For anyone who has been following my blog for the past couple months, you probably have seen that I have switched over from free WordPress hosting to my own self-hosting. It took me awhile when I first started my blog to understand the concept that I would actually have to pay in order to customize a lot of my blog and receive Google Analytics. But after awhile, you can get a little tired of the limitations of free hosting from what ever blogging platform you use. I realize I could have used Blue Host (which eliminates a lot of the installation steps for you) but I just didn’t like having to pay everything up front for a year. I’m on baby budget y’all :-p . We’re in a recession.
Now I’m no web developer so I had to dive deep into research in order to find out how the heck I can self-host my own blog. And let me tell you it was a great undertaking for myself but totally worth it in the end. A great source I found was this posting from another blog called “Self Hosting WordPress in 10 Easy Steps.” This posting then referred me to a video series called “Become A Blogger.” The video series was very helpful but a few things you should take into consideration when viewing these videos:
- Use Host Gator like they suggest. I especially like it because you have the option to pay month to month, it’s cheaper and they’re support services are really good.
- Remember you have to wait a day or two for your name servers to “propagate” through the web, so give yourself a few days to undergo self-hosting. I forgot this tidbit.
- If you’re a Mac user (such as me), you should keep that in mind and if possible use the FTP Client, Filezilla on a PC (I had to because the user interface was too different on a Mac and I got confused).
- Even though the videos say to download the WordPress software they’re using, download the most current version; it doesn’t make a difference in the installation process and who doesn’t want to most update version of software, right?
- If you’re using GoDaddy.com in order to buy your URL and as an email client, make sure you switch your email records back over to GoDaddy since Host Gator will switch them over to them and you won’t get your emails any longer. This happened to me.
Other than that I was able to self-host my blog fairly easy. But there wasn’t a lot of information on the implications of self-hosting so I thought I’d share my little adventures I experienced. After you complete install, you can pick almost any theme you want for your blog and have so much more flexibility. I especially like I can use Google Analytics now that I’m self-hosting. With WordPress.com you are not able to.
If anyone has questions on how the heck I self-hosted, I offer my assistance. God speed and get your self-hosting now!
