(answering) A question about blogs
Self-hosted WordPress is the blogging software of choice for most serious,
professional bloggers. Self-hosted means that you download the software (at
www.wordpress.org) and install it on your own server. This gives you the
most flexibility and control over the types of pages, content, and
appearance you can have on your site.
As Sharon said, WordPress is free software – it’s Open Source. However,
installing the software and customizing the themes (which is the WordPress
term for templates) can be complicated. That’s where the cost for a
WordPress-based site or blog can come in: if you decide you want a
customized, branded blog/site, you may have to outsource that work to a
WordPress professional.
If you just want to test the waters and see if blogging is even for you, I
recommend starting a blog on WordPress.com. It’s free, they have a decent
range of themes you can choose from, and for a minimal fee you can have your
own domain name on your blog there (i.e. instead of myblog.wordpress.com you
can have myblog.com). Having your own domain name gives your blog a much
more professional and serious appearance.
Aside from the benefit of being able to easily add your own domain name to
your blog, if you have a blog on WordPress.com and it goes well and you
eventually see you need more control and features, it is relatively easy to
move your blog onto your own server while keeping all the URLs for your
posts. This is crucial for retaining search engine and link traffic that you
may have generated until that point.
Hope that helps.
Miriam
—————————————-
Miriam Schwab
illuminea marketing & media | www.illuminea.com
T: 972.2.566.0297 | C: 972.54.571.0624
mschwab@illuminea.com
twitter: @miriamschwab <http://twitter.com/miriamschwab>
