Hosting is just one of the many tools one requires to implement a successful blog today. Can you use a .blogger or .wordpress extensive with your blog?

Absolutely, but I see value in your own .com extension. Credibility, exclusiveness, options, and overall blog potential increases with your own .com domain name. But, with innovation comes risk, numerous options and questions. If you’re wondering what risk is involved, never forget costs. But in both cases, time will generally be your largest cost.

Hosting with a trusted partner, friend, business, or hopefully combination of all three is your best solution. I doubt this will be the first time you learn the hosting business is saturated. With low startup and maintenance costs, buying a server or three worldwide is manageable. Throw a site on it (even a blog) and one can become a hosting provider.

Remember, trusted partners add value. Will they be the cheapest? No. And for good reason. Sometimes, even today in a global outsourced economy, you pay for what you get. You want it fast and cheap, you got it but it won’t be reliable. You want it reliable and quick, it won’t be cheap!

Tonight I had a chance to sit down with Nick Manners from Nashville, TN. His company website, penecta.com states to provide “fast, reliable and comprehensive service that we believe you will be completely satisfied with.” After speaking with him, he tells me he is constantly answering emails, taking phone calls and providing that “personal touch” I like to hear.  Call me a fan of the pre-1990 economy, when a support call was considered top priority. Some companies get it, many don’t. Hosting in my experience is one industry where customer support is crucial.

Issues that arise come from FTP upload errors, server crashes, changing Name server names, parking domains, changing blog themes, adding advertising, etc. I could go on all day because these hosting questions were some of my concerns. If you need assistance with these a phone call to your hosting provider, speaking English, not talking down to you, and generally concerned makes all the difference.

For these reasons and more, Penecta.com is my companies hosting solution.

What are the steps in setting up your own .com Blog? First, secure a domain name from a domain name seller, like  GoDaddy.com. If you are setting up a blog for yourself, check “yourname” .com first. Start there. Then buy some .com’s on what you want to digitally blog about. Football? Family? Etc. Buy a few, one blog can be imported into two, three, etc. very quickly.

Find a partner to host your blog with. As mentioned before, a trusted provider, like someone local for me, in Penecta.com, worked great. Many times the site you purchased your domain from has hosting plans. Search for a price, again, value costs more. Reliability cost more, as does speed, service and long-term plans.

Next, locate a WYSIWYG editor for installing on your new hosted server. Many times, installing wordpress engines, for example, is very straightforward. Here is a guide from Wikipedia that is pretty straightforward. In many times, the hosting company has built in software with many programs ready for you to install, like Wordpress, Joomla, Blogger, and other value applications.n If not, research an FTP uploader like FileZilla.

Value Applications Example Graphic

Hosting home graphic example

At this point, depending on what value applications you uploaded with your FTP server or hosting plan’s site software online, you are ready to beginning customizing your blog.

I have to pause to say that Digital PR Consulting does all the above, professionally, with a custom theme and graphics. This includes buying the domain, setting up the files, and working with you every step of the way. We even teach you how to manage, upload content, advertise, and install widgets to get the most of your site. There are many companies all over the country, but if you are in Nashville please see us first. We are happy to provide advice even if we never see a dime.

Customizing a blog is so much fun when you get the hang of it. When I began, just started with a free wordpress template and modify it (totally allowed). To this day, I still find incredible Wordpress Free Templates that work great. In fact, the theme for this site comes from DBT Wordpress themes. Using Adobe Photoshop, Illustator, Fireworks, InDesign, and Dreamweaver, modifily everything from code to graphics is almost limitless when you get into it.

So, to recap a bit, now you hopefully have learned a unique .com name for your blog is a better bet. You have looked into hosting options, considering value over cost. You have installed a WYSIWYG editor on the hosting server. You have found a theme you like and have made an modifications you deemed neccessary, or not.

I hope some of this helped. Just my thoughts on digital paper. Till next time, see you in the comments.

Best regards,

Adam Faragalli

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