Blogging
is your business which requires investment both in terms of energy,
time and money. As time goes on your little blog will grow and draw
attention of search engines and social media in terms of traffic.
Visitors enjoy when you offer something unique and something that may
help them and provide them with a reason to visit your blog. I started
blogging in 2009 with blogger and as time passed I started enjoying it
and this hobby turned into a profession. I needed a reliable company to
help me expand this little blog so that tomorrow we could add new tools
and resources to it. Readers deserve the right to be provided with an
open forum where they could exchange ideas and interact more openly with
one another. Off-topic questions often result in deletion and therefore
a Forum becomes important when you want to keep things simple and
clean. Google Blogs unfortunately doesn't allow access to the server
where your files are hosted for free. Which means you can not create sub
domains for your blog where you could add a Forum, portfolio page or
services page. Thus a reliable web hosting company becomes a necessity.
Note: This is
part1 of our series on choosing Best Hosting for your Blogs. I will be
sharing my personal experiences here, technical details, personal help,
web hosting plans and discount coupon codes.
You may also like reading:
What is Web Hosting? What Difference will it make?
Web hosting in layman terms is simply buying a storage space for your
website and all its files. Your files will be stored in secured hard
disks owned by the web hosting company. Like all our files of services page, tools
and Forum are stored at HostGator. The style sheets, the JavaScript,
the HTML pages, images, videos and any media used on our website sub
domains are stored in secured HostGator servers/computers.
You can create a whole new website and attach it to your blog. For example our services page
which is still under development is a complete new website linked to
our blog through a sub domain. What is sub domain? Its actually a sub
part of your main domain. For example:
Domainwww.mybloggertricks.comSub Domainsservices.mybloggertricks.comforum.mybloggertricks.comportfolio.mybloggertricks.comebook.mybloggertricks.comeditor.mybloggertricks.com
Not just that, you will have free Email Accounts that will give you a professional Email address like.
mohammad@mybloggertricks.com
You can even create a wordpress blog with hostgator like everyone
else. With web hosting you have a complete control on your website and
you can equip it with anything you wish.
What is Domain hosting?
Domain hosting means that you are simply purchasing a custom URL like
.com .net or .org etc. which may mask .blogspot.com or .wordpress.com.
It costs around $10 to buy a domain from blogger itself. 80% Blogger
users purchase domain instead of web hosting because they think that web
hosting is a lot expensive and they can't afford it. They also live in a
misconception that why buy hosting when Blogger provides it for free.
Its true that blogger blogs are hosted for free but with just domain
hosting you are sacrificing a great investment. This is what you can not
do with domain hosting:
- You can not create sub domains
- You can not create multiple email accounts
- You can not create web pages
- You can not create a Forum
- You can not store or upload files
- You can not learn and experience new tools and technologies
- You will always run after free storage services. Everything on your blog will always be owned by someone else. From your contact forms to scripts that you use are stored on third party servers, thus making your blog's load time damn slow.
- You will remain a Blogger and will never grow as a webmaster
Domain hosting costs around $10-$15 per year and web hosting costs less than $3.96 per month or $40-$45 per year. We waste hundreds of dollars per month but just $40 dollars per year will bring you in a much better and comfortable stage. You will learn playing with tools daily!
Why HostGator?
We never talked about web hosting and haven't written a single tutorial
on it before. But now when I have personally experienced what it feels
like to be a webmaster I can share its pros and cons. Its been a month
now since we purchased web hosting for our blog and sub domains from
HostGator. I always wanted to learn how forums works, how files are
uploaded via ftp, how html web pages are created and stored on a server
and etc. I thought all these things would require great technical skills
and it would not be a good idea to put your money at risk. I lived with
this thought for a year and just a month ago I realized how successful
have my friends grown and I was there still depending on free lunch. I
was scared how to start but then almost everyone whom I asked for
suggestion recommended that we should choose HostGator as our web hosting company. I visited Hostgator's homepage and started my research. Whether I searched for the list of top 10 web hosting companies or best web host or best Forum host or best blog host, I found this blue crocodile every where.
Their homepage is full of awards and achievements that speak for itself
but that still doesn't matter if your hosting company has a poor
customer service. Their amazing 24/7 Live Chat service is something I
can't stop praising. Without their excellent technical support I could
not have learnt and experienced tons of things that I apply to this blog
daily. We had to transfer our domain from old registrar to hostGator
and for this we needed help and guidance. Amazingly HostGator helped us
far more openly than our registrar who even lives in my town. Whether it
may be a simple query or technical help, the agents at hostgator wont
tell you what to do, they will themselves manage everything you want. My
DNS settings along with Email Accounts were all setup by an agent for
free. I just sat and relaxed.
About their technical details you may better visit HostGator Homepage.
What can I create after buying a hosting plan?
You can create almost anything using several excellent software found at HostGator control Panel (Cpanel).Some examples include:
- Blog Software eg: Wordpress, LifeType
- Forum Software
- Gallery Software
- Guestbook Software
- Website Builder
- Mail Software eg: xyz@mybloggertricks.com
- Social Networking Software eg: Facebook, mySpace
- Wiki Software
- Survey Software
- Billing Software
- Chat Software
- Directory Software
- eCommerce Software
- So on...
HostGator is crazy
I really mean it! HostGator guys are simply crazy.
On every special occasions they offer discounts as far as 80%. Hosting
for three years which could cost $150 would cost you just $30! I will
be updating you with such discount coupons in my coming posts.
If you register now using the coupon code below during the sign up process you will get 25% discount on any purchase your make.
Click this link and try it.
123927819218
If you are buying a hosting for just one year or two years then using the following coupon will give you $9.94 OFF
Click this link and try it.
5153557876
How to Host Blogger on HostGator?
Analyze whatever I just shared today and Research for yourselves until
you are convinced. Your blogger blog will still be accessed and used via
blogger.com. You will write your posts like you normally do. You don't
need redirection or anything. You wont loose traffic, pagerank or any
other harm. Take our blog as an example, everything looks better than
before. You just need to buy a domain from hostgator along with web
hosting and then tell the Agent via live chat to do the work for you and
set your DNS settings. Within 1-2 days you can enjoy a life of a
webmaster. You can create a Forum, portfolio, download page, services
page and even a wordpress blog. If you don't use Blogger and wish to
start a wordpress blog straight then there can be no better web host
than this blue crocodile.
Note: Before
making any purchase please wait for my next post which will share step
by step help on what plan to choose out of Hatchling, Baby and Business.
UPDATE: The post on hosting plans can be read here: HostGator Best Hosting Plans For Bloggers
I am running out of time as its too late here. I will write a detailed
post tomorrow telling you what plan to choose, for how many years should
you register an account, and all the technical details required. I will
share some more discount coupons and would try my best to share a
discount coupon of 50% so that you could enjoy free web hosting for the
first year. Please clarify all your doubts by asking relevant questions.
I will make sure to reply them the sooner possible. Its time to take a
smart step. Peace and blessings pals! :)