One of the most common blogging questions I get asked is:
I'm thinking of starting a blog. What would you recommend?
The basic answer is simple: for a straight-forward blog, particularly if you don't have much in the way of technical skill (or you have the skill but not the time), either Blogger or WordPress.com blogs will do a basic job and they do it for free. However, if your blog either becomes a bit of a success and you want to do more with it, or if you've got any very particular requirements, you're likely to pretty quickly run into some of the limitations of those systems. Therefore the alternative is to go for a WordPress blog. The WordPress software itself is free but as WordPress.com offers only a limited version of the full WordPress software, using the full WordPress involves getting hosting from somewhere else.
And so one of the other most common questions I get asked is:
Who would you recommend for hosting a WordPress site?
If you've already got some hosting, e.g. for a normal website, and you are happy with those arrangements, then using the same firm is often best. Otherwise, the host that I use and like is eUKhost. They are cheap, reliable and are also liked by several other people I know. Whenever I've rung their customer support I've had the phone answered fairly quickly and the problem resolved promptly.
There are a couple of quirks to watch out for. In theory, if you get near your monthly bandwidth limit, you should get a warning email. However, the experience of myself - and by the looks of it several others - is that these emails often (never?) get sent. [UPDATE: eUKhost tell me this problem is now fixed.] Second, although overall their customer service is good, several times I've spoken to someone who repeats back to me nearly everything I've said. It's a bit weird, almost as if they are putting on the record their interpretation of what I've just said. But they've still ended up doing what needs doing, and doing it fairly quickly.
Hence overall, I'd very much recommend eUKhost.
(Small declaration of interest: if you use the links in this post and take out an account with them, I'll be paid a few pennies in commission.)
I have often read you saying I will run into problems. But they never arise. Can you be more specific about what problems a blogger user may hit...
Here's a few (assuming you mean Blogger, yup?):
a. Blogger is reliable, but has periods of failing to publish posts. When that happens there's nothing you can do other than hope Google fixes things soon. With your own hosting you can find out things such as when it might be fixed or even switch the hosting.
b. Full WordPress gives a much richer range of comment moderation options, such as auto-moderating comments based on content or IP address, which lets you detect and stop cases of astroturfing much more easily than you can with Blogger.
c. You can easily send a welcome email to anyone who comments for the first time on your blog.
d. You can pull in to the comments on any post any Tweets made about it, so that they appear alongside comments typed on the site.
e. You can display different content to people depending on whether they've got to your site via a search engine or not and whether they are coming to it for the first time or not.
And plenty more...
If you're around at conference, happy to show you what the backend of this site looks like and some of the stuff that can be done.
>In theory, if you get near your monthly bandwidth limit, you should get a warning email.
Heh.