There are many tools out there that allow you to create blogs. Each of them have their strengths and weaknesses in my opinion. Having tried a few of the free options out there I decided to follow the suggestions of many and move to a self-hosted WordPress architecture. It has been a great move.
Hosting
Where should I host it? This is one of the hardest decisions for people building websites or blogs today. There are so many hosting options available. When I went looking to bring up a self-hosted WP blog, I have some specific criteria. Since I am an ASP.Net developer who wanted to use WP, the host had to support ASP.Net, PHP, MSSQL, and also MySQL. Because of some of the development projects that I have worked on, I wanted a host that would allow me to host in a “Full Trust Environment”. That basically means that I can run ASP.Net without some of the limitations that other hosts put in place.
With those criteria and the others (performance, reliability, etc) I found myself making the decision to use SoftSys Hosting. So far, I have not regretted that decision. They have met my needs completely.
Themes
Once I chose SoftSys and installed WP 2.7 (not the one-click install from SoftSys) I had to go find a theme that met my needs. WP has thousands of available themes. Depending on your selection many are even free. So I decided on my theme (StudioPress) and installed it. With that the standard formatting was complete.
Some great places for Themes:
Customizable
The theme selected obviously didn’t have my logo, so I needed to add that. By simply customizing the header document, the logo had been integrated. Over the last few months, I have been able to add many options and customize the template to fit my needs and desires. It is truly amazing to me how simple it is to customize the templates to meet my needs. If you have a basic understanding of HTML and CSS and the ability to search the Internet you can probably customize your templates relatively easily.
Plug Ins
For many of the customizations that you will need, you will not need to customize the code yourself. Thousands of WordPress plugins exist that will serve your needs. They are basically little components that allow you to customize WP to meet your needs. There are plugins that will help with SEO, Security, Social Media, and on and on. Most plugins are simply uploaded via the plugin manager screen and activated. You then will simply need to configure the specific plugin and off you go.
Sum it up
Self-hosted WordPress is a terrific solution if you are looking to have full control over your blog. It gives you lots of ability to customize and make the blog truly yours. Once installed, it won’t take long to get used to the very user-friendly interface. Then you can begin customizing the installation to meet you needs with Themes, plugins, and custom code. It is a great solution that I would highly recommend.
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