{"id":339,"date":"2012-08-22T15:44:37","date_gmt":"2012-08-22T21:44:37","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/patrickhester.com\/?p=339"},"modified":"2012-08-23T11:53:06","modified_gmt":"2012-08-23T17:53:06","slug":"how-to-start-a-blog","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/patrickhester.com\/?p=339","title":{"rendered":"How to Start a Blog"},"content":{"rendered":"

In today’s world, having a website is the most basic form of marketing anyone can have.\u00a0 I’d go so far as to say a website has replaced the business card in your marketing toolbelt.\u00a0 A website is cheap in the scheme of things, and can be cheaper than that business card when you look at how easily it can be updated and the long term impact having a good site can have.\u00a0 Can you still find people charging upwards of $10,000 for a ‘basic’ website?\u00a0 Sure.\u00a0 And if you’re a multibillion<\/em> dollar company, that’s probably an investment worth making.<\/p>\n

But there are affordable options and solutions for everyone out there, from the author looking to start their platform, the sales person looking to connect with existing and potential clients, all the way up to the small business owner needing to jazz up their online presence.<\/p>\n

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Today, I want to look at the pros and cons of free website services, concentrating on three very popular offerings; WordPress.com, Blogger.com and Weebly.com.\u00a0 Each has strengths and weaknesses, but provide solid platforms for folks working with a tight budget.<\/p>\n

1)\u00a0 WordPress.com<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

The WordPress software is called a CMS platform, or Content Management System.\u00a0 It supports third-party software packages in the form of plug-ins, and custom themes via their robust theme system.\u00a0 WordPress actually has two sides; a non-profit software suite distributed through WordPress.org, and a commercial version available at WordPress.com.\u00a0 The differences between the two are many, but it comes down to ‘do it yourself’ versus ‘we’ll do it for you’.<\/p>\n

With WordPress.com, you don’t install anything, don’t have to pay for hosting, don’t have to do updates to the software or any of the other technical things that can be a barrier for some folks.\u00a0 You visit the site, sign up for an account, and you can be blogging within minutes.\u00a0 54.5 Million Blogs<\/a><\/strong> are currently hosted on WordPress.com.<\/p>\n

Can a WordPress.com blog be my website?\u00a0 Absolutely.\u00a0 WordPress offers a lot of options ‘under the hood’, including the ability to create a home page people see when visiting the site, rather than automatically taking them to ‘the blog’.\u00a0 Just look at the site you’re on right now – I built it using WordPress and the home page is a welcome page, not the blog.\u00a0 They even offer up a tutorial<\/a> on how to make this happen over on WordPress.com.<\/p>\n

Here’s a WordPress.com site:<\/p>\n

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Upside: The UPS Blog<\/p><\/div>\n

Pros of WordPress.com<\/strong>: Free to setup and host (basic site), lots of basic options to play with, social media integration, tracks traffic, links, etc., little or no maintenance required, easy to update and maintain, live within minutes<\/em><\/span>.<\/p>\n

Cons of WordPress.com<\/strong>: You are limited to a subdomain of WordPress.com, ie, http:\/\/mygreatsite.wordpress.com.\u00a0 If you wanted http:\/\/\/www.mygreatsite.com, you would have to upgrade to a paid hosting plan for that.\u00a0 You are also limited in the themes you can choose from and, again, you can expand the list by upgrading to a hosted plan or purchasing a ‘premium theme’.\u00a0 Same goes for plug-ins and widgets, you are limited to a small number of each unless you upgrade.\u00a0 Last, any real customization of your theme will cost you $30 a year.<\/p>\n

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Blogger.com’s Template System<\/p><\/div>\n

2)\u00a0 Blogger.com<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

Like WordPress, Blogger.com offers a quick and easy setup, free hosting, themes\/templates, widgets and plug-ins (called gadgets).\u00a0 Since Blogger is part of Google, they also offer integration with Google’s suite of tools, like Analytics, AdSense, YouTube and the Google+ social media platform.\u00a0 Everything is tied together through your Google Profile (which you create).<\/p>\n

Unlike WordPress.com, Blogger doesn’t have a premium package – it’s all free.\u00a0 This also means that what you see is what you get.\u00a0 There are a lot of bells and whistles, so getting your site up and running quickly can happen, but you might find yourself delving into the different areas to see what’s available, slowing down your progress.<\/p>\n

Here’s a Blogger.com powered site:<\/p>\n

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It’s Google – they Own Blogger, so they might be cheating here…<\/p><\/div>\n

Pros of Blogger.com:<\/strong> Easy integration with your other Google products, plenty of options to customize your theme, 100% free.<\/p>\n

Cons of Blogger.com:<\/strong> Slightly more complicated on the setup, theme options can be overwhelming for a new user, I am not a fan of Google’s help documents and Blogger, sadly, isn’t an exception to this – while writing this post, I went round and round within their knowledgebase trying to find things only to come across dead ends or links to videos that had been removed.\u00a0 Disappointing.<\/p>\n

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Weebly.com<\/p><\/div>\n

3) Weebly.com<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

My next pick is definitely more of a business oriented site.\u00a0 Like the WordPress.com above, Weebly offers both a free and premium version.\u00a0 Features include a drag and drop website builder, custom themes, blogs, image galleries, image editing, stats, etc.\u00a0 Sign up is free.<\/p>\n

As for other costs, well, they don’t list any.\u00a0 For me, that’s always a speed bump.\u00a0 Two kinds of companies don’t list pricing; the one’s that don’t charge anything at all, and the ones who charge so much that they’re afraid to advertise those prices because it’ll turn people off.\u00a0 Most ‘free’ sites subsidize the site by having ads of some sort – Weebly says they don’t do that (they do have a small footer ad on every site).<\/p>\n

After a little digging around, I did come up with some pricing:\u00a0 Basic Plan\/Site is free with the above mentioned footer ad.\u00a0 The Pro plan will cost you $3.99 per month if you sign up for a whole year.\u00a0 (The prices show up only after you sign up for the free version)\u00a0 There are discounts if you sign up for multiple years.\u00a0 Domain names (if you want your own http:\/\/\/www.mygreatsite.com) is an extra fee, which isn’t any different from the other services mentioned above.<\/p>\n

Here’s an example of a Weebly.com Site:<\/p>\n

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C3 Enterprises<\/p><\/div>\n

All of these services have pros and cons to consider.\u00a0 When looking for a website service, remember to keep in mind not only what you need right now, but what you might need later on and choose the service that can best accommodate both.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In today’s world, having a website is the most basic form of marketing anyone can have.\u00a0 I’d go so far as to say a website has replaced the business card in your marketing toolbelt.\u00a0 A website is cheap in the … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[47],"tags":[48,49,52,82,51,81,99],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2yh0r-5t","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/patrickhester.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/339"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/patrickhester.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/patrickhester.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/patrickhester.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/patrickhester.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=339"}],"version-history":[{"count":11,"href":"https:\/\/patrickhester.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/339\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":437,"href":"https:\/\/patrickhester.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/339\/revisions\/437"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/patrickhester.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=339"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/patrickhester.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=339"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/patrickhester.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=339"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}