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
Posted on : 13-12-2008 | By : Kat | In : Blogging
5
The number one complaint that I hear about web pages is that they load too slow! In fact, people have said that to me about this page. (I’m working on that!) But how do you know if your site is a turtle when it comes to loading. You can’t always tell by your own experience. Your website or blog is probably cached on your computer, making it load faster. You may have a faster internet connection than most.
I have found a useful tool that can tell you how fast your pages load, and even offers suggestions on how to speed up the load times. Using the tool I have found that there is lots of room for improvement on The WebMaster Blog!
Run your site through Web Page Analyzer and see how fast it loads. Leave a comment here, and maybe the fastest blog will be the next domain winner! We will use the speed your blog loads at 56K. The home page of this blog loaded at 102.11 seconds. I am not too happy about that, but I will use the suggestions from Web Page Analyzer and see if I can improve that!
Posted on : 10-05-2008 | By : Zac Davis | In : Marketing
6
Used by webmasters and bloggers alike, blog commenting is a highly used technique of generating traffic. Blog comments usually spark some type of conversation between the blogger and reader, and will even include other readers as well. As there are many blogs to comment on, and many conversations going on at once, sometimes it can get hard to keep track of them all. Yes, there are comment feeds, but they feed you all the comments made across an entire blog, and you probably won’t won’t to follow that. There are also check boxes below the comment box on some blogs that allow you to be Emailed every time someone posts a new comment on that post. These are really great, but not every blog has them. So, what do you do when there’s no “Email Me” check box? The answer is simple; coComment.
coComment is a service that allows you to track your blog comments, and even forum posts. It is available as a Firefox add-on, which makes it all the more easier to use. If you use Internet Explorer, then you’ll have to manually add each comment to your coComment account, which will be very monotonous, and almost a waste of time.
coComment doesn’t just track you comments, it also allows you to share them with friends, and even discover new posts to comment on yourself. I haven’t had any good discoveries there, yet, but who knows, maybe you’ll find some. The sharing feature is pretty cool, too. It can be used like a social bookmarking system, but more privately social, if you know what I mean.
Zac Davis is almost your typical teenage geek. He has is own blog (Zac’s Blog), and enjoys browsing the “interwebz” for new and exciting things. Of course, he also likes to write as well. While not on the computer, he is either at school or playing soccer.
