Blogging has evolved over the years from being a hobby to becoming an essential element of content marketing. What was once personal pursuit and very much an amateur past time is now embraced by companies everywhere. When did you last see a quality mainstream business website that didn’t have a blog in the menu.

The purpose of this post is to talk about blogging. How it has changed over the year and discuss some of the different platforms available to use.

My first blogs

Do you remember when you first created a blog, if you have had one before that is? I think my first was one I created on Blogger while on holiday. If I remember rightly it was probably nearly thirty years ago. I seem to think about 3 people read it. I then used another platform, I can’t remember which, or if it even still exists to create a private journal style blog, which was lucky if it lasted more than a month or two.

Social Media Growth

Then we had the likes of Facebook spring up and it was so easy to connect with people you know in real life that blogging took a back seat. I just didn’t see the need for it, I could express myself easily online.

Fibromyalgia changed everything

Finding help from Bloggers

When I went through my journey from perfect health to living with Fibromyalgia, two things happened at at similar time. I realised how helpful bloggers were in explaining some of the things to expect when living with a chronic illness. All of these strange things were happening out of the blue as it seemed and here were people who not only understood but had experienced it. They helped me a lot.

Do my friends really need to know all of this?

At the same time I came to the conclusion that, although some of my real world friends were interested in what I was going through, they didn’t all want to read about it in their Facebook feeds. Thinking about how much I had been helped by the other bloggers I remembered how much I used to enjoy blogging, but stopped because I didn’t have a purpose or focus. That is when Living Creatively with Fibro was born.

Choosing a Blogging Platform

Once of the first decision to be made when you decide to blog is which platform to use. For a long time there was only two real contenders.

WordPress

WordPress comes in two varieties. WordPress.org which I have used. The main attractions are that it is free (although you have to purchase hosting and a domain name) and that it is highly customisable. Think of getting a WordPress site like getting a mobile phone, there is a whole world of Applications available in the Apps store and you get the ones you want to use.

Then there is WordPress.com, this is the same WordPress basic platform but they do the work of setting things up for you. You have some degree of customisation like the theme design you wish to use but you have to be using the Business account level before you can install plugins of your choice. So basically like getting a mobile phone and being told what apps you are going to have. The pricing is for one blog only.

Blogger

Blogger as mentioned above is another long established platform. It is generally, but not always used more for personal and hobbyist blogs. To put it into perspective:

However in recent years there has seen the rise of more choices. Some of these include:

Ghost

Ghost is a bit like WordPress in that the actual platform is open source and free to use if you set it up yourself. Although, I have to say as a fairly experience blogger now, setting up Ghost is not that easy. You will need you watch some tutorials or read a few blog posts. WordPress on the other hand is a one click install from most hosting providers. One thing Ghost does really well is make it easy to send a newsletter out straight from your blog. You can embed secret bits of text into a blog post that only email readers will see.

Squarespace

I have no experience of using Squarespace but it looks like it is a really clean blogging environment but from what I can see and have heard is rather limited in what you can do. In terms of the market share, the fact that spellcheck seems to think it is an incorrect word gives me an impression, correct or otherwise.

Choosing Hosting

If you decide to go down the WordPress.org route the next step is to choose a web host. This is both incredibly easy because there are so many but also difficult as opinions are so varied. Rather than make some suggestions I will tell you what I would have wanted to know when starting out.

When searching the internet and coming across comparison articles and videos first see who is making them. If it is made by the hosting company look for further opinions. If it is made by a user see if they have an affiliate link. I’m not saying what they say isn’t completely true but they have a vested interest and some bias. Using a site like Reddit to see what people are saying on the subject is good. Several users of a service with no reason to promote it is always a good sign.

It is also a good idea to try and find a service based in your country for logical reasons.

Two types of hosting

Having said all that there are two main types of hosting. Shared hosting which basically means that your files are on a huge hard drive shared with other peoples. Don’t worry they will have backups in case anything happens to that hard drive. Then there is cloud hosting. This is a bit like services like Dropbox and Google Drive. Your files are basically stored on the internet often duplicated to various places around the world, so the data doesn’t have as far to travel to your readers.

A simplified View

This is a simple overview of hosting and if you use shared hosting there are tools like content delivery networks that can help replicate the process of cloud hosting. If you are brand new to blogging it makes sense to use a shared hosting provider while you find your feet and get to know how it all works. My only other piece of advice is, it is not usually a good idea to go with the cheapest. Also look at the renewal cost as some companies give you a very cheap first year then it hikes up the year after.

I hope this overview has helped with some of the basics. If you happen to have Fibromyalgia or a chronic illness you may want to check out the post Why blogging is good for spoonies.

Until next time,
Susan