Hey, so I'm thinking of moving my blog over to my own domain. Does anyone have their own site? Who do you use? If you moved your blog were you able to keep your comments (I really don't want to lose them)?
I'm really technologically stupid so I need something easy. Also, free/cheap helps. Thanks!
Yes, Dreamhost is a shared host, and you are correct in assuming that if someone manages to take down or flood out a server, the onus is on Dreamhost to fix it, not you.
And that post was actually longer, but it got cut off, so I had to do some cutting of my own to get it to fit. :/
I think most of the questions have been answered, so I'll say that I use hostmonster.com for hosting and they are really awesome. I've been using them for about 5 years now and have had no complains. Great customer service and affordable prices!
Permalink Reply by Josh on August 22, 2010 at 10:42pm
Theres actually some free hosting websites out there like http://www.webs.com/ or if you have comcast you can host your website with comcast for free by going here http://publish.comcast.net/splash/ and signing in with your comcast username and password that you use to access your email and stuff. Theres some other ones you can find searching google as well.
While these are a good suggestion for people looking for cheap hosting for other content, they aren't really suitable for blogs. In general, the CMS systems offered and employed by sites like these (if one is offered at all) are often many times more limited than WordPress.com or Blogger (which, I'm sure you'll agree, is already a common reason for most people to host their own blogs) and you usually don't have the ability to install a typical CMS yourself. (And even then, there's usually an issue with the amount of space you have left over.) These free web spaces are great for people simply trying to share a picture of their cat or some recipes, but at the end of the day they really won't be useful for what anyone on this network is trying to accomplish.
In almost all cases, you also cannot carry a domain over (which is what the original post in this thread was asking about). If you manage to find one that will allow you to do so, I consider you extremely lucky and would like to get a name and URL passed my way.
Permalink Reply by Mei on August 24, 2010 at 12:23am
I self host a website, and it's a pain compared to the ease of wordpress and blogger. That said, I may buy a name someday, but blogger is just soooo easy for now. :)
Unless there's something very weird about them or you're planning to manage your blog with a very exotic CMS system, you will be able to import every last comment from your old blog on WordPress.com.
If and when you make the switch, I would recommend that you make a post on the WP.com blog informing users of the change in location so that they can update their RSS readers or bookmarks as necessary. Don't delete the account/blog, especially if you're using WordPress; you'll need that account so you can use your personal API key for Akismet (a spam filter plugin).