I have been giving a great deal of effort over the past few months to building several blogs for my clients and even for my own company to take advantage of the RSS syndication with the hopes of getting my postings picked up by other related web sites and thus building more naturally occuring one-way inbound links. My suggestion has always been to download wordpress and host the application on the web site owners server.

However, is that really the best strategy if the end goal is to provide relevant and unique content which is used as link bait to attrackt one way links. Also, the fact that a blog on blogger or wordpress would come from a seperate class C IP address seems to have some benefit as well.

What are your thoughts on this issue, the pros and cons and what would be your final decision?

I personally feel that you should use wordpress on your own host.

I had a bad experience last year when one of my blogger.com account was closed.

Thanks and Regards/Puneet M.

It's a no brainer if you ask me - always host your own, and if you do, use WordPress!

You'll have:

Complete control over the domain and hosting: Not satisfied? Backup your database and move to another host or import to another blog platform.
Ability to customise and add new themes and plugins: most hosted blogs are limited in functionality and even today, Blogspot doesn't allow for categories which restricts your SEO options dramatically!
A professional looking domain: A hosted blog account for business looks cheap and nasty


When I got into blogging, I started on Blogger, then graduated to Blogsome.com (which is based on WordPress MU) and eventually got my own hosting package and WordPress install. It's infinitely customisable and I'm in complete control of my data and my domain.

I recently moved from Blogger ftp hosting to Wordpress hosting on my domain. Blogger is restrictive in a lot of ways as there are only a few variables allowed in the template. The php based themes in wordpress just rock!

--
ksharma

I concur with GerryBot on all points. Wordpress is an excellent blog program. With a little work you can make it function like a website. People are constantly writing useful programs for it (many of which are only available if you host it yourself).

I use Blogger, and so far it's been OK. I'd recommend it for someone who knows nothing about website design and is uninterested in learning.

But I outgrew it in about a week. My blog is still hosted there, but if I was to start another one, I'd use my own hosting account and a more customizable system..

WordPress is obviously great, and the SMA-NA (which I'm associated with) uses TextPattern, another good one that is W3C compliant.

Ian

I haven't compared all the programs to see if one is more search engine friendly than another. But what I will say is that whatever you do, don't use someone else's domain. TypePad and Blogger both give you an option, to my knowledge, to use their hosted tools but host the blog on your own domain. WordPress does not, at the moment -- unless you want to download the software on your own server. Great software -- but great software you'll want on your own domain.

Many people instead opt to start using the domains of someone else, because it's easier. But that means you are leasing someone else's property. If you decide to move, you'll find it hard to move your traffic with you. For example, got a feed you started on Blogger and now you want to move that feed elsewhere. I know someone who's trying to figure out a way to do that, becuase it's apparently not easy.

My blog is hosted by the website builder I used to make it: sitekreator.com. So far I had no problems with the hosting and even more - I can say the blog features are really good, especially the RSS and the option to get email digests of new comments. Give it a try!

:confused: i have one blog at the blogger.com known as [edit] and i have some google ads, can any one tell me me about the billing function of the google adsence, becasue i have read your post and feel that may be blogger.com make some interfear in the my billing account, so plz suggest me some good blog's site that give me fine help in terms of revenue.. :confused:

I think some people may be wondering about is the possible value of links to their main site(s) from a hosted blog, being from a different domain/different c-class rather than on the same site.

We're planning to setup a blog for one of our clients on their primary domain (ie: blog.CLIENT.com) and run this out of their bespoke content management system.

We're structuring it to be as SEO'd as possible, but are there any advantages to running a blog out of a known technology (ie: blogger / wordpress / etc) rather than creating your own technology to publish articles? Or would you say the final page structure and content is more important than the publishing method?

I think some people may be wondering about is the possible value of links to their main site(s) from a hosted blog, being from a different domain/different c-class rather than on the same site.

Marcia, You hit the nail right on the head with your observation. I know that to have wordpress running on my server gives me a much more robust blog, but The link from the blog to my site, is on the same IP address and under the same domain. Is there a inbound link benefit to hosting remotly?