I Choose To Self-Host My WordPress

One of the blogs I follow posted this question “Are you on WordPress.org?” 

Some of the concerns prompted me to write this post.

So, here’s the skinny.

When I first decided to start blogging I had looked at all my options. After my research, I decided WordPress was my best option. Little did I know, there were two options. This was the subject of one of my first post. You can read about it here.

I ended up starting a blog-site on the WordPress.com platform. My decision was made simply because I was impatient and didn’t want to wait until I figured out how to implement a Self-Hosted WordPress Site. Unfortunately, I didn’t fully understand the benefits of the Self-Hosted option. 

Benefits Of A Self-Hosted WordPress Site

Since then, I’ve learned a lot about Self-Hosting a WordPress blog. I’ve discovered there is a lot more freedom involved in a Self-Hosted Site.

Here are some of the benefits I have discovered: 

• You can install whatever plugin you desire. 
• You can customize the themes more freely.  For instance, you can alter a theme by making it a child theme, giving you complete creative freedom.
• You can implement AdSense on your site. AdSense is a free, simple way to earn money by placing ads on your website.
• You can take advantage of Adwords and get paid when people click to visit your website.
• You can generate revenue from your site with personalized, unobtrusive native ads, affiliate links, and more by using Shareaholic.
• You can potentially earn up to 10% in advertising fees by becoming an Amazon Associate.
• You can form your own list of your subscribers to take to whatever platform you choose and create your own newsletters, e-blast, e-zines with MailChimp.

These are only some of the things I’ve found. However, I bet the possibilities are endless.

Disadvantages Of A Self-Hosted WordPress Site

Unfortunately, there are some disadvantages of a Self-Hosted WordPress Site versus one hosted at WordPress.com.

Here are some of the disadvantages:

• You do not have the advantage of the “reader function” that WordPress.com has to offer. 
• You do not have the advantage of the “reblog function” that WordPress.com has to offer.
• You do not have the “follow button” that WordPress.com has to offer.
• You lose all of your followers from WordPress.com

Sounds bad huh?

Don’t fret. Here are some solutions:

• To get the “reader function” install the Jetpack plugin on your Self-Hosted Site and link it to your WordPress.com account.
• To replace the “reblog function” use the Press This bookmarklet.
• To add a “follow button” use the WordPress.com Follow Button generator.
• To retain all of the followers from WordPress.com use the Subscription migration tool.

Web Hosting And Domain Name

If you decide to go with a Self-Hosted Site I suggest you use an Apache distribution like XAMPP to practice on your local host before taking it to a web host environment.

You will have to buy a domain name if you don’t have one already. Even if you did buy a domain name from WordPress.com you will still have to transfer it over to a Domain Name Registrar.

I did a lot of research and found I liked Gandi.net the best.

Here are some of the reasons I chose Gandi.net:

• Full Domain Management. You can control any aspect of your domain through the administration page.
• You get a free one-page website, with many templates to choose from.
• You get a free blog-site connected to the main address of your domain or a secondary address, even if your DNS servers are not Gandi’s. With as many writers as you want, 1 gig of disk space for your multimedia files, and 10 gigs per month of data transfer (that’s several tens of thousand visitors)
• A Standard SSL certificate for free the first year.
• Independent hosting. You are free to use the hosting provider of your choice while managing your domain name with Gandi.
• 5 e-mail mailboxes for your domain.
• 50 percent of Simple Hosting.
• Private Domain Registration.

I also chose to use their Simple Hosting Plan as well.

My Instance is a 10 gig Apache Server with PHP and MySQL able to handle an estimate of 60 GB of traffic a month. And since there is no contract, I can upscale as needed, should my traffic increase.

Right now I have three blogs running out of this one server, for $60 bucks a year.

Well, I hope this helped.

Good luck with whatever you choose. Just have fun!!

Oh Yeah!

If you would like notification of new post from my self-hosted site I am providing the following link so that you never miss a post.  If you would like to do this, just click below.