Blogging software comes in both hosted and self-hosted types. Hosted blogs are hosted by the blog service and are easier for creating a personal blog. Self-hosted blogs require downloading software and is better for business blogging because it gives the control for branding and marketing.

Hosted Blogs: A user simply needs to sign up, set-up a blog account and start blogging. These blogs are hosted on a central server and are very easy for the novice to get going quickly. All software updates and database maintenance is done by the provider. This type of hosting is required with services such as Blogger and Typepad but optional with services such as WordPress.

The main disadvantage of a hosted solution is the limitations. You are limited to having your blog on their domain. You are limited on the themed looks that are available and you are limited on how you can optimize your blog for search engines. This is fine for a personal blog, but not good for business blogging.

Self-Hosted: (User Hosted)This is very much like setting up a website. Here a domain name is purchased, a hosting account is set-up, the blog software is downloaded, a database is set-up and the blog is configured. Which blog platforms can be self hosted? These include Wordpress, Textpattern and Movable Type.

The advantage of a self-hosted blog is you get maximum benefits of control, flexibility and customization. Business blog marketing will usually use self-hosted blogs so they can control everything about the look and operation of the blog. They can customize the templates, incorporate plug-ins and optimize their blog for the search engines.

This entry was posted on Monday, October 1st, 2007 at 4:27 am and is filed under Blog Marketing. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.