Selfhosting your blog. Or not?
Selfhosting a blog is like building your own house
In a previous post I touched on the subject of selfhosting in a series about selecting the blog platform suited for your needs. The subject is important enough to elaborate a bit more.
When you start a blog, you have the choice of either using your blogservice to host your blog, or to rent server space yourself. Of the popular blog softwares, WordPress.org and Movable Type allow you to use your own server. Others, WordPress.com, Tumblr, Blogger and Typepad don’t give you that option, and will run your blog on their servers.
Intuitively, organisations, and the more “independent minded” bloggers would be inclined to choose for selfhosting, but the choice often is made uninformed. Let me share some of my personal experiences.
For the past two years, I used blogs hosted by WordPress, Blogger and Tumblr. In my experience, their services are reliable, fast, trouble-free, and allowed me to concentrate on writing, on blogging (apart from an occasional hiccup where Blogger thought my blog was spamming). And above all, their hosting is free, offering unlimited disk space for blogposts and unlimited bandwidth. I thought it was a natural progression to move to self-hosting but gradually I started to discover the differences.
I am a blogger, not a hosting expert
When you decide to selfhost, the choice of a hosting service is just as critical as the choice of your blogging platform. There are plenty of cheap hosting services around. Little did I know. I had good experiences with GoDaddy for my domain hosting, so I went with them for my server hosting. But, aaah, I had choices to make..:
- Linux or Windows hosting..? Beh.. Went with Linux. Don’t like Windows anyway.
- Which type of service? Economy (10 Gb space, 300 Gb bandwidth per year, at $4.74/month), Deluxe (150 Gb space, 1,500 Gb bandwidth at $6.64/month) or unlimited (at $14.24/month)? Beh, went with the economy plan.
- What I did not realize is that these prices are for a shared virtual server. Meaning you are using the same server with hundreds of other hosting users, and the load on the server depends what those users do. If you want your own virtual server, prices go from $26.99/month to $105.44/month (10 Gb disk space/500 Gb bandwidth to 50 Gb/2,000 Gb). Quite steep. And then you can also have your own physical server with prices up to $383.92/month..
- In my experience, for about 9 different selfhosted sites, I hit the jackpot: performance on a shared virtual server was good. Only one of my sites was clearly slower than the others, and showed a significant decrease in performance during the US office hours. Several emails and calls to the support centre did not resolve this issue. I am pretty much stuck.
So what is the best hosting service? I would have to ask the experts, but it looks like the opinions are largely divided, if not really subjective.
I am a blogger, not a system expert
If you select a hosting service, check if they offer an easy install package for your blogsoftware. I know blogs. I know my way around HTML and CSS enough to make a blog look nice. But God forgive, I am not a systems expert. Neither am I a programmer. I don’t know my way around the backend systems (PHP and MySQL for Wordpress). Even if it is not rocket science to install blogsoftware from scratch, I would really like to concentrate on blogging, and not hacking my way around MySQL databases, wouldn’t you?
Even as GoDaddy offers a ‘one click install’ for WordPress, there are still quicks, I guess you find with other hosting services too. After I removed a WordPress site from one of my servers, I found out that the SQL database was deleted, but the files were not. I found the problems and the solutions, but wouldn’t I rather spend that time actually writing blogs? You bet!
So when you choose a hosting service, make sure they have a control panel where you can install your blog software with one click. If not, you will have to do a lot of stuff manually, with mistakes easily being made. In that case, start reading “MySQL and PHP for Dummies” !
Building: Do-it-yourself
After you installed your blog software, the real work starts. Just as with blogs hosted by the blogplatform, you will have to choose a theme, or layout template. By itself, that is easy enough, BUT you have much more choices. And choices are curses. Which template to choose?
Most people make their choice based on the looks of the template, but forget there is more than that. How easy is the SEO (Search Engine Optimization)? How easy can you integrate your scripts for Google Analytics? Can you plug in your meta-data for Google Webmaster and the like? How easy is it to customize your template? How well structured are the style sheets? How easy is it to change the banner picture? How good is the documentation of the theme? Is there support, and a user forum? Are there known issues with popular plug-ins and widgets?
Speaking of which: Widgets… In my case, I used WordPress hosted blogs before, and always cursed the limited choices of widgets they support. Boy, once moving to a selfhosted blog, was I glad with the choices I had. But only for a moment… As “choices are curses” again… Which plug-ins to take? Which work well with the theme, and don’t conflict with others? Support? User forums? Documentation?
Even after you installed it all, you might find things are pretty slow. On blogs hosted by popular blogplatforms, all issues related to performance are taken care of by the host. Using selfhosting, you have to do it all yourself. That includes caching to optimize the blog’s loading speed, and keeping an eye on your hosting service’s performance.
Maintenance: Do-it-yourself
There are people who enjoy building their house themselves, or refurbishing it by hand. They enjoy fiddling around in the weekends repairing broken pipes, repainting doors and window frames. I am not one of them. Nor do I enjoy the fiddling around with blogsoftware trying to solve one problem or the other, which is unrelated to the contents of my blog.
A few months I started BlogTips, a new version of WordPress came out with an urgent security patch. I don’t know about you, but upgrading WordPress is not one of my favourite pass-times, even if WordPress makes it as easy as “a click of a button” (Kudos for that!). I first had to check if all my plug-ins and my theme would work. It turned out some were not. The security upgrade was that urgent, I decided to disable the plug-ins I suspected problems with, and to upgrade anyway. Luckily, the upgrade went fine, but boy, I had cold sweat in my hands when I clicked that “Upgrade Now” button.
I can not imagine what trouble I would have to go through if my site did not come up.
On my WordPress blogs, new releases of widgets and plug-ins come out every week. For the 10 widgets I always use on my blogs, I get an average of 5 updates a week. On one hand, this shows the widgets are well maintained, and kept up-to-date, but on the other hand, each time I click on “Upgrade”, I keep a hand on my heart. And my eyes closed. Swift prayers are always at hand, hoping no error messages come up on the screen.
While I only use pretty well supported and popular widgets, there were times where all went haywire and my blog came up all hooble-de-boob. I had to hack my way through to disable the widget, and try to restate all as was before the update.
I can say that for the four selfhosted WordPress blogs I have, I spend at least two hours per week on the maintenance.
Break glass in case of fire
And as a conscientious blogger, you of course back up your blog. Right? Right?!?! Euh… While blogs hosted by your blogplatform, backups are taken care by them, once you go selfhosting, you will have to ensure you distribute the fire extinguishers, and keep them filled with foam: You need to back up your blog, and learn how to restore it, in case of problems.
Luckily, there are some plug-ins that help you with that, but you need to find out which. And learn how to use them.
Concluding
The moment you decide to move away from blogs hosted by your blogplatform, and decide to follow the road sign “Selfhosted blogs”, you will need to keep in mind it is not as easy as a switch. You will have to invest time to choose the right hosting service. You will have to invest time in building your blog with all its widgets and you will have to invest time to maintain it all.
Is it worth it? That is a really subjective matter. I would say, for the serious blogger, with a certain level of technical knowledge and savvy, it is worth to selfhost a blog. If -on the other hand- you can not stand the sight of HTML, CSS, and get a rash by the thought of having to tune a cache plug-in, I would advise you to think twice.
Picture courtesy GoGrid
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Peter. Flemish, European, aid worker, blogger, expeditioner, sailor, traveller, husband, father, friend, nutcase. Not necessarily in that order. (
The first comment… comes from me.
Blogs are the new ‘corporate website’… I am not sure there is space for both. In theory, there is, but if well done, a blog can ‘exterminate’ a corporate website.
J.
Excellent post, thanks!
I am still trying to convince the public information people that blogs are GOOD! I will forward them this post!
My web guys will have a real go at this post!
It would also be interesting to see some graphs over period of time.. How they evolved as the blog got “to be known”…
Thanks, Lucy… Think this is a good idea!
Peter
We must not keep quite at this moment. The situation in Iran is getting worse by the minute. The events happening in Iran are really sad. I really hope that Iran’s people get back there freedom of speech and democracy.
I’m very happy to see that bloggers all over the world are blogging about this issue to raise awareness. Twitter is also doing a great job.
Iranian people, we are with you.
Thanks for explaining clearly about twitter. Keep posting.
Nice posting. Actually I am trying to increase visitor of my blog. So this article help me lot.
You are doing a good work here may the good Lord continue to grant you good health.
Please am interested to learn how to blog,please me,www.twitter.com/worldcupza
WOW,You’ve tons of good article in your site man….but i wonder why there is no ads on your blog?
You must have at least few right?
If I would blog for money, I would have gone broke or mad a long time ago.
I only have a few text-link ads at the bottom left sidebar.
Peter
Thanks to admin, great posting
very thankful tips i found about tweeting, thanks
There’s a lot of interesting information in that report. It sounds like they really did some homework to come up with those numbers.
“8. Write when there is something you know, and not before”
Totally disagree with that one. Some of the best writing is born from doubt.
Hacking became easy now
everybody are trying to hack something they want.
Thank you for posting this. As a Technotard it is information like this that helps me learn and understand the complexities of Blogging. Keep up the good work.
Microsoft Bing would be the closet competitor of Google. but i still use Google because it shows more relevant results on the serp.
great information,Good post there mate.
Nice post I like reading the reviews
Blogging Tips
I love wordpress myself, and cannot seem to get into any other platform!
i have been evaluating the search results of Microsoft Bing compared to Google and they are comparable. Bing gives almost the same relevant search results just like Google.
I’ve used Wordpress.com, Blogger and Movable Type. Of all of them, Wordpress is definitely the most fun to use.
However, there is one benefit to using Blogger than many of the other sites don’t have: They let you earn money from advertising.
I know this is a non-profit blog, but earning money is one of the reasons I stick with blogger when I want to create a free website.
But I believe a Wordpress.org site hosted on a rented server can be altered to earn an income. Not 100% sure though.
Nonetheless, very good tips you have here.
@Jacob,
Thanks for your comments.
Indeed, WordPress.com (the hosted version of WordPress – on a rented server as you describe it) does not allow advertising.
WordPress.org (the selfhosted version) allows you to do anything, so do Tumblr, Typepad, Movable Type (and Blogger of course).
Peter
Bing search engine gives almost the same search results as Google. Looks like Google will now have a tough competition when it comes to search engine technology.
Good article. perhaps we can lok forward to some videos in the future?
@TwitterTricks:
if only I had time!
P.
wow, wonderful images. it is great to see. i think it is photoshoped, but it’s amazing .
no photoshop. just basic cropping and highlighting contrast…
Peter
No offense or anything, but your site is filled with many things that kind of slow down the loading. Just a friendly hint:
Too many widgets and pictures=Too few viewers
@ATP
If it were you, where would you suggest to make changes?
Is it slow at your end? Over here the home page is 0.5 Mbyte and loads in 6 seconds flat. There are no widgets whatsoever. All images should be cached.
tnx–Peter
@ATP..
oops sorry. there is a widget… The only widget there is, is the ‘Related posts’ at the bottom of each single post…
P.
Here’s an article helping to explain PageRank if anyone is interested in reading more into it.
Tracking your site is really important ,if you want to know your sources people linking to you +You get new ideas by tracking your site so you start building new source.
Sincerely,
Adeel
Age 16
Along with great details, what I like about Google analytics is the simplicity
Blogs are an easy way of earning cash as well as traffic to your site only if done in a tactful way
http://tinyurl.com/y9lr3le
Bing does give search results much like Google but i would have to say that Google still gives more relevant search results
Great article. Very helpful information. Thankyou.
Great tips! Now what about pinging your blog and blog posts? I’ve had my blog Journey to Independence for quite a while now and would like to know how pinging my blog posts will do me any good. I read a lot of tips on how to ping and what plug-ins one can use but none of them that says what the exact benefits of pinging is.
Andy,
This would be an interesting topic to write a post about.
Apart from the advantage of pinging search engines/aggregators, the blog-to-blog pinging seems only a mechanism to “network socially amongst bloggers”:
If blog A pings blog B, this means nothing more than B advising A of an update moreso “reminding of its existence”…
I think the only real (and honest) use of blog-to-blog pinging is as WordPress has implemented it (maybe others too, but am the most familiar with WordPress’ implementation):
for each post, I can automatically (and manually) ping other URLs to advise them I have referred to them in a link, within my post.
As a ‘thank you’, the other blogs can include that ping (with your URL) within the comments of the “referred to” post.
Does that make sense?
Peter
I like twitter, it’s the best tool to drive traffic to my website.
Twitter is really phenomenal, using it right will really help boosts your traffic and loyal readers if you’re lucky
Good tips on promoting blog posts on twitter.. making the tweet interesting is a good idea. Will try it out!
This is so great to see the story of the blog here through the interview. It makes me think that I promised to go back and blog for you
What I most liked about this experience is the natural flow of investment and entusiasme of different people at different times that ensured the growth of the blog and made us all learn together. The new site is excellent. I like how it values the authors while keeping the “whole” of the program evident. Great job! And proud to be part of tyhe story!
Thanks Peter to give us an opportunity to reflect upon and document a journey the team took in the last couple of years! An experience I hope will inspire others.
a nice post and thanks for visiting my blog, like to hear more from you
i love to Twitter my day to day activities to my friends and followers. Twitter is much better than blogging because it is direct to the point and does not require you to type so many unnecessary words.
1h
My take on this: you get what you pay for. If something is critical to what I do, I don’t use a free service. If I don’t have a choice (e.g. in the case of Twitter), I ensure that I have fallback plans — e.g. I am now getting a (paid!)subscription for Backupify.
I don’t see how we have any ‘rights’ when it comes to free services. The only right you have is to leave e.g. Yahoo and go to the competitor (who you might need to pay for), which will impact Yahoo’s bottom line because they will get fewer clicks. You can try to influence them, but rights, no.
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