Summary: Before you start your WordPress blog, you have many decisions to make about how and where your blog appears online. WordPress offers two blog hosting options, and you must choose the one that best suits your business and your technical skills.
Before You Start: You want to start a WordPress business blog.
Learning Level: 1 | Social Media Basics
Article Last Updated: Thursday, August 19 2010
WordPress Overview
WordPress gives you two hosting options to make your blog operations easy.
WordPress is one of the most popular blogging tools today with over 18 million bloggers choosing to publish their personal and business blogs with WordPress. But what exactly is WordPress, and how does it help you get your thoughts on the internet?
WordPress is personal publishing software. Sometimes, people refer to it as content-management software. The content is your writing. WordPress, like other blogging software, makes it easy for anyone to publish their words online. You don’t have to know anything technical. You don’t have to know how to build or maintain a website. WordPress takes care of everything technical for you. Your job as a blogger is to write good stuff. WordPress handles the technical parts.
Your Business Online Presence
Before you start using WordPress, there are some decisions you have to make. You are creating a blog website, after all, and you need to understand what WordPress can do and figure out which option makes the most sense for your situation.
Your blog is going to appear on the internet. It’s part of your business online presence. WordPress automates the day-to-day writing and publishing blog posts process. But you need to think about what your business online presence and how your blog fits into that presence.
Many businesses today actually have a separate website and blog, but they link the two together so visitors at the website can jump to the blog, or visitors to the blog can jump to the website, without realizing they are visiting two separate things online. You can do this, too. However, you may need the assistance of the technical people who create and maintain your website for this initial setup piece. It’s really easy to add a link from your website to your new WordPress blog, and from your blog to your website.
Hosting Options
Hosting refers to where you set up your blog. With WordPress, you have two choices, each with distinct differences and advantages.
- WordPress Hosted Blog. WordPress allows you to set up a blog using their software for free and they will manage your online presence for free. In exchange, they limit your set up options and your web address options. These limitations make it easier for them to do the maintenance for your blog.
- Self-Hosted Blog. WordPress allows you to download and use their software for free anywhere on the internet. With this option, you must perform some software updates, and you are responsible to keeping your blog up and running on the internet.
With the self-hosted option, most businesses use a hosting service to keep their blog (and their company website) up and running 24 hours a day. If you add a blog to your website hosting, you may have an additional charge from your hosting service, depending on your contract. Your hosting service is responsible for keeping your blog (and website) running 24 hours a day. However, you are responsible for the software upgrades and other maintenance to the WordPress software. In exchange, you can customize your blog to your heart’s content, and add in additional features available to the WordPress community.
With the WordPress hosted option, you can choose between a list of available design options for your blog, but you cannot customize your blog beyond these options. You have limited options for adding additional features to your blog. There are some additional features you can purchase. In exchange, you get your blog hosted for free and someone else takes care of the software updates.
You can start out using the WordPress hosted option and later switch to the self-hosted option without losing any of your blog content. So choose the option that best suits you starting out, and know that you can change your mind later if your needs change.
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