Yes, some of the more web-savvy of you will be schooling your monitor right now, saying things like "but Liq, what about self-hosted versus service-provider-hosted blogs?" and all that. You are right, depending on the solution you've chosen to run your blog, there will be differing levels of benefits and challenges listed above.
Eenie-Meenie-Miney-Moh
There are several options available for the standard blogger wanting to move to a dotcom. This allows some flexibility in terms of expense and customisation. Basically, you need to know about two services:
domain names and
web hosting.
DOMAIN NAMES - A
domain name registrar is a company that you 'buy' a domain name, like google.com or myfreeporn.net, from for the privilege of use. I say 'buy' in quotes because really you're just renting it on a usually-annual basis; when you stop paying your bill, you stop being allowed to own and use the domain name you've chosen. If you don't buy one, you can always use a provided one for free (such as xxx.wordpress.com or xxx.blogspot.com).
WEB HOSTING - Separately, you may wish to purchase hosting from a
web host, which allows your very own virtual space in the corner of the world wide web for you to store (and serve) pages. This is essentially where websites and webpages are kept and published to the world. They will often package in database allocations that drive selfhosted Wordpress engines and other goodies that we don't care about right now.
Here are the three most common 'choice baskets' that people choose (URLs are examples only and costs are $USD average ranges as at Oct 2012):
What the Fuck, Dude? Break it down for me...
This is intended to be an extremely beginner-oriented explanation, so I will gloss over or oversimplify a few concepts. If you have questions beyond my rudimentary outline, feel free to bug me on Plurk (
@liquidhell) or IM me inworld (LiquidH3ll.Carter).
There are three common solutions that people tend to gravitate toward. For lack of better naming, I've named them
Provider Hosted,
Domain Name Only and
Self Hosted. Let's break it down into a summary so you have a basic idea what it means...
1. PROVIDER HOSTED
* What most people start out with
* Easy; requires almost no setup at all (sign up with
Wordpress,
Blogger or
Tumblr and start blogging!)
* Free of charge
* No maintenance - a range of features and updates are managed by the provider service*
* You have to have a
yourname.wordpress.com or
yourname.blogger.com address
* Very limited features and customisation (usually reduced to free offerings for themes, widgets, etc.)
Total Estimated Cost:
$0 USD
* Note: Wordpress.com hosted blogs do not support installing the powerful Google Analytics engine but have their own simplified traffic/statistics dashboard functionality. Blogger.com is owned by Google, so have it built-in.
2. DOMAIN NAME ONLY
* You buy a top-level domain name, like
binderbitches.com and link it to your blog
* You pay annually, usually between $5 to $30 a year**
* Some setup related to mapping domain name records to point to your blog location is required
* You can link it to a Wordpress/Blogger hosted website or your own - you can choose
* You have the ability to leverage a top-level domain for branding and marketing
* With a bit of setup, you can also have your own email domain (e.g.
mromney@binderbitches.com)
Total Estimated Cost:
$20 USD per year
** Note: Traditional suffixes like .com, .net and .org are cheaper than newer ones like .tv or .me. You can also pay an additional premium for privacy protection (when people WHOIS backtrace the domain name, the registrar is listed as the contact, instead of your full name and address, which is required for registration).
By the way, you're not supposed to have the words "sl" or "secondlife" in your domain name as this is against Linden Lab Terms of Service regarding marketing and use of trademarks.
3. SELF HOSTED
* You buy both a top-level domain name
and you purchase hosting space for your blog***
* This option requires the most setup and the most monetary investment
* You will need to install a
Wordpress.org blog engine on your webhost (unlinked to Wordpress.
com, the free provider-hosted version
).
* You pay annually for domain name ownership, between $5-$30 (as in solution 2)
* You pay monthly for webhosting, usually between $3 to $20 per month****
* Maximum flexibility; more notes below...
Total Estimated Cost:
$80 USD per year
*** Note: Of the three example providers, you can only self-host Wordpress-type blogs. Blogger and Tumblr do not offer selfhosting options. There are, however, other blog engines available you can selfhost but that's beyond the scope of this article, sorry.
**** Note: Different web hosts offer different packages for hosting. It's up to you to pick the best ones by comparing reviews based on service, affordability and quality. I have used HostMonster, BlueHost, InMotion and GoDaddy before with varying levels of ease and satisfaction. Often, the web host will also allow you to buy domain names from them (they either are a domain registrar themselves or resell domain names to customers).
More self-hosted notes:
I won't go into the details of setting up a Wordpress blog (there are stupidly-many help articles out there if you search) but there are some hosting requirements that you
need - read them here.
With a selfhosting option, because you basically own and run the site and it's content, you have the flexibility to do things like modify the CSS of your Wordpress themes at a code level. Hell, you can edit the PHP pages and entire architecture of your Wordpress installation itself if you want (if you're not scared of breaking everything). Uploaded files will also go to your own webhost and the entire blog will be driven off a database on your rented webhost servers.
If you have existing blog content (posts, comments, etc.) to be transferred over, both Wordpress and Blogger offer cross-platform import/export functionality, though some things just can't be moved.
Because of the customisation options available to you in selfhosting, you may be required to purchase 'full versions' of blog themes that were previously free (albeit, limited versions) to use them on your new blog.
Google Analytics can be tied to a self-hosted Wordpress blog, unlike it's free counterpart.
Long Story, Short...
As you can see, there are a lot of options surrounding a decision to move to a dotcom. I've presented just the most basic common choices, but the opportunities are very wide-ranging and dependent on your personal needs and budgets.
I hope this was a very basic primer to moving your blog to a dotcom. I apologise if it's unclear or convoluted (or even self-contradictory) as it's currently late and I'm starting to just mash my keyboard while my attention span grows ever-shorter.
Thanks for reading (or tolerating).
If you do have further questions though, feel free to bug me on Plurk (
@liquidhell) or IM me inworld (LiquidH3ll.Carter).
Liquid hails from an IT background, with rudimentary (laughable) experience in web-development, web design and web-based object-oriented technologies. He currently manages and maintains the technical side of several Second Life blogs so the authors can focus on blogging. In the past, he has also helped with moving blogs to dotcoms or new hosting.
* Moves/Transfers:
Simply DaniRiaxik - full selfhosted setup (wordpress)
RockinChicas - full selfhosted setup (wordpress)
JanainaDelvalle - full selfhosted setup (wordpress)
Expression - full selfhosted setup (wordpress)
VforVeenya - full selfhosted setup (wordpress)
NotQuitePink - full selfhosted setup (wordpress)
GrandIllusion - transfer from blogger to wordpress
* Service/Maintenance/Other Support:
Slidioglossia - new domain name
KyootSL - wordpress reinstall - site no longer active
LittleMissFashionCupcake - new domain name
KeepCalmAndKeepShopping - theme layout fix
Head: Fashionably Dead - Doll Head (Blushing Smile) *Available at The Arcade*
Head: Fashionably Dead - Doll Head (Teeth 2) *Available at The Arcade*
Head: Fashionably Dead - Doll Head (Third Eye) *Available at The Arcade*
