Comments on: Blog Hosting, Domains and Blogging Platforms – What We Wish We Knew

By: Radu

Radu — Mon, 02 Jun 2008 22:57:11 +0000

I agree… for a while I started debating if i should more from blogger to wordpress… I like wordpress, but i don’t want to lose the google juice for http://radupg.com

By: Steven Smit

Steven Smit — Sun, 06 Jan 2008 15:51:10 +0000

I also wish I had started out with Wordpress and not wasted my time with Blogger. Biggest waste of time ever. Could have used the six months time to build up my blog.

By: Drupalace

Drupalace — Tue, 14 Aug 2007 03:47:49 +0000

Let me toss in another reminder for Drupal. Like Joomla, it’s a popular CMS that’s not going to be as easy to start with as Blogger or WordPress, but has the potential to take the site much farther than a simple blog, should the site (and the user!) want to grow into it.

For anyone interested in dipping a toe in the waters, I write about Drupal from the newbie and blogger perspective, at http://www.drupalace.com .

But whatever your choice of tech, going with an established CMS, and getting your own domain, is a great start for any blogger. Get that domain now or you’ll wish you had later!

By: Nicholas the copywriter

Nicholas the copywriter — Wed, 11 Jul 2007 05:57:35 +0000

Sorry about the long link…

By: Nicholas the copywriter

Nicholas the copywriter — Wed, 11 Jul 2007 05:50:40 +0000

I am just starting out as a blogger and these posts are a great help. I secured my name as a .com, I feel that if anyone wants to take on the Internet Marketing game on a serious note, you should register your name. Who knows what kind of domain squatter might notice you in the early days, register your name and then ask you stupid money for your name domain. Just like what happened with the Problogger.com domain.

Blogging on your name domain also makes one think twice about the quality of the information you publish…it has been working really great for me!

I will have to soon get different domain names for the topics I blog on, but for now, I would just like to earn my first $2000 from my web efforts!

I do not know if this would be in bad taste, but I wrote a post on the lessons I learned on building a web business:

http://www.nicholasgrobler.com/blog/internet-business/learning-the-hard-way-building-a-web-business-is-not-for-the-faint-hearted/

Like I said, just edit my comment if the above is not appropriate Darren.

Thanks for a great resource site!

By: Darnell Clayton

Darnell Clayton — Wed, 11 Jul 2007 01:54:51 +0000

I started out on blogger, experimented with wordpress.com and a few others, and almost moved away from blogger until Google launched the new version.

Now I have my blogger blog on my own domain (hosted by Google) and I am enjoying it very much!

By: Peter

Peter — Tue, 10 Jul 2007 14:53:03 +0000

Hi Darren,
I love your site and I am reading it now for some time. I just started blogging the other day, although I want to do way much more than only blogging, I am using http://www.joomla.com a CMS – system. So far I spend a looot of time to just set up the template for blogging, however it is a real great CMS-system, if you want to do just more than blogging. Reading that everyone else is mainly using wordpress, I hope I am not using the wrong tool now.

By: Bernie A.

Bernie A. — Tue, 10 Jul 2007 14:11:20 +0000

I am glad I found this blog. There is so much written about blogging platforms and I was just about ready to create some blogger.spot blogs for variety although I have some wordpress blogs already set up on my own domains. It appears that I am doing the right thing with using wordpress.org so now feel no need to change anything.

By: Blog Hosting for Dummies - Rajaram S

Blog Hosting for Dummies - Rajaram S — Tue, 10 Jul 2007 10:42:38 +0000

I have been blogging for about 1.5 yrs now. It took me many months of reading up stuff before i knew what i had to do :-)
Sometime back i had written an article “Blog Hosting for Dummies”. Maybe, some will find the info useful!

By: AmeyJah

AmeyJah — Tue, 10 Jul 2007 10:39:12 +0000

Hey Mt darren, you are absolutely right. After spending 3 serious months on blogging, I am feeling the heat of blogger. But now I will also make an attempt to move to wordpress, because just now i was searching for right hosting on this site.

By: Russ

Russ — Tue, 10 Jul 2007 10:28:26 +0000

I wish I knew how cheap a domain was. Instead of starting off with a blogger blog I definetly would’ve created a wordpress one on my own domain for a tiny initial cost.

By: - Spaceman Spiff -

- Spaceman Spiff - — Tue, 10 Jul 2007 08:38:34 +0000

I guess I was lucky having a friend who had started out blogging and was transferring to his own domain when he told me to not even mess with the subdomain accounts because it would just end up being more of a hassle. I have only had the site going for a couple of days, but I enjoy the flexibility of WordPress. I thought about using other tools like Joomla or Drupal, but my friend was willing to help me get started on Wordpress and we all know that having someone dedicated to helping you is pretty substantial.

By: Shine

Shine — Tue, 10 Jul 2007 06:32:12 +0000

I moved three times in the frist two weeks and I’m glad that I’ve made the decision quick. It’s both time and energy consuming to move around… I’ve tried blogger.com (struggled even at the very basic level for about a week), signed up for typepad (getting a feel but not officially launched), loved wordpress.com and therefore settled down at wordpress.org with a hosting site for greater flexibility. Feeling very contented since.

By: gameguy

gameguy — Tue, 10 Jul 2007 05:20:33 +0000

I lasted about two weeks with a free blogging platform before switching to WordPress. I’m totally sold on WordPress, but I wasted a lot of time playing around with the “look” rather than just focusing on the content. I also regret purchasing a number of books on blogging and CSS when I eventually found much better resources online.

By: Charles Lau - Online Biz

Charles Lau - Online Biz — Tue, 10 Jul 2007 05:19:27 +0000

Hi Darren, I had been learning from your blog quietly while doing on my blog… And I decided to write a comment in your blog now…

I had similar kind of experience with you.. I first started on blogger.com, went on to try movable type and then to wordpress.. However, I am still at the initial stage right now… Thank God I found your post..

I am now experiencing different ways of writing the blog, getting my momentum in writing good articles about doing business.. Just want to do it good…

By: Mark

Mark — Tue, 10 Jul 2007 04:48:43 +0000

Hey Darren

It would be great to see an article from you titled “Great! Now I know what I wish I knew before, I still wish I knew what I want to know now!”

In other words, now that some of us have gotten the hang of it, some of us may not understand exactly the significance of Unique IPs hits or utilizing Google Analytics to help gain sponsors or subscribers.

By: Don Wilson

Don Wilson — Tue, 10 Jul 2007 04:24:44 +0000

I didn’t use free blogger platforms long enough to know that they were so limited. I’m fortunate to have been directed early on to get my own domain and hosting package and put up WordPress.

It’s much easier than one would expect. I was very new to the internet and had never used domain names, hosting, or even ftp prior to this exercise. I pulled it off with very few glitches.

By: The Guitar Resource (Ross)

The Guitar Resource (Ross) — Tue, 10 Jul 2007 04:16:50 +0000

Like many bloggers, i started on Blogger and switched to wordpress, and regretted i waited so long. The only good thing about starting with blogger is i learned how to edit a basic HTML template and got familiar with some blogging “best practices”, but when i switched to wordpress a little over a month ago i had to start rebuilding my SEO and backlines from scratch, which has been slow. But it was still well worth the wait. The plugins available on wordpress make my blog a much more powerful tool and resource to my readers.

My advice to those on blogger: Don’t wait to switch! Do it ASAP. And to those who havea pretty decent following on blogger and already have many posts, don’t worry, the new version of WP allows you to import you blogger posts to WP, which will save you a lot of time. And you can always redirect traffic from your nlogger blog to your new domain.

Maybe even get your readers involved in helping you choose your new blog’s theme/design. Get them excited for it. Let them know the switch will benifit both you and them.

But stop pushing it off! Do it now!

By: DaveLu

DaveLu — Tue, 10 Jul 2007 04:12:58 +0000

I have only started blogging since last June 06, and i have only realised how limited blogger has become for me… it has just dawned on me(about 1 months ago!!!) the amount of things you cando with wordpress is really amazing.

I only wished i had acted upon advice regarding setting up with wordpress right from day 1. But anwyays, i’m in the process of migrating to wordpress… the move is quite simple but rather astonishingly, the actual thought of moving to wordpress made me re think my whole direction which is in fact excellent..

So for me… although i learnt much by doing something the wrong way. The best thing is still to host your own domain. wordpress rocks.. i don’t think with the amount of wordpress users around we will ever see the end of the type of applications we can play around with…

By: Leszek Pawlowicz

Leszek Pawlowicz — Tue, 10 Jul 2007 04:03:21 +0000

Having said nice things about WordPress, let me also say that it sometimes has me screaming in frustration at my computer; it isn’t always the most user-friendly of platforms. You have to be willing to twiddle with the guts of the templates, and the CSS style sheet, to get things laid out exactly the way you want them. For the latter, I highly recommend the Web Developer extension for Firefox, which lets you tweak the loaded CSS stylesheet in a browser subwindow, and see the effects immediately in your Firefox window. But watch out – a layout that looks fine in Firefox can be broken in IE, and require you to set up alternate CSS settings for IE6 and IE7. CSSVista (http://sitevista.com/cssvista/) is a bit clumsier to use, but lets you look at the effects of CSS changes on both IE and Firefox simultaneously.

Adding capabilities also requires you to learn a bit about template structure, and where to insert things so that they’ll work.

Recommended WordPress plugins:

AdSense Deluxe
Dean’s Permalinks Migration (if you ever change the permalinks structure)
FeedSmith
Google Sitemaps
In Series
Instant Upgrade
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