Hosting sites
Part of “Going Self-hosted with Wordpress : A Wolfie Guide”
One of the subjects that is a bit of a minefield when it comes to going self-hosted is which hosting provider to choose. There are, literally, thousands of them out there, and there is often little to choose between them. Ok, you can take recommendations from friends and fellow bloggers (like the ones I’ve given in previous articles) but that only gives you a very small part of the market.
In an effort to overcome this difficulty, a number of sites have been launched that offer information to help you select hosting providers. So far, one of the best that I’ve come across is top10webhosting.com. They have a long list of providers, to help you choose the best web host for you. What top10webhosting.com gives you is a way to compare prices and specifications, filter providers by whether they offer certain things (cPanel, for instance), read reviews and check out in detail what each provider has to offer.
One provider they recommend (that I’d not heard of before) is HostMonster - which has been at the top of the recommendation list for 10 months on the trot. And it’s no wonder - $5.95 per month, 1500GB disk space, 15000GB bandwith, host unlimited domains. It’s an amazing deal and well worth taking a look at.
This post is sponsored by top10webhosting.com
Why go self-hosted?
Part of “Going Self-Hosted with Wordpress: A Wolfie Guide” [PDF]
Another question that I’ve been asked in the course of writing this sort-of Guide to self-hosting is why you would want to go self-hosted in the first place, and what skills you need to be able to do it? I touched on this subject in the first post in the series but I’m going to try and go into a little more depth here.
Why go self-hosted?
The biggest reason is freedom. Whichever blogging service you’re currently using, you’ll be using it under their terms of service which will restrict you from doing certain things. For instance, if your blog is at Wordpress.com then you can’t:
- Edit your theme, or download and install new ones from the Net
- Change the way your blog works
- Add new features, like a blog search, if your theme doesn’t already support them
- Use Javascript in your widgets, or anywhere else
- Use forms, other than those created by Wordpress
- Have Google Adsense or any other form of advertising
If you think that you will ever want to do any of these things, then you need to start thinking about self-hosting.
Another reason for self-hosting is to get some protection for your blog. At the moment, your Wordpress.com blog is not really under your control; at any time Wordpress could delete it for a Terms of Service violation, without telling you about it first. You may not think this could happen to you, but seeing as the ToS are really quite vague (and one important prohibition is actually in the FAQ and not the ToS) there’s always the possibility that it will even if you didn’t mean to do anything wrong.
Once you go self-hosted, you don’t have to worry about any of this stuff - it all becomes possible and if your experience is anything like mine, you’ll immediately see an increase in readership and visitors to your blog.
If you’re at all interested in the way blogs work underneath, then go self-hosted. You can set-up a test blog in addition to your main one and experiment with everything. If you want to learn CSS, then playing about with your blog’s theme is a good way to see how it all works. If you want to add features like threaded comments, or comment subscription, then self-hosted is the way to go. If you want to add a message board (like this one) to your blog, then self-hosted is definitely for you.
What skills do I need to go self-hosted?
You need to have a certain amount of computer-literacy, but then you’ve probably got that if you’re already running a blog. You’ll need to know that some of what is done for you at Wordpress.com, you will have to do yourself. Most of it, though, is not hugely different.
If you use the tips in the first article, then installing the Wordpress software is a matter of a few clicks; this will get you up and running. You can then follow the tips in the later articles to add features. The only thing you really need to learn - at least to begin with - is how to successfully use an FTP client. File Transfer Protocol is what takes the files from your local PC and uploads them to the webserver that your site is loaded on. It’s just like transferring files using Explorer - just that one of the folders is on a remote machine. There are various FTP programs you can use - Cyberduck for Mac, CUteFTP and Filezilla for Windows - all of which work basically the same and make the task really easy.
The only other thing that could be a barrier is cost - and with hosting packages starting from as little as $25 (about £12.50) per year there’s really nothing to stop you is there?
Domains
Part of “Going Self-Hosted with Wordpress: A Wolfie Guide” [PDF]
In the first installment of this Guide, I covered getting yourself some hosting for your very own website, but I didn’t really go into depth about domains; since then I’ve had a couple of requests to cover that subject a bit more fully and now seemed like the right time.
What is a domain?
Simply put, it’s an Internet address, like wolfshowl.com. It’s a unique name that identifies a website on the Net. It can be a “friendly” address (words that you can understand) just a group of numbers, like 192.168.0.1.
You may also hear terms like “top-level” and “second-level” when referring to domains; this refers to the extension at the end of the address. For example, wolfshowl.com is a top-level domain, whereas wolfshowl.co.uk would be a second-level domain. As far as I can see, there is no practical difference, except for the snob value of having a top level-domain.
How do I choose a domain?
This can be trickier - all of the good ones are gone! Basically, decide first what domain extension you want; would you prefer the one specifically for your country (so for the UK you’d be looking at .co.uk), do you want a .com, or do you want one of the more academic ones like .org or .info?
Then think about what you want after the www; if you run a company, you’ll probably want to have the company name or perhaps your best-selling product. For bloggers, you might want your name or the name of your blog. Any and all of these are valid options, but remember that you may not be able to have your first choice because someone will have got there first. You have no rights whatsoever to your name as far as domain names are concerned; it’s first come, first served.
Finally, go to who.is and enter what you’d like in the search box. The results page will tell you whether it’s available, who owns it if it’s not and what related domains may still be available.
I’ve decided what I want. How do I buy it?
Here you have loads of choice. There are sites all over the web at which you can register a domain. If you just want to register the name but don’t want any hosting at the moment, do a Google search for “domain registration” and see what comes up; the maximum I would pay would be £8.50 (about $17), which should get you a .com for a year or a .co.uk for two years. There are many sites out there with headline prices much lower than this; just make sure you read the small print.
If you want hosting as well, then I suggest you register your domain name when you sign up for your hosting package. That way, all the paperwork is taken care of in one go. The two companies I mentioned in the previous article (A Small Orange and Hosting-Unlimited) will both do this for you.
Make sure that, whoever registers it for you, it gets registered in your name not theirs. I’ve heard that some of the companies offering rock-bottom registration prices don’t register them in your name but in theirs. That way, it becomes difficult for you to do anything with the name because it is more difficult for you to prove ownership.
Now I’ve got it, what next?
Well, now you need to set up your site. Use the information in the previous articles if you need help on this.
Wordpress.com offer domain mapping. What’s that?
This paid add-on to the free Wordpress.com blogging service lets you buy a domain name and then have it re-direct to your free-hosted blog. That way, you look like you’re self-hosted but you’re not and you remain bound by the Wordpress.com Terms of Service.
The problem with the domain mapping add-on is that it goes the wrong way. Most people will have started with a free-hosted blog and will be looking to move to self-hosted, and so would want to point their free-hosted blog to their brand new site. That way the traffic and readership they’ve worked so hard to build up on the free-hosted site would be re-directed to the self-hosted site, helping it to establish itself and build up traffic, Alexa Rank, Real Rank and Google Page Rank quickly rather than having to start from scratch.
Going Self-Hosted with Wordpress
The Wolfie Guide for Going Self-Hosted with Wordpress is now available as a PDF download, for anyone that might find it useful.
It includes the three articles so far published and will be updated as and when new articles become available.
(If you find any errors, please let me know and I’ll put them right in the next edition).
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