Information Technology Reference
In-Depth Information
IV
Finding a Blog-Friendly Host
When looking at possible hosts for your blog, you'll need to make several decisions ahead of time.
Some of these options are covered in Chapter 2, “Starting Your Blog Right”:
•
Do you want to have your own domain name, and how do you plan to register that name?
•
How much time are you willing to commit to installing, updating, and administering your blog?
•
Are you planning to include a lot of images or stream audio or video from your blog?
•
What are you willing to pay for blog hosting?
As with most things WordPress, you've got options when considering where to host your blog:
•
ISPs offer free or low-cost websites to their users.
•
WordPress.org recommends a few select WordPress-friendly hosts at http://wordpress.org/
hosting. (These hosts pay Automattic a small fee for the listing.) These hosts offer one-click
WordPress installations, access to multiple databases
(good for running several blogs simultaneously), and finan-
cial support to WordPress to keep the WordPress websites
and support forums up and functional. Some of these hosts
come pretty cheap, too.
note
Choose your domain name before
shopping for a web host. See
“Playing the Domain Name
Game” in Chapter 2 and “Getting
a Good Domain Name” in Chapter
10, “Adding Upgrades, Audio, and
Video,” for tips on finding and
registering your domain.
•
Some hosting companies offer a range of support options
for your WordPress blog. Look for the support you need.
Shopping for a web host generally involves obtaining enough
disk space, bandwidth, and support for third-party software
like MySQL databases and WordPress.
Disk space at a web host is the same thing as disk space on
your own computer. If a web host offers 10 gigabytes (GB) of
space on its hard drives with your account, when you bump up
against that limit you can't save any more there.
Fortunately, simple text-based blogs have files measured in kilo-
bytes (KB), and you could have many hundreds of posts before
you even come close to hitting a 1GB space limit. Add a small
image to each post, or the occasional video clip, and a minimum
of 3GB should last you through your first hosting contract.
Bandwidth is the size of the pipe that brings data to and from
your site. Your bandwidth use depends on two things: the size of
your files and the popularity of your site. If you use your blog to
keep 10 invited guests current on your daily life, bandwidth limi-
tations are essentially meaningless to you. If you are a pop music
star hosting a daily hour-long video blog designed to keep your
millions of fans current on your daily life, you should get the
biggest pipe available.
tip
Before you sign a hosting con-
tract, make sure you understand
what your host does when you
begin to get close to your space
limit. You should hear from them
when you hit 80% of your allot-
ted space. The good news is that
should you underestimate your
space needs, your host should
be able to upgrade your space
for an additional, but reason-
able, fee. Be sure to shop
around, as some hosts are better
known for honoring their
promises than others.
