Blog-Software

There are many choices for web hosting companies available and for blogging there are many free choices offered as well. The question that comes to mind to me is, “Is free webhosting cheap?” What I mean by that is what is it going to cost me in terms of functionality and accessibility. Let’s take a look at some of the comparisons between free web hosting and paid web hosting.

Unless you have been living under a rock for the last couple of years then you know that blogging has become a formidable force on the internet and has allowed many people to get an online presence that may otherwise have been unable to do so. Many of these people are making their living by blogging and some like Jason Calcanis have become wealthy from it. Jason built a network of blogs over about eighteen months and sold them to AOL for nearly $30 million! That’s a pretty good ROI. Anyway, I digress, back to our discussion on web hosting.

If you have decided that you want to operate a blog your next choice will probably be what blogging platform or software you want to use to accomplish you blogging. Relax, it’s easy. Most of the blogging software out there today is open source which means it’s, you guessed it, free! In this instance free is not a bad thing, I use Wordpress almost exclusively, it is free and has more options that I care to learn or use. There are other blogging software options available, but I won’t go into them here because this article is about web hosting.

As far as web hosting for your blog you can choose free web hosting or paid so let’s take a closer look at our choices. First off, you can choose Blogger which is owned by Google. Blogger is a good program especially for beginning bloggers because it is easy to use, it is web based, and the price is right. It’s free. With that said however, if your intention is to blog professionally and possibly run a large number of blogs with automated content then Blogger is not for you. I have seen Google shut down many blogs because they considered them to be spam. If you want control over your own destiny then you want to use paid web hosting and have your blogs on your own server, or at least a shared server.

Still in the realm of free web hosting you also have a fairly new option from Wordpress who now offers a free web hosting for Wordpress blogs at their .com site as opposed to the .org site where you get the software and plug ins. The problem is that like Google, they are very restrictive with what you can put on your blogs and how you update them.

Another big issue with free web hosting is that you will usually have to display advertising of some sort which “pays” for your web hosting. This is great for the web hosting companies because it gives them tons of virtual real estate out there with their name on it, not so great for you. If you are blogging professionally, and if you are trying to make money for it then you are blogging professionally, you do not want any distractions on your site that leads visitors away from your site unless you are being paid for it like you do when someone clicks on an Adsense ad or affiliate banner.

My recommendation is that you pay for your own hosting because it gives you a wealth of choices, much more storage space, and takes almost all restrictions off of you within reason. There are still some web hosting companies that will not allow you to host gambling or porno blogs but other than that you are pretty open. Paid web hosting is not that expensive. You can get an account that will host as many blogs as most people will want to deal with a few bucks a month. So for the cost of a domain name and your hosting you will probably be around $100 a year. That is a pretty cheap investment for something that enables you to plug into all the ways of earning money on the net.

The blogging software that is enjoying the limelight for quite some times for now is the B2Evolution. Written in PHP, and supported by MySQL database, it is among those few web applications that every web host will recommend you for your website.

The beauty of this software lies in its comprehensive feature list that includes

• Multiple blogs

• Multiuser with different access levels

• Antispam tools

• Trackbacks and pingbacks

• Timezone handling

• RSS and ATOM feeds

• Image file organizer.

• It is also multilingual; a feature that can be attributed to its originator, Francois Planque—who was a Frenchman.

In addition to that, the latest version of B2 evolution has been enriched with many more interesting features:

One of the most talked about point in the new release is its parting with the feature of configuration file editing. From now on, all configuration tasks are going to be handled through the installer or administrative back-end.

In addition to that, this software allows an admin user to lock himself out permanently. What he needs to do is to redirecting the admin.php page to a nonexistent URL on the root domain.

Another important feature relates to the spam protection for which B2Evolution receives adieus. It is provided with community-wide spam filters. This helps the B2Eevolution sites aggregate and “tag” spammer IPs into a central blacklist. The other B2Eevolution blogs get benefited from this spam filtering.

Then, B2Evolution is famously packed with a fully skinnable interface. Traditional blog, knowledge base, bug tracker—-any type of skins can be easily downloaded and installed to render a new look and feel to your blog site.

It also offers localization into a number of language packs which can be easily downloaded. Already available languages are: Chinese, Czech, Dutch, Finnish, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Lithuanian, Norwegian, Spanish and Swedish. Even if you can’t find your language, just use the localization toolkit to easily localize B2Evolution to your language. With B2evolution it’s really easy to translate to your own language too.

The software helps to integrate a truly efficient workflow.

How does it work? When a user posts an article, it can be assigned to an editor. Editor may then assign them to reviewers for final approval and then only the article is published on the site. Thus, the actual permissions and statuses remain with the site owner.

In its course of development, the B2Evolution also introduced 3rd party plugin features that allow further expansion in its feature list. Some of the most popular plugins from the users perspective are Textile, Auto-P, Greymatter, BB code, Texturize (text formatting plug-ins), and graphic smilies.

B2Evolution has built-in support for RSS 0.92, RSS 1.0, RSS 2.0, and Atom feeds for both posts and comments.

No matter whether you are going to step into the world of professional web publishing or just want to start a fun filled family blog, the comprehensive b2evolution platform can give you an easily installable, free, feature rich, extensible blogging solution. Unless with B2 Evolution, your transition from a novice to seasoned blogger could never have been so quick and smooth.

If you are looking for a suitable tool to host a blog site then believe me, nothing can give you a better option than a B2Evolution software package. Going beyond traditional blogging tools, this software can offer you a range of other unusual features that add to the uniqueness to your blog site.

Multiple user/multiple author/ multilingual support

First of all, it supports a multi user, multiple authors set up.

By installing the software for once the software helps organize your blog in a way that each blog has its own set of member users. Thus, you can take the decision as to who gets to write on a particular blog.

On a more advanced level, certain readers can be denied access to particular posts.

To top it all, full user management is included in the software.

RSS feed enabled

Content syndication is one of the most prominent features of today’s blogging behavior. This is a process of article sharing among several related sites. But it is not essential that the full article should be circulated. Through the RSS feed, you can get to see the title and the source of the article. The source link can take you the original article.

The B2evolution has built-in RSS feed support. It also has Atom feeds for both posts and comments.

Thus the readers can get to see your RSS feeds and subscribe to your site.

With B2Evolution, it is possible to assign separate feeds for each individual blog on your site. Alternatively it is also possible to get a feed containing all the blogs on your site by subscribing to the ‘Blog All RSS feed’.

Digging

Another recent blog-culture involves ‘digging’ of the articles. With the help of a plugin called, AstonishMe Digg Plugin, it is possible to add Digg buttons to your posts by simply checking a box in the Write tab. This allows you and your readers to dig the stories.

Advanced categorization

Another feature helping in advanced blogging relates to complex categorization of contents. This system allows for categorizing and sub-categorizing of the posts/news items by subject or theme.

However, with this software it is also possible to assign multiple categories to each post.

The additional features include: an integrated XHTML validator, supports recursive subcategories, cross posting and has an integrated skinning system.

The end result is: you get blog software that runs easily on almost any web hosting service, generates web pages dynamically from the MySQL database, without any hassle of ‘rebuilding’. Also without running into any hassle, you can add to your site different ’templates’ or ’skins’ from time to time. It also comes with faster search/display capabilities and makes for the most comprehensive blog engine you could ever find.

Moving your Blogspot blog to your own hosting is undeniably a clever decision of time, but before that you might be looking for the right Web Hosting Plans that will fulfill your current and future needs. If you are seeking for an option that can let you bring all your Blogspot entries, comments and of course your blog traffic to your own hosted blog then, WordPress is the right choice for you.WordPress as it’s the most famous blogging software on Paid hosting. Well, here’s the step by step guideline for moving your Blogspot blog to your own hosting using WordPress. There may be two situations for this: 1. You’ve yourblog.blogspot.com 2. You’ve yourblog.com hosted by WordPressIn first situation you’ll be moving like: * Prepare for the migration by uploading few .php and .html test pages * Install WordPress on your server * Go to WordPress Dashboard > Manage > Posts, and delete “Hello World” * Now go to Manage > Import > Select Blogger and follow the instructions. All your entries and comments are there now.Now go to your Blogspot blog and download all images, and upload them on your own server and enter them in the posts manually. (This is a hectic job, but you’ll have to do it.)In second situation, you’ll have to: * First get back to yourblog.blogspot.com from your Blogspot account. For this go to Setting > Publishing > Switch to Blogspot. * Now change the name servers of your domain from your domain panel. You’ll have to give new name servers, i.e. as prescribed by the new hosting company. * And now follow all the steps as described in case 1.Your Blogspot blog is now completely moved and set on your own hosting. Experience the new interface and better customization.