Hosting or Where to Park Your Blog

The current entry for “hosting” on Wikipedia, or “Web Hosting Service” to be precise, reads as follows:

“A web hosting service is a type of Internet hosting service that allows individuals and organizations to provide their own websites accessible via the World Wide Web. Web hosts are companies that provide space on a server they own for use by their clients as well as providing Internet connectivity, typically in a data center.”

All clear now? Or clear as mud? - Clear as mud I think… I reckon there are simpler ways to think of hosting. My wife and I own a car, which requires somewhere to be parked when we’re not in it ;o) So, in the same way that we need to park our car in a car park, we need somewhere to park our blog or website. Our house requires foundations to sit on, and this blog requires hosting to sit on also… Making sense? (I hope so because I’ve nearly run out of analogies). A library book requires a library shelf… okay, that’s enough. So, blogs and hosting go hand in hand - like peaches and cream according to Forrest Gump. Simple as that, kind of…

Similar to the fact that there’s no wisdom building your house on shaky foundations, there’s also no point sitting your blog on something that is inherently unstable, and prone to “earthquakes”; a hosting “outage”, or failure, would be to a blog what an earthquake is to a building. If the foundations go down, then the house goes down too. So, we need a little wisdom, or at least a little insight, as to where there may be a rock solid foundation on which to park our blog.

Each of these hosts provide simple WordPress installation using Fantastico. I’ll link to a brief discussion on the upside and downside of using Fantastico in a future post. For now though, if you’re unsure how to proceed, just use Fantastico - it’s how AddIncomeOnline.com was born!)

Click Here to View our Recommended Hosting Providers

Remember, there’s still the option of using WordPress.COM, should you decide you don’t want to pay the small monthly fee for hosting. But, as mentioned in ‘Blogging for Beginners’, we’d go with hosting every time ;o) Especially given that we require flexibility in ‘Adding Income Online‘.

In the event that you have already signed up with a Hosting provider, it’s worth while checking out whether or not the service includes Free Fantastico installation of WordPress. If not, don’t worry. You’ll just have to find out whether or not your Host meets the basic requirements for a WordPress blog. Current basic requirements are as follows:

PHP 4.3 or higher, MySQL 4.0 or higher, Apache or Litespeed recommended.

If this makes no sense to you, and you can’t locate the information on your hosting provider’s website, then just fire off an e-mail to them, and ask for confirmation. You’ll then want to visit WordPress.ORG for step by step installation instructions. Or, you could even make a request to the WordPress Install4Free team, to have them do it free of charge.

Feel free to comment below if you’re still unsure, and we can get back to you with support. We’ll send out the Cavalry… ;o)

Where to now? More ‘Blogging for Beginners’.

http://AddIncomeOnline.com