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Thread: Blog Hosting

  1. #1

    Blog Hosting

    Hello and I'm a new member of WHT, I hope I can find a good home here, I like the layout reminds me of suggestafix.com.

    I've been doing research into Blogging as a last resort option of pushing information out to the users of our website. Recently my college was hit by a tornado and that almost one in a million scenario occurred. Power failure, UPS's not holding a decent charge, generators not kicking on, mother's day early morning, etc, etc... you may have heard it on the news.

    Anyways the website was down for an extended time until we could get another college to host the domain (which took the longest, mother's day, etc) and we could not get information out to the community.

    Anyways our lasted idea is to host a blog that we can advertise on campus as an "If all else seems to be failing GO HERE for information" page. It needs to be idiot proof, preferably accessible by PDA or PDA email, reliable, allow multiple admin user access, and somewhat customizable.

    Google-owned blogger looks like it can solve most of these problems...built in software and such but I do believe the higher-ups are going to want a specific domain-name (which I don't think you can do with Blogger, but I could be wrong). I've also been looking at Godaddy bloghosting with something simple like WordPress or MovableType.

    I'm somewhat new to hosting and blogging in general and was wondering if anyone had suggestions. Money probably won't be a factor, but considering this site will probably never be used unless another unlikely series of circumstances happens again, the price should be kept low. More or less we need a simple blog that can be idiot proof and accessible by the technically non-savy president's secretary to post information on closings, damages, contact info, etc, etc. Able to create a URL similar to our current one would be a huge bonus.

  2. #2
    MovableType isn't exactly simple, you'll have an easier time finding themes and plugins for WordPress, plus it will be a bit more user friendly and easier to setup

    In terms of hosting, find a suitable domain name and get some hosting for it. The best place to buy a domain is Godaddy or Namecheap. For hosting find a hosting company that does not oversell (no 5$ for 500GB space plans) which supports PHP and MySQL and you're all set.
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  3. #3
    Join Date
    Mar 2004
    Location
    Singapore
    Posts
    6,990
    What you require seem to be quite basic. You will need just a basic Linux hosting maybe Cpanel with Fantastico or Directadmin with Installatron. Just use the one click functions of Fantastico or Installatron to install Wordpress and you are ready to go.

    Most of the web hosting companies here support what you need, just do a search on the Shared Hosting Offers, I think you will easily find what you need. It would be helpful for you if you can get someone from your school that is well versed in blogging and estimate your requirements before getting a package.

  4. #4
    Join Date
    Oct 2002
    Location
    EU - east side
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    21,920
    but I do believe the higher-ups are going to want a specific domain-name (which I don't think you can do with Blogger, but I could be wrong)
    You should be able to use a custom domain name for your blog:

    http://help.blogger.com/bin/answer.p...en&ctx=rosetta

  5. #5
    Join Date
    Jun 2007
    Posts
    1,238
    I would recommend Downtownhosts.com They have a special plan just for blogs

  6. #6
    Join Date
    Aug 2004
    Location
    Canada
    Posts
    3,785
    If you decide to go with a web host pretty much every host offers Fantastico or something like it which can install wordpress in a few clicks. Along with that it can also do the updates assuming you login to it once in a while and use the update option.

    So you do not specifically need someone advertising blog hosting.
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  7. #7
    Thanks for all your help. Really I'm just kinda on a fact-finding mission for the project. Blogger seems like a simple application and well-suited to our needs since we can get get our own url. As much as it pains me to use a mainstream..really we just want to set it up and forget about it.. and let the people who would need it have it since if any of us are around we'll be ok. We really just need a solution that non-techies can handle if everything else fails and we (the tech staff) can't be found. We are working on some other things for disaster planning as well (banner warning controlled by xml, transfer of control applications, and other things). I'm sure other solutions have it but the posting by email is a great thing to have considering we are planning for total network, power, recovery problems.

    Btw, if you're interested in seeing pictures of our newly renovated campus we made a crude site containing some pictures ...well i guess i can't post links yet.

  8. #8
    Join Date
    Jan 2008
    Location
    Sacramento, CA
    Posts
    3,657
    I would recommend wordpress as well. It's got the best all-around features. as for hosting, most web hosts can get you started with what you need. you should check the offers section of wht.
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  9. #9
    Join Date
    Feb 2008
    Posts
    237
    Like already said, blogspot lets you use ur domain. When registering it, pay attention to nameservers, not all registrars give u free nameservers to use.

    If u are not using this blog very much, I don't think you should pay a host and use WordPress that requires some more effor with theme + plugins configuration. With Fantastico upgrading is easier (installing and upgrading is easy anyway), but theme and mostly plugins may stop working, and u will need to upgrade them too.

    blogspot doesn't have so much versatility as WP and u can't make backups, but is easier and has the basics for blogging.

    If u don't like blogspot, you can always import its posts to WP later.

  10. #10
    Join Date
    Jan 2008
    Location
    Paris
    Posts
    26
    You can also use your own domain name with a free account at wordpress.com - which some people prefer to Blogger.

  11. #11
    Join Date
    Aug 2007
    Posts
    82
    Quote Originally Posted by Wittgenstein08 View Post
    You can also use your own domain name with a free account at wordpress.com - which some people prefer to Blogger.
    Unless things have changed, you have to pay $10 a year to wordpress.com to use your own domain.

  12. #12
    I would recommend wordpress, much better.

  13. #13
    To confirm, it still costs 10 dollars per year to use a domain on wordpress.com. Just checked.

    Though, if you can afford hosting or using wordpress.com with a domain, I strongly recommend WordPress.

  14. #14
    Join Date
    Feb 2008
    Posts
    237
    You can also 301 WebRedirect your domain to wordpress.com

    The question is, will u use this blog just on critical times, or for anything else?

    I'd not suggest leaving it for only when anything else goes down, because if it is little used, when needed nobody will remember its URL. Even more if it has its own domain......

    Why not create a blog for something that u'd use with some frequency and ppl would go read, so they keep it in memory? You can create a category for this critical matter, so that ppl can list only that subject posts. I think wordpress has a plugin that lets you use subdomains associated with categories.

  15. #15
    Yes..It would only be used in critical times. UGA has the ability to redirect the traffic for us in case EVERYTHING goes down like it did last Sunday. Trouble with last Sunday was that it was 5 am, Sunday, and Mother's Day. It took hours and hours to get even a splash information page to come up from UGA (which we don't have access to of course). I've asked the networking guys to look into Blogger to see if its possible to get our domain (maconstate.edu) into Blogger in case it happens again to totally route out having to deal w/ UGA altogether. (I'm not network savy at all.) In worst case we can have a redirect page at UGA so that we can just call and, hopefully, someone can just remote in from home to make it active(which apparently they couldn't do Sunday). In Blogger I can edit all the code by hand to give a similar feel to our site, so I'm not too worried about having design tool.

    The idea is just so that the president has a medium to get info out to the community in case of total power/network failure, and hopefully even if none of the IT staff can be found, in a non-technical, easy manner(posting via email on his PDA). Another one of our programmers is working on automation atm. We here on the IT staff really just want it to set it up and forget about it for the most part.

  16. #16
    Join Date
    Sep 2004
    Posts
    153
    Well, from my experience it's always better to domain name and a hosting account for it. This way, you have full control of how you want to run the blog, such as adding ads codes, installing plugins, etc.

    Of course, Wordpress is always my first choice blogging script.

  17. #17
    Join Date
    Feb 2008
    Posts
    237
    Sorry but I don't think using a blog only for critical situations will work. If ppl are not used to go there, they will not even remember it exists when it is needed. Unless you phone everybody remembering about it

    The idea of redirecting your main domain to blogspot is a nice one. U'd need access to ur domain nameservers and do a CNAME to ghs.google.com and configure blogspot to use your domain. If that can be done, that's a nice solution.

    My question is, where are your nameservers? If they are offline as well, nobody will be able to reach them to be redirected.

  18. #18
    My question is, where are your nameservers? If they are offline as well, nobody will be able to reach them to be redirected.
    Haha I'm not networking at all, I'm in web development. I do believe that is what is up in Athens, can't say for sure. If the domain isn't able to be switched or redirected then at the very least we could channel that address through the media (TV,radio, etc).

    More or less we've been brainstorming ideas. Thanks for all your input.

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