When you start thinking about a blog, you soon want to know what type of webhost a blogger should use. If you’ve already started a blog using a free or shared hosting account, you may be thinking about expanding to a virtual private server (VPS), cloud server or managed hosting service to accommodate your increased traffic.
In the article, “Types of Blog Hosts,” author Susan Gunelius, states that for small blogs without any established traffic, a free or shared Web host is a good option. These types of Web hosts offer low or no cost hosting and typically enough resources to reliably display a few blog pages when people click on your site. All of the security and administrative tasks are taken care of for you, and you simply upload your Web pages using your blogging software or a free file-transfer application.
The downside to using free Web hosting is that it’s usually supported by ads, so your blog might display ads that you don’t get to choose or earn money from. With shared hosting, your blog’s performance can suffer if another tenant on your server suddenly has an increased need for resources.
What Are the Best Free Web-Hosting Options for Bloggers?
With a free Web host, you will either be required to display ads on your site or use a domain name with a sponsored address, such as yourblogname.wordpress.com. For a small annual fee, you may be able to transfer a domain name you already own to your free hosting service. Generally, established blog-hosting sites such as WordPress.com and Tumblr.com offer a much better service than free Web hosts that allow you to upload your HTML files via FTP.
If you have plans to expand your blog when your traffic begins to increase, consider purchasing a domain name so that you can transfer it to another host when you outgrow your free one. That way, your regular readers will be able to find your site when you switch. With WordPress.com, you can also purchase a custom domain name for a small annual fee, although you will also have to pay an additional fee to avoid making your contact information public.
Related Resource: Increase Website Bandwidth
The Difference Between Shared Hosting, VPS and Managed Hosting
Shared hosting is the least expensive option for beginning bloggers who want to control the HTML files stored on their server. If you use a combination of shared Web hosting with blogging software such as Drupal, Joomla or Django, you can manage your blog using a dashboard interface and you don’t need to manually upload files using FTP software. With shared hosting, your server resources, such as RAM and disk space, are shared equally with other tenants who might have higher requirements than you.
With VPS hosting, you rent space allocated on a server just for you. This type of hosting can be a little more complicated if you don’t know much about configuring a server. With managed Web hosting, all of the configuration and security is handled for you, but you lose administrative rights to the operating system installed on the server.
Learning about starting a blog may seem complicated at first, but the essential components aren’t too difficult to understand. With the right domain name and blogging platform, the type of web host a blogger should use is a matter of meeting your resource requirements.
