Okay, I’m not trying to sound annoying or anything, but I have been trying for months to figure out this whole “self-hosted” wordpress.org thing.
Okay, if you haven’t already guessed I’m using the hosted WordPress.com platform or whatever you want to call it. I don’t like how I can’t customize much or use Rafflecopter on my blog… I also don’t like how I can’t add my own plug-ins! I’ve been trying to add them when I first started then soon figured out that it’s not allowed on hosted.. I literally know nothing about setting up a website or anything so I’m completely clueless as to what I need to do to make my blog self-hosted.
I don’t plan on doing this until at least the summertime, because I do know I’m going to need money.. Well, at this point I’m kind of broke! I can’t afford to spend $100 to however much it costs to make a self-hosted blog and keep it going.
The last couple months I’ve been researching different blogs that make their own layouts and everything and have found some people. Well, I guess that’s a good start, but I have no clue what to do. I’ve bought the WordPress for Dummies (yeah I know.. Laugh all you want) book and have been going through it every now and then. But, it just isn’t making sense. I’m still having trouble processing what the heck is PHP and MySQL or however it’s spelled.. I think that’s right?
I don’t know where to start and where to go from here. I’d really like to start slowly transitioning to self-hosted.
Does anyone have self-hosted? Thoughts?
I would suggest going to Nose Graze (http://www.nosegraze.com/). She’s a web designer and self-hosts. She’s taught me basically everything I know about this stuff. She actually wrote a blog post about this stuff that will probably help. Here’s a page full of different articles Ashley’s written about this type of stuff: http://www.nosegraze.com/?s=self-hosted
I’ve been trying to keep up with her posts about it. I believe Shannon from Twilight Sleep referred me to her when I first started blogging. And I remember when Ashley made a post about her starting her own little hosting thing and I said I was interested. But, I haven’t heard anything about it since.
Hahaha if you find out, let me know. On my other blog (for recipes), I use WordPress.org and have it hosted through GoDaddy. But I think that there’s a difference between doing that and being legit “self-hosted.” Or maybe there’s just different levels of it? Because GoDaddy hosting (and I think there’s some other big companies) is really easy to use, inexpensive (I pay about $100 per year for the domain name and hosting, I think?) and you share a server with a bunch of their other customers, and they’re really well integrated with WordPress.org.
But I had a huge problem where I somehow lost like a year of pictures that I’d uploaded onto my blog and then subsequently lost them on my computer as well (bad timing), so I was pretty pissed, but both WordPress and GoDaddy kept saying it was the other company’s fault, so I didn’t know what to do and I never go those pictures back.
So when I started Tempest Books, I decided that I was just going to do WordPress.com and make it all simple. And then if I eventually wanted to get hosted and have my own domain name or whatever, I’d do it through WordPress.com itself, so that nothing would happen to my information.
But then there’s also self-hosting through other, more expensive, but smaller companies, and you basically have to know a LOT about what you’re doing, because you have to do most of the trouble-shooting and coding yourself (although it depends on the company…different ones are more or less helpful, and subsequently more or less expensive). Or you can literally do it yourself and have your own server, but that’s really hardcore and basically nobody does it, unless they want to have absolute complete control over every aspect of their website.
Here’s a list of WordPress.org hosts: http://www.nosegraze.com/moving-to-wordpress-choosing-the-best-web-host/
And here’s an explanation of all of the different kinds of hosting (super helpful!): http://www.nosegraze.com/kinds-of-hosting-explained-shared-vps-and-dedicated/
Well…I don’t know if that helped, but I hope it did?
It actually did. I’ve been referred to Ashley at Nose Graze quite a bit and I’ve been trying to keep up with her posts about blogging. I remember at one point– not too long ago that she was doing her own hosting thing for bloggers and I had said I was interested but haven’t heard anything about it since. But in order to do that, I would have to own my domain and all that. I’m not entirely sure how to do all that stuff. I literally know the BASICS to wordpress.
I will definitely check those links though. Thanks!!! :)
I would really like to keep up my blog but for the most part this stuff gets complicated really fast. Recently I have all but abandoned the book blog for book tube but honestly I want to know how to do this!
Me too! I literally know like the basics of WordPress and I’ve been trying to learn about hosting and all of it, but it’s so confusing. I don’t understand all the coding and whatnot so I have no idea where to start and where to host and all that fun stuff.
Well, I also have the wordpress.com… It’s kind of annoying often, but I find the .org way too expensive, so I just do my best to work around the .com. Also it is really complicated in the beginning with coding and stuff as you said!
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