens if your site's traffic goes above the limit.

"Let Them Do The Work"

If you don't want the hassle of hosting, select a provider-hosted solution. You can do all your setup and blogging work through a web interface, but you'll have to accept some limits in customization, and sometimes advertisements from the service provider. Also, in most of the times, you're not allowed to use a top-level domain name. Major players in the area:

Once you've selected the provider, go through the registration process and you can start blogging in usually 5 minutes.

How to choose?

To break it down to one simple question: if this is going to be your first blog, choose a provider-hosted solution. It's much simpler to set up, and once you get more experienced, you can still migrate to your own hosted site. If you're still undecided, take a look at the WikiPedia Weblog Software entry.

March 27, 2006

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