Considering that I’m trying to get my financial house in order, adding a new expense might not be the wisest move. But I’m thinking about doing just that.
When I started this blog, I didn’t know how it would turn out; if I’d be able to keep it up, or if I would become more or less interested in blogging. So I took a look at all the blogs on my reader list and picked those whose design I admired. Then I looked for the hosts of those particular blogs. I quickly discovered that of the three biggies, TypePad was very cool, but you had to pay for it. WordPress seemed a bit too complicated to just jump into, and Blogger seemed the easiest. I went with Blogger.
Now that my ideas for Small Cents seem a little clearer, I’m looking for better design and hosting solutions. I have to remember not to dive in head first, when I don’t know the depth of the water, and I’m dragging a heavy lead anchor- it’s a bit counter productive to pay for blogging services when I’m trying to get out of debt!
One way I am being frugal is by calling in some favors. I belong to a networking group, and I asked one of the members to help me with some copywriting. I’m asking another member, a graphic designer, to help me design a graphic identity. I’ll help them out in turn.
When it’s time, there will be a pretty new blogsite, but for the moment, it’s trusty old Blogger. It’s easy, it’s convenient, and most importantly, it’s free.
Any suggestions?
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{ 6 comments }
You are doing it the very right way.
I thing Lynnae from beingfrugal.net doesn’t pay that much for hosting.
I am very bad at graphic and computer things, otherwise I would have gladly helped!
wordpress is actually easy peasy – but then i’ve used it for years, so i might be a teensy bit biased 😉 one way you could see if you even like the options available with wordpress is to start an account over at wordpress.com (which is also free). i will warn you with that option, however, that some things are locked down that are not in the host-it-yourself wordpress cms. that said, there are a billion (not really, but close) template options, and most if not all can be easily personalized to meet your needs.
i’ve used my own domain and wordpress for years now, and although i loved it, this time around, good ol’ blogger is really enough for me. i can do whatever i want in terms of templating, their reliability in terms of uptime is sooooo much better than it was in the early days, and developers are coming up with more and more scripts and hacks to do what i originally went to wordpress to be able to do.
also, if you want your own domain, and want to lose the blogspot.com “stigma”, you can easily purchase a domain and then just redirect your blog through the settings in your control panel, and voila…free hosting, no blogspot.com tag, and you’re only out the cost of the domain, no monthly hosting fee.
for what it’s worth 🙂
I’m quite happy with blogger as well. Much like you I have contemplated moving many many times. I even went so far as to sign up for wordpress and get working on setting up my new blog and wasn’t really happy with my experience there. Plus with the free wordpress they can put google ads (which they do rarely, but still) on your blog, but presently you can’t. Meaning they accrue any advertising cash while you cannot. I think that kind of stinks.
Thanks for the feedback everyone! I have bought the right to smallcents.net, but can’t quite figure out how to transfer it over. I also have a free wordpress account, and I’m slowly trying to learn how to use it, but so far it doesn’t seem worth the trouble to switch everything over. We’ll see!
argh…the links wouldn’t wrap correctly, so instead i’ll put them
here
and here
🙂
Thanks Cricket!