So a big question a lot of people face when they first start blogging is how to set up their blog. Should it be self hosted on your own domain or can you get away with just having a .wordpress.com domain?

What’s the difference?

A WordPress.com blog a is a free blog that you set up. Its all hosted by wordpress themselves. To have a blog on your own domain you need to buy the domain (about $10), get it hosted (from about $7/month) and then upload the wordpress platform (most hosts will do this automatically for you). WordPress.com blogs are a limited version of the self hosted wordpress available at wordpress.org and give you a domain name like yourblog.wordpress.com

So which do you choose?

WordPress.com

Pros:
Free!

Quick and easy to set up

Requires almost no technical knowledge

Posibility to gain traffic through WordPress “Blogs of the Day” or Blogger search bar (very limited traffic in my experience).

WordPress handles backups

Cons:
Cant upload plugins (this is a major).

Limited to the standard themes (70+ themes and growing… slowly)

Can’t run adsense => can’t make money with adsense

Can’t edit your theme or any other part of the blog.

Your Own Domain (wordpress.org)

Pros:
Can upload plugins

Thousands of themes to choose from online (free and paid)

Complete control of your theme.

Can run adsense and profit from your blog

More professional on your own theme.

Can add it to your existing website (eg yourwebsite.com/blog)

Great community

Cons
Costs

More technical to set up

You need to handle backups yourself

Traffic spikes might cause your hosting to crash (5 Things You Should Know About Making The Digg Front Page)

My 10 Cents

I used a free platform for a grand total of 1 week before I realised I couldn’t make any changes to my theme or add plugins so I made the switch. I think owning your own domain has value and looks less amateur than the free blogs plus I wanted to run adsense. To be honest it took me a while to learn how to set up my blog an get it working as I like (heck I am still changing things) but I think there’s good value in having your own domain.

If your not very technical and you want your own domain I recommend you either ask a friend to help or pay someone to set it up for you. However if you like learning and want to have a go it’s not too tricky to figure it out and a good learning experience.

Stay tuned and I’ll put together a guide that covers the whole process See below for a free guide to get you through the whole process, you may want to download it now and save it for later.

What do you think.

Are free blogs a good place to start and then move on?

Should you set up your own domain from day one?

Or can your survive on a free blog forever?

Leave a comment with your thoughts.

Edit: Here’s the guide I talked about.

Enter your details below and I’ll send through the guide: Setting Up WordPress On Your OWN Domain
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Here is a walkthrough for setting up a FeedBurner account right through to adding cool RSS buttons to your blog.

Set Up FeedBurner

FeedBurner is owned by google and will track your RSS statistics for free. Tracking your RSS is just another way of finding out how many people are following your blog and what they find interesting. Go to FeedBurner and set up a FeedBurner feed now.

If you are on wordpress (you should be) you can install the FeedSmith plugin to your blog which will direct all of your existing feeds to your new FeedBurner feed. Once you have your feed then go to Settings>FeedBurner and insert your new FeedBurner feed.

Optimise Feed

Before you click the optimise tab make sure you have checked the item views and item link clicks (and podcasts if you are doing them) at analyse>configure stats options.

Then go to the optimise tab and select Feed Flare and add any social media options your readers might want to use. This will help your posts get more exposure should your readers decide to bookmark/share them (don’t forget to activate once your done).

Use the Publicise feed and set up the Headline Animator and Pingshot.

Subscribe Icons

Now that you have set up a FeedBurner feed you need to set up your subscription buttons for your readers. You can use standard ones or you can download some more unique designs. Check out Design Bliss and SpeckyBoy for some free unique RSS buttons.

Having a RSS button that stands out will increase the number of subscribers your blog will get.

Add RSS Icons

Once you have chosen your subscribe icon, upload it to an images folder. In wordpress you can use the text widget (WP Admin>Appearance>Widgets>Text) to add your RSS button as a widget in your sidebar. Simply add the widget and paste in the following code:

While your doing it you should also think about adding a Twitter button. Simply add the following code to add a twitter badge:

Once you have your RSS and Twitter buttons showing your can play with the  margin-right/left to get the right placement within your sidebar.

(If you find that the widget makes your blog layout go weird you might need to add </div> at the end of the text file to clear it up).

Email

You can use FeedBurner to handle your email subscriptions as well. Simply activate Email Subscriptions in the Publicise tab then add the code to your subscribe widget.

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This is something that many wordpress users overlook and the sooner you get it right the better. Search engine results are influenced by the URL so make sure you have good ones!

Permalinks

I have seen so many wordpress accounts lately who are using the standard permalinks. Permalinks are the way your URL is set up when you publish a post. The standard permalink structure looks something like http://yourblog.com/?p=5. And I am sure you can understand that ?p=5 isn’t very search engine friendly (or people friendly for that matter).

To set up great permalinks go to Settings>Permalink in the wordpress admin panel. Then choose the “Custom Structure” then paste in the following text “/%category%/%postname%”. Now you will have a permalink structure that will look like this http://yourblog.com/category/postname.

More Tips

Because your categories are now in your URL you can use them to target keywords so keep that in mind when choosing them.

Category ID’s are assigned in the order you created them. If a post belongs to multiple categories it will be filed under the earliest category ID. This means you may have to choose fewer categories to make sure you get the right one in the URL.

If you blog isn’t new and you want to update your permalinks this can be a problem as all of your existing search enine traffic and backlinks go to the old URLs. Fortunately there is an easy solution. You can set up some 301 redirects for your site that will redirect traffic from search engines, bookmarks and other sites. The easiest way is to use the Permalinks Migration Plugin for WordPress which will set up your redirects automatically.

Once you have finished updating your permalinks I recommend you install the 404 notifier plugin to make sure all of your redirects are working properly.

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This is just a very quick overview of how to install all the fancy themes and plugins that make wordpress such a great blog platform. These tips are only for self hosted wordpress blogs i.e www.yourblog.com and not yourblog.wordpress.com.

Before you read this you should already be familiar with wordpress and be part way through setting up your blog. I would recommend you read the post “Blogs 101 The Essential Tips For Setting Up WordPress” before you start.

You can download and automatically install a majority of the plugins direct from the WordPress Admin page by going Plugins>Add New. These directions are for installing the themes and plugins you find outside of the main WordPress site.

Installing a WordPress Plugin

All WordPress Plugins install the same way.

• Download the latest version of the WordPress Plugin to your computer.
• With an FTP program, access your site’s server.
• Upload (copy) the Plugin file(s) or folder to the /wp-content/plugins folder.
• In your WordPress Administration Panels, click on Plugins from the menu at the top.
• You should see your new Plugin listed. If not, with your FTP program, check the folder to see if it is installed. If it isn’t, upload the file(s) again. If it is, delete the files and upload them again.
• To turn the WordPress Plugin on, click Activate on the far right side of the list.
• Check your Administration Panels or WordPress blog to see if the Plugin is working.

Installing a WordPress Theme

All WordPress Themes install the same way.

• Download the latest version of the WordPress Theme to your computer.
• With an FTP program, access your site’s server.
• Upload (copy) the Themes file(s) to the /wp-content/themes folder.
• In your WordPress Administration Panels, click on Appearance from the menu at the top.
• You should see your new Theme listed. If not, with your FTP program, check the folder to see if it is installed. If it isn’t, upload the file(s) again. If it is, delete the files and upload them again.
• Click on the theme you want to switch to and you will see what the new theme would look like.
• If you are happy with your new look then click “Activate ‘New Theme’” in the top right corner.
• Check your WordPress blog to see how the new theme looks.

Easy as.

If you have any issues checkout wordpress support for Plugins or Themes jump on Google and see what people say, there is a lot of support for WordPress out there and I’m sure you will find what you are looking for.

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Why use wordpress?

It has an easy user interface, there are a trillion different themes and they are easily interchanged, it is SEO friendly and probably the most important is the plugins. With wordpress you can simply add a plug-in activate it and then add it to your sidebar. Simple

So setting up wordpress is really really easy just go here http://wordpress.com/ and fill out your ‘deets’. If you want all the functions and edit-ability you need to host wordpress on your own domain (looks like www.yourblog.com instead of yourblog.wordpress.com).

Next thing you will want to do is find a theme to match your style. Free themes are perfect when you are just starting out.

Tips for choosing your theme:

• Find one that has a 2 or 3 columns. More than 3 and you start to get confused and with no sidebar (1 column design) you will have trouble adding widgets.
• Make sure the main column is a normal width (like mine). You want a normal width one because if you change themes later and the main column size is different you will find that your pictures may not fit properly.

As far as free themes, wordpress provides loads that you can browse from you admin page (Appearance>Themes).

If you are hosting your blog there are also some other providers, here are some I found useful:

• WordPress Theme Base
• Woo Themes Free – These guys have some great paid themes too.
• Smashing Magazine Top 100 Free Themes

For information on how to install themes go here “Installing WordPress Themes And Plugins“.

Change your permalinks

When you first start your posts’ URL will be in this form www.timscullin.com/?p=4, which is not very search engine friendly, no one searches for “?p=4″. To change permalinks go Settings>Permalinks in admin control. Then choose ‘Custom Structure’ and paste “/%category%/%postname%” into the box. This is the structure I recommend and will change your URL to www.timscullin.com/Category/PostTitle. Now your posts can be found on search engines.

Install some plugins.

Here are the plugins I recommend and use:

• All in one SEO pack – Adds Keywords, Titles and Descriptions to your pages for more search engine appeal.
• Flicker RSS – Lets you add Flickr photos to your blog via an RSS feed (essential for some themes).
• Google Analytics For WordPress – Automatically adds analytic tracking code to your wordpress pages.
• Quick Subscribe – Lets people quickly subscribe to your blog via email (remember not everyone is familiar with RSS).
• Share This – Let your visitors share a post with others via email, social bookmarking and more.
• Tweetmeme Button- Let your visitors tweet your posts to twitter via a “tweets” button at the bottom of each post.

Once again for any issues installing plugins go to “Installing WordPress Themes And Plugins“.

There are tons more but that is all you need to get started.

So now your ready, start writing some posts!

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