Web Hosting For Your Blog What is a blog? Blog is short for Web Log. It is an online journal. Blogs are similar to and often confused with web forums. The difference is that as a blog is more like an individual journal and a web forum is meant more for communication and interaction between many individuals.

Is it difficult to start a blog?

No, it's relatively simple. The software used for blogs is actually very user friendly. Every day, lots of internet newbies set up their blogs easily with no problems.

Does it cost money to start a blog?

It depends. There are several websites that you can go to and set up a free blog. These websites include blogeasy.com, weblogs.us, blogsource.com, blogstream.com, bloxter.net, blogsky.com, blogger.com, and many others.

If you already have a website that you pay for web hosting on, then you would probably be better off using free blog software and hosting the blog in the hosting account that you already have. The reason for this is that free blog web hosting is not as reliable. Free blog hosts have no real obligation to you. They host a lot of free blogs and their servers may be very maxed out. You just don't know. Many free blog hosts also place advertising on your blog.

Even given the possible lack of reliability of free blogs, many of them are fairly reliable and many of the people blogging with these free blogs are very pleased with their service. After all, it is free.

What free blogs are the best?

This isn't really our specialty, but we've heard good things about blogger.com.

Remember, free blogs come with risks. The biggest risk is the free blog host could just shut down. It's happened before and a lot of people lost all of the information that they had in their blogs which is a lot of information if you blog a lot. Check out this article about a major blog host shutting everything down.

Where do I start if I want to have a blog?

If you are going to use a free blog web host then blogger.com is a good place to start. Once you're there you will be taken through the process of starting a blog.

If you're going to start a blog using a paid web host then just contact your hosting company and they will help you get started. The process is very simple so don't worry about having to tackle a big learning curve.

Should I pay for blog hosting?

For some people, paying for blog hosting by opening a web hosting account and then hosting the blog on your web hosting account is a more suitable alternative. With your own hosting account, you have more control over your blog, and your web host that you pay for is more likely to have a more reliable server.

With a free blog, you will be using a sub-domain. For example, if you had a free blog at blogger.com, then the domain for your blog would be something like myblog.blogger.com. If you paid for your blog, then you would own the domain and hence you would have more freedom in choosing the domain. For example, if you paid for a web host then your blog domain could be something like myblog.com instead of myblog.blogger.com if it was a free blog. It's not much of a difference and it probably doesn't matter to most people, but it might matter to some.

That being said, if you don't have money to spend on web hosting then a free blog is a great way to introduce yourself to the internet.

The web hosts that we review are not free. If you are thinking about purchasing web hosting then please see our list of the top web hosting companies on the internet.