Preliminaries: Hosting Services & Broadband Connections

Hello you, (thus far it's just my blogger alter-ego around :)

I want to do a brief re-cap of what I've done until starting to actually blog. In other words, what you see is already the end result of some time put into it.

1. I got a good internet connection. Needless to say, no broadband = no blog. If you don't have access to a fast and reliable internet connection, damn, girl? you are in serious trouble. Get that sorted out first and foremost.

2. I have a relatively good computer (laptop) to work with. Nothing fancy, 1 GB RAM, 1.73 Ghz CPU, 110 GB space. I'm not an expert on this!!! RAM has to do with how many applications you can have opened at the same time. I usually end up having a lot. CPU speed is about, well, processing power. If the computer 'thinks' a lot, it's not a very good sign.

3. I did some general, but not too deep research into blogging offers out there.
The conclusion: there are two main approaches:
- hosting on your domain. I can't afford this one at this point, though of course if this does well I would enjoy having main own www....I am aware that there will be a bit of a trick transfering from a hosted domain to my domain later, but there you go. Money makes the world go round. If you host on your domain, you have to research (a) hosting providers and (b) domain providers. Usually they are the same thing. I will try to write another post on the future regarding hosting providers, because I have had the experience in the past and it's a quite grueling subject to deal with.
- hosting on a (free) domain. My default option. There are four main hosts I believe:
i. wordpress.com - this apparently is great and nice-looking, but no adverts are allowed. Ouch. Not good for my monetization strategy.
ii. typepad - they charge, so out of my books.
iii. blogger - Google's blogger is generally default choice. Disadvantages is that most names you want to put on your blog are already taken :( . I also read there are problems with spamming, but I will see on that. Other disadvantage: the limited ability to customize. BIG advantage: free, easy to use, already marketed in the Google world and beyond, well-known.

If there are other options I will let you know. In the end, I didn't look any further: Blogger so far suits my limited needs.

I will be back!!!
Jo the Blogger