Hi Again,
Yesterday we spoke about picking a name and hosting a blog yourself, so today we are actually going to get started with hosting a blog. There are two kinds of hosting which you should be aware of.
- Shared Hosting
- Virtual Dedicated Hosting (or otherwise known as VPS hosting)
The first is by far the cheapest solution (with some plans costing as little as $3 a month). Unfortunately it is cheap for a reason. At its essence, shared hosting is about storing many people’s websites on the same computer. This means that you can spread your resources more evenly, instead of having one website per computer you can have hundreds or thousands. The problems arise when some of those websites start requiring a lot of CPU power because then the computer hosting them gets overwhelmed and crashes. Then all the websites on that computer go out like someone hit the light switch and won’t come back on until someone at the hosting company fixes the problem.
The problem is compounded because a lot of hosting companies offer waaayyy more to their customers than they can possibly fulfill. This means that they get a lot of customers and then find out that they really don’t have the infrastructure to actually fulfill all the orders!
Still it remains a very cost effective method for getting ahold of hosting for a start-up blog. On the good side — if you have the right shared hosting provider, then it can be VERY easy to get started on their service versus the Virtual Dedicated which may require more technical skills than a shared hosting provider.
For the purpose of getting started I’d recommend looking into shared hosting. There are a lot of hosts out there, but here are some of the ones which I have heard to be good:
- Dreamhost (aff)
- Knownhost
- Media Temple
I have personal experience with Dreamhost and Media Temple. I have a shared hosting account with Dreamhost, and although they are ok with keeping the websites on the internet (they have had some downtimes in the past) they are REALLY easy to use and get started with.
Media Temple has a good VPS server solution for not too much. I pay about $50 a month to get a server which has never gone down as far as I can tell. However, like I mentioned earlier it is a bit more technical than Dreamhost so for the rest of this tutorial I am going to focus on using Dreamhost. But before I run you through signing up with Dreamhost, I’d recommend doing a little research of your own and seeing what hosting service works best for you, and if there is anyone else out there that you’d rather work with. Google is your friend. I just find Dreamhost as an easy to use tool which is a good way to get started into the blogging world.
If you make the decision to go with Dreamhost
Once you get signed up I have a short video which will get you started with hosting your first website.
Upon signing up, you’ll be able to register your first domain name for free as a gift for doing hosting with them (see why I asked you not to purchase in the last article?)
If you decide to go with someone else
If Dreamhost is not for you, then the best thing to do is to get ahold of someone techie to help you install wordpress on the host you got. There are a lot of people who will do it for you for cheap or free and you can find them anywhere from around your local neighborhood to doing a google search for them. People are often happy to help you get setup with your wordpress blog. Though, be careful who you share your username and password with!
Regardless of who you choose:
You should have a wordpress blog that is installed and up and running! We are getting closer and closer to a finished blog that is ready to roll, and we have only made it to step two! I look forward to chatting with you on step three!
God Bless,
-Dan