Web Hosting For Blogs

By Author: Ivan Cuxeva Jr
Total Articles: 779
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When it comes to hosting a content management system which makes information dynamically available to readers an appropriate hosting service is required. Most webmasters know the difference between free hosts and paid hosts, basically free hosts are not recommended accounts even if it is for personal web sites because there are several downsides to this particular service.

To name a few: most free hosts do not offer MySQL databases which are key to running all the information required to run a blog, information such as articles, polls, statistics, add ons, template system, etc. are all stored within this database type. Not having this feature available will only leave the option of creating static web sites which are hard to manage after a certain amount of articles or posts.

Another key element free hosts interfere with is: advertisement. Almost all webmasters try to monetize their quality content through ad networks such as Adsense, Commission Junction, etc. or by selling a particular product/service. The problem with free hosts lies in the fact that several, untargeted ads are placed in areas of high visibility ...
... within the blog, the most common area is the header. Imagine you run a blog about children's education and protection against internet predators, what would be the reaction of your readers if they saw a huge 700 x 100 banner at the top of your blog advertising an adult dating service?, wouldn't you think such advertisements defeat the purpose of your source?, not to even mention the pop ups.

An option to free this disadvantageous service lies in blog platform hosting through the CMS provider, for instance, Blogger (Google owned) and Wordpress both offer free hosting services which are ad free, the only downside to this solution is that your visitors will face a lot of trouble to find your site because the URL is not very practical. Most visitors remember a web site by its design but more importantly by its domain. Blogger and Wordpress offer a "sub-domain" hosting option which means that your blog web address will look somewhat like "blogger/wordpress.yourblogname.com" (replace blogger or wordpress depending the platform you use).

A good way to approach these problems is by acquiring a paid hosting account which these days are extremely cheap and are well within the budget range of everybody. The most popular solution is virtual hosting, but not all paid virtual hosting providers are right for blogs either. The most important aspects and features you should look for are: one click platform installation, blogging software tech support, platform variety, MySQL database allowance, email accounts, a web server able to run multiple CGI scripts, Perl modules, web management system, FTP, ImageMagick script, etc.

All of these requirements need to be fulfilled in order to successfully run a blog on a server. The best way to decide which service is best, is to look at your platform of choice, go through the system requirements and match it to your service provider. Remember that all blogging applications will require different resources.