Using a Free Blogging Service vs. Blogging on Your Own Hosted Site

Using a Free Blogging Service vs. Blogging on Your Own Hosted Site How to Decide Which One is Best for You Includes examples of plugins , themes and widgets .

Using a Free Blogging Service vs. Blogging on Your Own Hosted Site Mark McLaren mcbuzz.com twitter.com/mcbuzz

Free Blogging Services
WordPress.com
Blogger.com
Squarespace.com
LiveJournal.com and many others

Third-party Hosted Blogs
You choose the host & pay for hosting
Some hosts setup the blog for you
You can modify source files & add plugins

Before You Create a Blog
What are your goals?
Who is your audience?
What is your budget?
How much time can you spend on:
Design
Learning HTML & CSS
Learning to use widgets, plugins, etc. ?

Depending on your audience…

… a generic blog design may be fine.

Major Considerations
Ease of Use
Flexibility
Good User Interface / Sticky Design
+ 2 more (discussed in a few minutes)

Ease of Use
If it's not easy, you and your staff won't use it. Totally defeats the purpose.
Flexibility

Ease of Use
Flexibility
You want to be able to add new stuff and update stuff to increase stickiness and make it easy for users.

Ease of Use
Flexibility
In some cases, you need the latest design to keep a young audience coming back. But don’t forget the basics. Good UI is for everyone. Without it, you will lose visitors and defeat the purpose of having a blog.

Plugins and Themes
Plugin: an easy way to “extend” or add features to your blog
Plugins are free
Hundreds available
Theme: the set of files that constitutes your blog’s design (page layout, fonts, colors, graphics)

Plugin Example: “Share This”

When you install the “Share This” plugin in your blog, it puts a button after every post. Readers can click on the button to let others know about the post or to bookmark it.

The “Share This” plugin is free. You can install it in about ten minutes by downloading a file from WordPress.org and uploading it to your 3 rd -party hosted site using FTP software.

The “Share This” button at the end of a post on the mcbuzz.com website.

Some features – like this “Notify me via e-mail” checkbox – must be added manually or by installing a plugin. You cannot get them with free blogs hosted on WordPress.com , Blogger.com, etc. Comments. “ Notify me via e-mail when these comments are updated.”

Plugins like “Recent Comments” come with WordPress.com, but other great plugins like Related Posts” do not . Comments.

The Plugin Directory of over 2,500 plugins on WordPress.org

Example of a Theme This is a WordPress theme. Themes on Blogger.com are similar in most respects. They are easy to use, easy to switch from one to another, etc.

Changing your theme is easy In the WordPress administration panel, go to Design > Themes. Click on the theme you want to use.

Same content, different theme

What about Widgets?
Widget: a really easy way to “extend” or add features to your blog
Available on free blog services and on third-party hosted blogs

The Flickr Photos widget has been added to the left sidebar.

To add a widget, go to Design > Widgets in the WordPress administration panel. Click the Add button. Then click the Edit button for that widget and fill in the blanks.

For the Flickr Photos widget, you just fill in the title you want to display in the sidebar, fill in the Flickr RSS URL you get from your Flickr account page, and select the number of thumbnails you want to appear in the sidebar.

Major Considerations (+2 more)
Ease of Use
Flexibility
Branding
Search Engine Optimization

Branding
A 3 rd -party hosted solution is required for real branding capability. And, you can make your whole site with WordPress.

There are many aspects to this.
Blogger and WordPress.com do several things well in terms of SEO, but the 3 rd -party hosted option is definitely best.
A number of technical details follow on the next two slides. Send me a comment – or email me using the link at mcbuzz.com – if you want to learn more.

Many SEO plugins are available for WordPress.
Some hosted solutions restrict SEO techniques, like .htaccess for permalinks (important!) and adding “www.” in front of a domain.
Also, customizing robots.txt and the PHP header files for NOINDEX of pages like Archives pages is important and can’t be done on the free blog services.

Even tags in <head> section of the HTML should be customized: description, keywords
Good formatting should be used, especially use of header tags <h1>, <h2>, bold & lists
If you move your blog, you want to keep existing URLs or to be able to redirect.
Domain name is also a consideration – but free services allow you to use your own domain.

Custom WordPress Designs Design by e-CBD www.e-cbd.com

Custom WordPress Designs Design by OMSH ohmystinkinheck.com

Blogger.com
Ease of Use – very good
Flexibility – fair (some widgets)
Good User Interface / Sticky Design – good (themes are great but limited)
Branding – limited
Search Engine Optimization – fair

Blogger.com & domains
You can use your own domain mydomain.com
You can use a subdomain news.mydomain.com
You cannot use a subdirectory mydomain.com/news/
You can buy a domain on Blogger.com

WordPress.com
Ease of Use – excellent (tutorials)
Flexibility – fair to good
Good User Interface / Sticky Design – good (thousands of themes)
Branding – limited
Search Engine Optimization – fair to good

WordPress.com & domains
You can use your own domain mydomain.com
You can use a subdomain news.mydomain.com
You cannot use a subdirectory mydomain.com/news/
You can buy a domain on WordPress.com

WordPress on 3 rd -Party Host
Ease of Use – fair (excellent with skill or $$)
Flexibility – good (excellent with skill or $$)
Good User Interface / Sticky Design – good to excellent
Branding – excellent (with skill or $$)
Search Engine Optimization – very good to excellent (with skill or $$)

Questions or Comments?
Visit:
WordPress.org
WordPress.com
Blogger.com
And also:
mcbuzz.com
mcbuzz.wordpress.com

Thank you! Mark McLaren mcbuzz.com Tel. (209) 962-9119

Using a Free Blogging Service vs. Blogging on Your Own Hosted Site

by McBuzz Communications on Jul 17, 2008

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Using a Free Blogging Service vs. Blogging on Your Own Hosted Site Presentation Transcript