Should I use a free blogging site or create a new domain/web hosting?

[R0J@m]

I am about to start my own blog, question here is which of the two options should I use? I am a beginner and never done or deal with blogging? Are there any advantages or disadvantages on using one of them? Please tell me more.

I want somebody who really knows about blogging, and also I want somebody who knows about creating it too.

[Jake]

Two 'old school' blog choices.

Google's Blogger.com is perhaps the least restrictive free blog host, generally they have no editorial restrictions other than the worst of the illegal, there are no paid upgrades, it does use a relatively simple proprietary blog engine with a limited number of widgets.

Wordpress.com is the slightly limited, free hosted version of the well known Wordpress blog engine, they do charge for adding a custom domain name.

The industry standard blog engine Wordpress has countless free and commercial plugins and themes, about 17% of the top 1 million web sites use Wordpress. There is a free wordpress host wordpress.com which has some sort of paid upgrades for things like a custom domain name or added revenue earning, using the multi-user version of Wordpress there are some limitations of the free hosted version.

There are no decent free domain names, you either get the Post Office Box like subdomain yoursite.hostname.com or pay about $12/yr for a custom domain name like yoursite.com.

More serious blog writers tend to use a paid host running the unrestricted version of Wordpress for which the host typically has a semi-automatic installer. Paid host are about $8 a month, including 1 domain name, many allow unlimited added sites and domain names which you can get elsewhere for about $12 a year.

[miniaturestove046]

For search engine optimization it is better to have your own website with a URL that includes your most desired keyword right in it. If your website/bog is about pizzas, for example, you might have the URL pizzapiesandmore.com so that you can make it easier to get seen.

It is possible to rank with an unpaid site, however. And if you are just getting starting you are okay starting with an unpaid site. Good luck.

[kyle]

It is best to create your own website. You can receive more traffic this way.

[Jhonedoe]

I recommend you download wordpress and install it on a web host. This way you have more control over your blog.

For domains you could purchase one from http://webhosting-land.com to host a wordpress blog. Fantastic service from them and timely responses to the few support tickets I've sent.

I found webhosting-land.com on webhostingtalk.com

They do have softaculous installed so if you would rather just install wordpress the easy way, with just a click of the mouse you can.

[Michael]

As you are looking for Blog hosting which takes little CPU/RAM resources, the best option for you is shared hosting.

So unless you have a high traffic blog which has visitors more than 2000/day, then a shared hosting can meet your requirements and save you a lot of money.

But if you do have a high traffic blog, you may have to use VPS server or Dedicated server which are more powerful than shared hosting.

If you have a high traffic website which has visitors more than 200/day, then you may face lots of website too busy problems with free hosting.

[Bot]

Hi! Honestly, I think that you should look into getting your own website, it is much better for SEO reasons. Dreamhost is pretty good and is apparently the best web hosting around. I have a $50 off promo voucher.
"50OFFDISCOUNT" - remove the quotes.
That is a huge discount, and is almost half price for a year. They are the most reliable web hosting companies.
You can also try blogger and wordpress.
I have 4 of both and the websites definitely outperform the blogs.
Hope I helped!
Alice

[Jay]

I've been a blogger for several years. If you are serious about blogging you will purchase an actual domain name and web hosting. This is something that you want to do as soon as you can because time is important to any blogger. The longer your website/blog has been online, the more money it will be making. The only downside to this is paying the money for web hosting and domain, which is around $50 per year.