A blog host is where your blog content is saved. From text content to images, videos & more, all your content has to reside somewhere right? (like how we store personal data in hard drives, pen drives, etc). Similarly, a blog host is where you store the website content.
The performance of your website (speed, page load, etc) depends majorly on your host (even your search rankings depend on website performance). This makes choosing the right blog host a critical decision to make. This is also the step where you make a financial commitment (thereby making it an even more important step). Through this module, we’ll see:
Let’s get started!
Before we begin, here’s the table of content for this course. I recommend starting from the first chapter if you are new to blogging & want an overview of how to set up a successful blog. This is a standard section meant for first-time TBS visitors. If you’re a returning visitor, please feel free to skip this section & move ahead to the module content below.
This is one of the chapters of “The Blog Strategist’s Master Blogging Course”. This free course includes multiple chapters covering the A-Z of everything you need to know to achieve blogging success (and mostly everything you would probably find on a $497 paid blogging course). I know it because I personally bought and went through thousands of dollars worth of blogging courses and scoured through 1000s of articles & videos on blogging over the last decade!
At The Blog Strategist (TBS), my mission is to bring the kind of premium content you would see on $497 blogging courses to my fellow bloggers, for free. I don’t sell blogging courses, I hate putting information behind paywalls and I am not an affiliate sellout recommending anything & everything for a commission. Every single word in TBS is written from my heart (and constantly updated), there’s zero AI bulls**t.
I am transparent about what I do, I publish monthly income reports, operates this blog as a public case study and believe in genuinely helping my readers scale their blogs. I do not write for search engines or social media, but to create truly helpful content for my readers – that’s my mantra.
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Now that you have decided on the blog niche & domain name, the next step is to bring your blog to life, that is, to get it online.
There are two steps to be taken to achieve this:
A blogging platform is the content management system (also called CMS) that you’ll use to manage your blog. It’s where you write posts, categorize them, etc. Don’t worry, it sounds complicated, but it’s more like using a simple dashboard. If you can use Facebook or Instagram (they are also like dashboards where you publish images & posts, create albums, etc), you can use a blogging platform as well with ease. There are numerous blogging platforms available like WordPress, Blogger, Jimdo, Ghost, Squarespace, Wix Studio, etc. We’ll see which is the best one shortly.
And like we said, a blog host is where you store all your data & files.
I’ll explain all about hosting, services, etc in the coming parts of this guide. But please do not jump the guns & purchase any hosting yet. Buying a blog hosting is the next chapter, we’ll do it then. There are several other things you must understand before you make that decision. It’s a long-term decision with financial commitment, so you have to be careful what you choose. So, please wait till you finish this guide & then make an informed decision.
Please note that you need not know any of these to make a blog. Most people create an FB account without knowing how FB works, where content resides, etc. We just create an account & use it – right?
It’s the same with blogging. Starting a blog is as easy as starting a social media profile in today’s world. But being a blogger for nearly a decade now, I’d recommend you otherwise. Even though it’s not necessary to know how a blog works to build one, you should still understand it. I’ve explained the process in very simple terms below. It might be a bit technical & boring – but please don’t skip it. It’s important to understand this to be a well-rounded blogger.
The first step is for you to purchase some space in a server (from a hosting company who maintains a lot servers). There are two options here:
The difference is that if you share the server (ie, multiple people use it), the performance & space available will be limited (unlike owning it completely). This is what’s called as shared hosting (you share a server) & dedicated hosting (you own a server).
Shared hosting is very cheap & affordable – but performance will be lower. Dedicated hosting is costly – but comes with high performance. It’s the same difference between ride sharing (same car, multiple people, less cost per head) and booking a Uber by yourself (only you, but costly).
According to me, that depends on the stage of your blog.
If you are starting a blog for the first time, you should go ahead with a shared hosting plan because it’s cheap & your website doesn’t need that much space in the beginning. Why pay unnecessarily when you are just getting started.
Also, what if after an year you decide to stop blogging, your blog doesn’t scale or for whatever reason that led your blog to fail – it’s not the best idea to over invest on something you’re just starting.
The Blog Strategist currently is hosted in a standalone cloud server, but I started my blogging journey with shared hosting only. I migrated once I had my blogs bringing in thousands of monthly visitors. I’d recommend you to do the same. Start with a shared hosting. Once your blog picks up pace, you can migrate to a dedicated server.
There are a ton of hosting companies out there. From some handling millions of websites to regional companies, your options are plenty. You would have already heard of hosting services like DreamHost, A2Hosting, SiteGround, Cloudways, BlueHost, HostGator, WP Engine, etc.
My recommendation is to go ahead with DreamHost.
Why?
Well, many reasons. To be brief – they’re good, they’re perfect for beginner bloggers.
They’re fairly old in the industry (started in 1997) & knows what they are doing. They host over a million websites. They offer a 100% uptime guarantee (which means your server won’t go down often). They offer 24x7x365 support via multiple channels like live chat, email, social media, etc.
Their plans start from as low as $4.95 per month. In fact, they even have options for $2.95 per month, but I’ll explain why you should go ahead with the $4.95 plan in the next module.
They also offer you a free domain name for 1 year with annual plans (wowza!)
Domain names cost you $15 to $20 to purchase. That’s significant savings!
And most importantly, three things:
First, many hosting companies offer a low cost in the first year to attract customers & increase prices sharply from second year. For example, SiteGround charges go from $2.99 per month in first year to $17.99 per month in second year (almost 6 times what you pay!). GreenGeeks Pro charges go from $4.95 per month in first year to $17.95 per month in second year. With DreamHost, you only have to pay $12.99 per month from second year. That’s significant savings!
I know by second year, your blog earnings can easily pay for hosting, but still, every penny counts.
Please note that I’m not benchmarking prices with services like BlueHost, HostGator, etc. They have a poor reputation in the hosting space for performance. I’ve tried them personally in the beginning & moved out (I felt my websites to be too slow with them).
Just to let you know, I categorize hosting services to three levels (please note it’s in my lenses, there is no such actual system as below):
For a beginner, mid level services are more than enough.
Another reason why I recommended DreamHost is the 1-click instant WordPress install which they offer. It makes your life so much easier & reduces the technicalities involved in setting up a blog.
I use Cloudways for some of my blogs. I like their service, but they’re costly & setting up your blog as a beginner is tough (you have buy domain name separately, hosting separately, change DNS, use FileZilla Client for root changes, etc). You might get overwhelmed with a service like Cloudways in the beginning. They’re good, but to be honest, they’re not built for beginners. I don’t want you to start with something hard to set-up, get demotivated & stop before you even start.
The third important reason is that DreamHost offers both preimum managed services as well shared hosting services. For example, if you look at managed services like Cloudways, WPEngine, Kinsta, etc, all their plans start at around $20 to $30 per month. They don’t have plans meant for beginners below $5 per month. It’s for established bloggers mostly.
Whereas DreamHost is more well-rounded. Maybe because they have been in the industry for long, but they have both shared hosting for $5 per month & managed hosting for $25 per month. In case you grow so damn big you need big dedicated servers, DreamHost has that also starting at $199 per month.
They can meet your needs at all stages of your blogging journey – in the beginning, as you are growing & once you are big. That’s what makes DreamHost special. You need not switch between hosting everytime you see an uptick in your traffic.
Taking all these into account, I personally feel that DreamHost is one of the best hosting services you should go ahead with. There’s absolutely nothing stopping you from going with A2Hosting, SiteGround, etc – they’re all good. But considering above factors, I’d lean more towards DreamHost.
And to walk the talk, let me tell you that The Blog Strategist itself is hosted on DreamHost, I personally use their hosting & know they’re good.
In the next chapter, I’ll show you exactly how to set-up your blog with DreamHost. But for now, let’s continue with understanding hosting more. Please do not proceed to buying hosting yet, that’s for next chapter.
Let’s continue, we still have a lot to learn about hosting & how a blog works!
Fun Fact: Did you know that 40% of visitors leave if your website takes more than 3 seconds to load?
It’s important to have a fast website. And even more important to have a good hosting that ensures your website loads fast!
In the world of hosting, shared & dedicated hosting were like the gold standards – until the concept of “cloud” kicked in. You’d already know how cloud services took over the entire world. From Google Cloud to Apple Cloud, Amazon Web Services & more, the world of data storage now runs on cloud.
And just as expected, cloud took over the hosting industry as well. Unlike dedicated hosting which runs on a physical server, cloud hosting runs on multiple interconnected servers spread across diverse geographies.
To dig one more level deeper, cloud hosting works on the concept of having multiple virtual servers on a single physical server. It’s like cutting up a physical server to make multiple virtual servers and interconnecting them (this concept is called as virtualization). Each virtual server will have it’s on computing resources. The advantage is that in case traffic shoots up exponentially, more computing resources can be pulled in from overall pool (since they are interconnected) to stabilize the situation.
Whereas with dedicated hosting, there is a cap to the computing resources of your server (because it’s a single, standalone physical server). If traffic shoots beyond the handling capacity, you’ll be helpless with dedicated hosting. But dedicated servers are usually quite powerful such issues never really occur. And it’s mostly used by corporates & large organizations (and priced in the starting ranges of $150-$200 per month), so let’s leave out dedicated hosting for now – it’s not for 99% of bloggers.
Unlike dedicated hosting, cloud hosting is much cheaper!
Because you are not paying for an entire physical server, rather a virtual server that’s sub-part of a physical server.
Why are we talking about all this?
Because I wanted to introduce another hosting method called “Managed Hosting“.
Managed hosting means that a third party handles the management of your cloud servers & applications. You need not worry about site migration, backups, administration, system updates, security, etc – it’ll be managed for you.
Managed hosting services also offers supreme performance compared to shared hosting. You’ll know the instant you make the switch. I’ve experienced it personally, you’ll be on awe how fast your site gets. And most importantly, instead of worrying about backups, updates & minor technical stuffs, you can rather focus on what’s important – content creation & driving traffic.
So once your blog grows (maybe to a stage where you have over a 1000 monthly visitors), you must switch over to a managed hosting service.
Again, this is where DreamHost becomes invaluable. They offer a managed hosting service called DreamPress. The Blog Strategist runs on DreamPress plan. Yes, I use their managed hosting service & it’s quite good. You’ll know by looking at how fast this website is (versus many others).
With DreamHost, you need not undergo the stress of migrating to a new hosting provider as your blog grows. You can simply move your hosting plan from Shared Hosting to Managed Hosting in DreamHost itself. That’s what makes them powerful. It’s for everyone – when you start, when you are growing & when you’re damn big – they can meet everyone’s requirement!
As you’d have guessed, DreamPress is costly (starts at around $19.95 per month), but the performance will also be incomparable. The $20 you pay is worth every single penny because your blog will be blazing fast compared to shared hosting.
Don’t worry if you’re new to blogging or not confident financially, you need not start with a DreamPress plan, shared hosting is more than enough. You can switch over once your blog grows. But in case you feel that investing $19.95 a month is not a concern (only if it’s absolutely not a concern – maybe you’re rich, maybe you are from a high income country like US, UK, Switzerland, etc), you can start with managed plan itself. It’s always good to have the best!
But let me reiterate again – shared hosting is more than enough while starting. You can upgrade later, do not feel any pressure to go with managed hosting (don’t even think about it if you’re strained financially). Shared hosting is more than enough!
Special note for pro bloggers: In case you already run a successful blog with thousands of monthly visitors & feel that your website performance is not good enough (maybe you still use a mid-level or cheap hosting), try giving DreamPress a chance. I switched long ago & never looked back. I love DreamHost performance, I simply love the speed & load times I get!
You now know what hosting is. You essentially buy some server space from a company (it could be a virtual cloud server, physical server, etc).
In this space you bought, you will install a blogging platform (a content management system aka CMS to be exact). There are many blogging platforms, but the most renowned one is WordPress. In fact, WordPress powers over 40% of the web, it’s the largest CMS in the world.
With DreamHost, you get a 1-click WordPress install feature that makes your life so easy. Think of the old times when you had to go to hosting panel, install WordPress separately & do other technical stuff. Thank god we live in the new era!
So, you just make a click & wowza – DreamHost will install WordPress application in your server.
WordPress is the application you use to manage your blog. We’ll see in detail the power of WordPress in upcoming modules. Do not worry about having to deal with technical stuff. Like I said, blogging today is as easy as using a social media account. WordPress is just another dashboard like your FB account where you write & publish posts, customize your profile, etc – it’s very simple. You’ll understand once you start setting up your blog.
Coming back – you now have installed WordPress in the server space you bought & started publishing content.
How does someone searching for your blog see your website?
I’ll explain it briefly.
Let’s say a fan of your blog entered your website URL in their browser (let’s say Google Chrome). Chrome first finds out the IP address of your domain through something called Domain Name System (DNS). DNS is the phonebook of internet, it’s the naming database where domain names are located & are mapped to IP addresses. It essentially translates your domain names into IP addresses.
Why is IP address needed?
Because domain names are human readable format (like theblogstrategist.com) whereas IP addresses are machine readable (it’s a bunch of numbers). DNS bridges this gap by linking the domain name you type to the IP address it is associated to (through the DNS database). Your IP address is the address of your server (like your home address, IP is your server address).
With the IP address, your browser can now identify & reach out to the server where your website is hosted.
How amazing is it right!
You asked your computer in a format you understand (a domain name), the computer turned it into a format it understands & started asking other machines for the data you asked. Crazy right!
Coming back, Google Chrome now asks your server (let’s say DreamHost) for the files the user requested. It’s done through an HTTP request.
What is HTTP?
HTTP stands for Hypertext Transfer Protocol. It’s a set of rules that define how a browser should communicate with a server. In other words, it’s simply a specific request structure through which your browser can ask for information from your server. Think of it like sending a mail (with subject line, body, etc). Similarly, a HTTP request will also consist of a header, a request line & message body.
Ever noticed that whenever you type a URL (Uniform Resource Locator) in a browser, you follow the format: https://example.com
This is essentially the request structure needed for your server to understand what it is that you are asking for (what’s there in the URL) & how it should communicate with your server (through HTTP requests).
Your URL is a text that specifies the location of what you asked for in the internet.
So, by entering a domain name, you have asked in a specific request format to see what’s there in a specific URL. Your computer turns this request into a format it understands & asks your server. That’s essentially what happens.
Your server now sends back what the browser has asked for (in the same HTTP format itself). And your browser finally displays the content which the server has shared back.
Never thought searching for a blog URL was this complicated right!
But you know what – it’s good that you now understand how complicated the internet is. As a blogger, you must understand the basics of how a blog works – which you now know.
To summarize, this is what happens when someone searches for a URL in a browser:
As simple as that! or as complicated as that huh?
And just to help people who’re wondering what HTTPS is, it’s a more secure form of HTTP. S stands for secure. With HTTPS, the data will be encrypted while moving from browser to server. It’s a more secure way of browser to server communication.
How awesome is computer science huh?
I’m an electronics engineer. I honestly never really understood the applications of all this while sitting for my computer communication lectures. Now that I am a passionate blogger, I realize the applications. I realize the importance of what I was being taught. We were being taught the language of computers!
Another very common question among new bloggers is whether to go with WordPress or website builders like Wix, Squarespace, etc.
I absolutely recommend you to choose WordPress because you will have more control & customizations. The fact that WordPress powers almost 40% of the web means that the community in itself is huge. With website builders, you will find a much smaller ecosystem that makes your life harder.
Website builders might seem easy to use from outside, but I wouldn’t recommend them. If it’s a static website with a couple of pages that you want to create, website builders are okay. But if you wish to build a serious blog – something that you want to rank, something that you want to make money from, something that you want to showcase your expertise & skills on – go with WordPress. It’s a no brainer.
For me, it’s a very simple answer, I would choose WordPress over website builders any day.
Let me be brutally honest – you MUST use a Hosted WordPress blog (which will cost you some amount).
Please do not use a free platform if you are serious about your blog. Because you are setting yourself up for failure & wasting your precious time.
Free blogs never rank & are not trusted by readers. By free blogs, I mean the Blogger sites (example.blogger.com), WordPress sites (example.wordpress.com), Wix sites (example.wixsite.com), etc. Any site which is not directly “.com” & built on a free platform hardly ever ranks.
Avoid free platforms – they are just there to fool you & waste your time.
I truly hope this guide was useful to you in identifying a hosting service & understanding how a blog works. If you feel there is something I missed out, something that’s wrong, something to be edited or any doubts & suggestions you have – anything at all, please let me know in comments section below. I promise you I’ll try to incorporate all genuine feedback to make this guide even better. Please don’t limit to just feedbacks, let me know your views & thoughts on this topic! Anything you have on your mind!
And if you liked the guide, if you found the content helpful – kindly share it with your friends, with someone you genuinely feel will benefit from it. Also, please feel free to bookmark the guide or pin it so that you can access it anytime!
I know this chapter was a bit technical (and I hope I didn’t bore you too much). But it’s important to understand these as a blogger.
As we reach the end of this guide, I’d recommend you to give DreamHost a try. I’m an affiliate of DreamHost – but I’m talking from my personal experience, not for commissions. I’ve tried multiple hosting solutions over the years & I know DreamHost is better than most. They have both shared hosting as well as managed hosting – that’s their biggest advantage. And you can start small, with just $4.95 per month & not shift hosting service in between (because they have managed service as well). When I started out, my bad choice of hosting selection led me to migrate between multiple services before I finalized one (DreamHost) that I actually liked (loved in fact)!
Are you ready to set-up your blog? Who knows, it could be a life-changing event!
So without further ado, let’s move to the next chapter!