Choosing the right web hosting for your blog
Choosing the right web hosting is important for a reliable blogging website.
It can be the difference between a fast loading website or a slow one that's constantly down.
In this guide we'll show the best options for you to choose from for your blog.
Blogging can be used to many ways, including how to guides or general day-to-day life experiences.
Blogging articles are great for finding useful information about particular subject or topic.
According to the newest 2021 data, a staggering 7.5 million blog posts were published daily.
By now you've probably decided on which topic you want to write about.
If you haven't decided, it's usually best to choose a subject you know most about.
Lets choose "football" as an example.
The subject can also be broken down into topics, this could be football teams, or greatest goals for each month or even latest table fixtures.
Remember blogs don't just have to be text, or one topic.
You can also add images and video to make it more interesting for the reader.
We have a few options for bloggers, depending on your budget.
There are free and paid options - we recommend the paid ones to help you get noticed more on search engines.
Here are 8 free blogging platforms you can use
Although you have to pay to blog, you have more ownership of your website as it's on your own domain
Here are 3 paid blogging platforms you can use
We've now got the topic you'd like to blog about and preferably the content management system you'd like to use.
If you've chosen a free option you can skip this step, however if you're serious about blogging you'll need your own domain.
Having your own domain or several domains if you've have the time to create regular content is a great way for people to search for you on search engines.
You should ideally be researching the domain as this will be what visitors type into the browser to search for you.
You can do this by typing in your desired domain name here.
Once you've ordered your domain you can move onto the next section
Next up we've got website hosting, you'll need this to start creating your website.
If you've decided you want to use WordPress, the number one content management system, you can order here.
If you want to use a different blogging platform that is listed in the Softaculous software section, you can order from here.
We recommend starting with shared hosting where resources are shared on a server, this is the best budget friendly option for small and medium sized websites.
Choose a hosting provider where the server location if preferably in the same country.
This will give you faster loading times as the server is closer to you.
Factors you need to consider before taking out any hosting package
Another important factor is how long has the hosting company been in business? You should be looking at least 5 years so your website doesn't suddenly go down and your hosting company goes bust.
Should this happen and the company does go bust, you'll lose your website and data, unless you've made an offsite backup elsewhere.
As we've mentioned in many of our other blogs, always research your web hosting provider.
Bloggers don't generally need much disk space, especially if you're not using any images.
We've heard lots of stories saying they bought a cheap hosting package and they are having lots of issues.
Cheap hosting is likely to be hosting on old, outdated server hardware.
This can lead to overcrowded servers, causing slow and sluggish websites.
Find a reliable provider that has everything you need for a successful blog.
You may want to consider finding a provider that offers the option of upgrading as your website grows, saving you the hassle of changing hosting provider.
We also provide an anytime upgrade, should you need more resources for your website.
So, you may be thinking what is WordPress?
Well, it's the most used CMS (Content Management System), WordPress is undoubtably the best blogging platform out there at the moment.
WordPress was created back in May 2003.
WordPress is a free and open-source content management system written in PHP and paired with a MySQL or MariaDB database.
Features include a plugin architecture and a template system, referred to within WordPress as Themes.
To put into context how many people use it, 43% of the web is built on WordPress.
Bloggers, small businesses, and Fortune 500 companies use WordPress than all other options combined.
It's also one of the reasons we offer WordPress as a hosting package, because it's so popular.
I think heard you say, but it's free why do I have to pay for it?
Answer is you don't, you only pay for your domain and hosting to keep your costs down.
Setting up your own blog using WordPress takes around 5-10 minutes, depending on how many plugins and theme you want to use.
For this example we are going to be using our own hosting control panel as a guide.
Presuming you've now ordered your domain and our WordPress web hosting, login to your control panel.
To login enter your domain in a browser and add :2222 to the end.
It should look something like this yourdomain.com:2222
Hit enter and it should send you to your hosting account login page.
Enter your username and password you created when you signed up to login.
You should now be logged in and see your dashboard.
Now you've logged in select the "Extra Features" tab and go to "Softaculous Auto Installer".
Select "WordPress" and press install.
In the "Software Setup" section you can choose the URL structure to install WordPress.
normally the "In Directory" can be empty, removing the "WP".
Select http:// if you haven't yet installed your SSL or https:// if you have.
We also recommend an SSL certificate if you are going to be selling anything on your site to prevent phishing attacks.
It's also become a Google ranking factor, making it even more important for ranking your website properly on search engines.
SSL certificates can be installed in your hosting control panel under "Account Manager" tab then select "SSL Certificates".
Choose "Free & automatic certificate from Let's Encrypt", select where you'd like to install your SSL and press save.
Your SSL will be installed within a few minutes.
Back to the installation page, complete as needed and press install.
After installation has completed you can now login using the link or by typing your domain once again in the browser and adding /wp-admin to the end.
It should look something like this
With SSL certificate installed https://yourdomain.com/wp-admin
Without SSL certificate installed http://yourdomain.com/wp-admin
Any of the other parts can be removed in the widgets section.
Now that you have an installed version of WordPress on your domain for blogging, you'll be able to login and see your dashboard.
To create your first blog post go to the "Posts" tab then select "Add new".
You will be take to create your first blog from here.
Once you've finished writing your blog, press "Publish" to show on your website.
You'll now be able to see your post on your website along with other samples that are on there when WordPress is first installed.
You can remove posts in the "Posts" section of WordPress.
You can remove pages in the "Pages" section of WordPress.
Don't forget to also check out the themes section and plugins area to customise the website to how you want it.
Blogging is a great way to share memories and information that may valuable to visitors coming onto your website.
Remember to research your domain and domain topic to give you the best start, having your own domain and hosting will give you an advantage over free blogging platforms.
Aim to create at least 1 blog per month, the more the better!
If you're a serious blogger wanting the best for your blogs to help them rank, check out our make your website rank higher in Google & other search engines.
Over time you'll start to notice an increase in domain and page ranking.
Content is king when it comes to ranking, the more content the better.
Aim to have around 1000 plus words per article, you can use word counter to see how many words you have per blog.
We can't seem to talk about blogging without someone getting onto WordPress.
Some may find it a bit difficult to navigate at first, it does become easier the more you use it.
There are also loads of YouTube blogs you can check out simply by entering the term "WordPress tutorial" in the YouTube search bar.
We hope you've found this blog interesting, to start your blogging journey check out our WordPress web hosting packages.