The Web Marketing Blog » Hosting

Create a Free Blog

Kat — Mon, 22 Feb 2010 21:50:21 +0000

Visit the forums and you will find that the debate rages on. Is it better to use a free blog service, or pay for your own domain and hosting? In my opinion the answer is both!

The biggest advantage to having a self hosted blog is that you have the most control over your blog. You can post the ads you want and the content you want.And when you you use a provider such as Hostgator or GoDaddy you can rest assured you will have reliable hosting without too much downtime.

But there are advantages to using a free host. The number one advantage is that it is free! Free blogs are a great way to test the water of blogging. Try it out and get some experience before you actually pay money to blog. Free hosts are also a useful source of backlinks to your regular blogs.

There are some downsides to free hosts. Some will place ads on your sites. Some will not allow you to place your own ads on your site. Read the terms of service carefully and make sure that the host you choose will meet your needs.

Following is a list of free host sites. My favorite, just because it is small and I know the owner is Blogging4Life. My blog there is Katalina Online. Have fun creating your free blogs!

Blogging4life.com
Freeblogs.org
FreeBlogIt.com
Blog.com
MyBlogSite.com
informationjunkie.net
blogsome.com
weebly.com
wordpress.com
blogger.com
livejournal.com
theblogs.net
thoughts.com
webnode.com
blog.co.uk
freeblog.org.uk
bravenet.com
yola.com
webs.com
bloguni.com
sosblog.com
wix.com
doodlekit.com
vox.com
tumblr.com
blogskinny.com
blogeasy.com
blogr.com

How Not to Lose (Too Many) Visitors When You Move Your Site – Part 1

Karen Zara — Sat, 31 May 2008 22:46:39 +0000

One of the biggest problems about using free webhosts is that in case you decide to move to a paid one, you may lose some visitors in the process. Don’t despair though. There are several things you can do about this.

Redirect your visitors

1. When a webmaster or blogger reveals their plans to move from a free site to a self-hosted, paid one, they’re often told to use 301 redirects. You may click here to learn more about this method. As you’ll see, the main problem about it is that most free webhosts won’t grant you access to your .htaccess (infamous pun intended). And if you’re a non-technical type, the whole 301 redirection thing will look like a nightmare to you.

2. You might go for a meta-refresh HTML tag instead. This one is much easier to do and I’ve used it myself several years ago. The problem is that several years ago I didn’t know this practice might get me into trouble with search engines. At that time I didn’t care anyway, because my site’s traffic was almost exclusively generated by my networking efforts. If that’s your case as well, or if for any other reason you feel that search engine traffic isn’t so important to you, here’s the code you must place on your homepage, inside the HEAD tags:

Replace 5 by the amount of seconds a visitor should wait before being actually redirected to the desired address (represented above by “example.com”). Also make sure to include on your homepage a brief message telling your visitors that your website has been moved and that they’ll be automatically redirected within so many seconds. Include a clickable link right below this message, so people can use it if they don’t want to wait and/or if the redirection fails for any reason.

3. Short URL services are yet another option. You could promote the short URL instead of the actual site address, so that your visitors would always be able to find your site, no matter where it’s hosted. The main issue about such services is the fact that by masking your pages’ addresses, they may hinder search engines from indexing your site. Besides, many spammers make use of URL redirection services, giving them a bad reputation that could hurt you in the end. For instance, when leaving a comment on a blog, you might have it marked as spam if you include a link generated by a short URL service.

If you still want to try an URL redirection service, at least make sure to always use your site’s real address when promoting it or building links for it. Display the short URL somewhere on your site (preferably on the main page) and explain to your visitors that it’s an alternative address that they should save for emergencies, i. e., in case a sudden move is needed, they won’t lose sight of your site (another infamous pun intended).

Would you like to suggest any other ways to redirect visitors to other URLs? Do you want to share any tips or links to helpful services and tutorials? Leave a comment, please.

Redirection isn’t the only way to avoid the loss of visitors when you change your site’s host. I’ll show you other alternatives in my next post. You won’t miss it if you subscribe to The WebMaster Blog now.

Karen Zara has been involved in Internet-based projects since 2002. One of them is Abaminds, a blog for content producers that you can visit by clicking here.

Web Hosts Dedicated IP vs. Shared IP

Kat — Mon, 19 May 2008 17:40:44 +0000

Before we get into the reasons a dedicated IP is far more better than a shared IP let’s go over the difference a little. A shared IP would be like getting a birthday cake and sharing it with 10 complete strangers. You don’t know where their hands have been and you don’t know what they’ve done with those hands. A dedicated IP would be like having a birthday cake to yourself. You know exactly where you’ve been and exactly where your hands have been. With the growing number of spammy website’s and black hat webmasters on the internet today, having your website on a shared hosting provider using a shared server IP could get your site blacklisted, blocked, and even penalized by search engines. A dedicated IP is just that, dedicated. Your website is the only website using that IP address meaning you control your own destiny. Many easy website hosting providers offer dedicated IP’s for their customer’s who wish to take advantage of them. Paying the extra $2-$4 a month for a dedicated IP may not be such a bad idea. It could save your hard work from getting blocked by Google, Yahoo, and other popular search engine due to someone else’s bad spamming habits.