Fed Up with Hosting?

If you've invested in a hosting service and have decided, after this last malware attack, that you've had it up to here with hosting Web sites, Linda offers some alternatives for you in this article.

WordPress.com

WordPress.com seems like a logical choice for hosting if you use WordPress for your current site. I'm very fond of WordPress, as many of you know. And, in moving one site to their service over the past 24 hours, I can say that I'm very happy with how they operate their transferral and hosting services.

With WordPress.com, you receive all the goodies and more than you would get if you kept your current WordPress site up-to-date – all for free. You have a wide choice of templates, widgets and integrated stats. They kill the spam for you, offer 24/7 support and you can have as many blogs as you want with up to 35 authors. You also have privacy options, which means you can host a site that uses a password to enter.

The downside? No monetary gain. You cannot host ads on your site unless you have the traffic to prove you can pull in some cash. Even then, you don't keep the full amount. Additionally, WordPress may run ads on your site, but you can opt out of that feature for a low yearly fee. Other premium features include extra space (anything over 3GB), more than 35 users and the ability to use a domain name (and more).

WordPress also has VIP hosting and support for high traffic or commercial blogs and Advanced Services for features such as WordPress.com Firehose – A real-time, XMPP-based stream of newly published WordPress.com posts and comments.

Finally, you might be concerned about backups. Never fear. You don't have to worry about backups, as WordPress handles that end. And, you can leave WordPress.com any time you want and your content isn't locked in. They provide a complete XML export of all your posts and comments, which you can use to populate other blogs on other servers. At this point, I know that this XML works with WordPress.org's WordPress download software.

Next week, I'll tell you how I moved a less-than-3gig site to WordPress.com. I moved the domain name as well, and the total cost to me at this point for this one site is $9.95 per year to map that domain name.

TypePad

If you are a WordPress fanatic, then TypePad takes a bit of a learning curve to handle. Additionally, it is not free. But, you have two weeks to squirm around in the site to see if it's for you. The bonus that this hosting service has over WordPress is that you can insert monetized ads such as Google Adsense.

For $14.95 per month (and, I think, $149 per year), you can gain access to space for four Web sites, including the ability to use a domain name for each of those four sites. However, you must have custom DNS, as you will need to edit the CNAME Record for the domain in order to set up Domain Mapping. The domain name transfer is included in the monthly/yearly cost for hosting.

WordPress.com and TypePad both offer options for blogging from email. TypePad also offers an option to blog from another Web page with their "Blog it Forward" feature that automatically links back to the original content. You have access to 24/7 support, plenty of templates – including a "design your own" template – with various layout options, widgets and – well – about the same services as you get with WordPress.

I did not use TypePad for site transfers, as I like my registrar, and that registrar doesn't use custom DNS...so TypePad lost out.

Posterous

Oh, really? Posterous? I haven't been to this site for a few months, and I was shocked at the changes made with this site's services – all to the positive. My only advice is this – don't drink or drug before you use this site, otherwise you may find yourself in some pickled situations.

The image shown above belies the services they have to offer – and they're all free at the moment.  Since I last wrote about Posterous, they have added themes, along with the ability to customize them (including customizing the CSS). They also have added the ability to register or transfer a domain name and the ability to import your blog to your Posterous account. All you do is input the domain name into a form and they do the rest.

You can make your site private, make a group site, use video and audio podcasts and get 1GB of space (If you need more, just ask). Plus, this is a great place to learn how to use Markdown. Markdown is a rich-text formatting language that is translated into valid HTML. It's a more powerful way to control exactly what kind of HTML markup is generated when you post, especially from your email account.

Free? Yes – all free. And ad-free, too. So, what's the catch?

In the future, Posterous plans to add premium features. What those features entail, I don't know. Nor do I know how much they'll cost. Also, there's no mention on transfer from Posterous to another site...while your site is backed up by Posterous, it appears your material is locked in.

To be fair, I have an email out to the support crew to see what they have to say about this ability to transfer blog material from Posterous to another site. In the next article, I'll report on what they have to say, and I'll have tried to upload a site to Posterous, too – so I'll let you know how that process works out.

In the end, you may become addicted to Posterous – you can post to your blog, to your Twitter account, to Facebook and more – all from various email addresses. So, you can Twitter one thing, blog another and Facebook something else, all from your email account. This is why I say you shouldn't drink and do Posterous, as their formidable social contact network is like a mindmap that could go terribly awry if you're not careful.