MobileRead Book Challenges discussion

So, for all you bloggers out there:

Do you self-host or do you use the site hosted blog service and why?

If you do self-host, what encouraged you to make that move? Do you enjoy it, yes or no? If you don't mind telling, how much do you pay - per year - to host and maintain your domain name? If you had the option, would you still self-host? What hosting service do you use?

If you do not self-host, are you thinking about self-hosting?

I've always used Go Daddy for hosting, and I think my renewals for the domain (.com) were 12.99 / year, an additional $7 or $8 for private registration, and around $5 / month for hosting.

I've always preferred managing my own hosted Wordpress installation due to the endless flexibility.

But then, I'm a total geek who loves digging into the nuts and bolts of things, which isn't something everyone loves to do.

The advantage with a blog service is that what they do offer will always work - so if you go with Wordpress, for example, they will keep everything up to date and you know that what they offer for use on your site will work together.

There is no guarantee with self-hosting. Stuff can break, themes can fail to work with an update, plugins can fall apart completely (or fall off the map), and it's on you to get it all working when something goes wrong.

There are "managed hosting" services for Wordpress and some other CMS systems, which is something in between. It's sort of "full service and support" hosting, where you have the flexibility of self-hosting, but people to actually manage the technical side of things. Those are costly, though, so are usually only a sensible option for blogs that make a lot of revenue.

Christa wrote: "I've always used Go Daddy for hosting, and I think my renewals for the domain (.com) were 12.99 / year, an additional $7 or $8 for private registration, and around $5 / month for hosting.

I've al..."


*waves at Christa*

Do you still get to use the smart phone app and online publishing? Or am I tied to a specific computer?

I've been thinking of self-hosting for the flexibility of plugins and the like - but I'm not sure if its worth the money.

*waves back*

I did everything through the online interface from whatever computer I happened to be in front of, and you can still use the smartphone app with a self-hosted site but I don't do much on my phone so I never tried it.

Edit to clarify - I installed the app and set it up, and it connected properly, I just never posted from it.

Usually you can get good discounts on a new domain and hosting that are significantly cheaper than renewals, so you can try it out for a year, and if you decide not to keep the hosting account, you can move your blog to a Wordpress-hosted site and point the domain there. So there are options if you decide self-hosting isn't working out. You would have to work around the limitations, but all your posts, pages and media will export just fine.

It works in reverse, too. You can start with a Wordpress-hosted site, pay for the domain feature (yourname.com instead of yourname.wordpress.com), then if you find it too limited you can move to self-hosted.

I run my own website, too. But be careful, if you want to run things as Wordpress check first how they offer it. When I decided to choose my first hosting company I asked if I could run a full Wordpress blog on the package I wanted and they told me I could. It turned out that that wasn't true, I could only run a Wordpress.com blog. Which meant I couldn't install all the apps and themes I wanted. I needed a more expensive package to run a real Wordpress blog. They were also very slow and often down. When it was time to renew after two years I switched to my current hosting company, Antagonist.nl.

I paid just over €50 for two years. They offer Installatron, with which you can easily install a lot of blogs, forums, etc.

Like Christa I like the flexibility to run my own Wordpress, though I seldom do anything more than basic things with it. I would also advice you to start on Wordpress.com and if you find it's limiting you can always switch to self hosted. If you go for your own website Google various hosting companies to see what others are saying and I would strongly advice to choose one which offers some sort of automatic installation of Wordpress, unless you like to do everything manually.

Good luck!

I have a Wordpress.com blog right now: bookslifewine.wordpress.com

but I am running into some issues that I want automated.

There are great plugins - but only if you self host.

I was thinking about GoDaddy - they're one of the cheapest.

I wanted to go with Bluehost but I found out they are owned by Mormons who have vulgarity/morality TOS attached. And I review erotica...and I curse. So that's a no go.