Pre-Planning Stage 4 - Hosting

So you've decided a subject; you've decided a name. You've decided whether or not to get a domain.

Now it's time to figure out where you will be hosting your blog from. Their are hundreds of thousands of hosts out there; and everyone wants your business - but I'm gonna tell you what my opinion is:
- Get free hosting until you get a readership that is substantial enough to pay for your hosting.

Sure, using free hosting does give you less "street cred", but bottom-line: it's free. Also, some of the free-hosting blog networks (like the ones listed below) help you get ranked by publicizing your blog into their directories. Wordpress is especially good at this.

The free hosts I like the most are:
1) Blogger.com - Incredibly easy to use; easy ad-placement - especially if you're going to use adsense. This is where, obviosuly, this blog is currently hosted at.

2) WordPress.com - Quite frankly, This is my favorite. The only problem - THEY DON'T LET YOU ADVERTISE OR USE ANY SCRIPTS
- You can pay wordpress to host you on their network and then they allow you to advertise and script; but this is by no means the most efficient way. It's like $300 a month for this service.

Pay-Hosting
My tip is if you are going to pay for hosting; go with Godaddy. That just me; I have a lengthy history with GoDaddy.com for domain name registration and hosting and I love them. Domains are only 1.99 if you get any other service on the site at the same time (like a month of hosting).

If you are going to pay for your hosting; another option is to use Wordpress.Org's free-ware php scripts to make your site. This is probably the most professional and best way to go - if you are computer/blog literate enough to do it. What I suggest is blog a bit on free hosting and once you learn the ins and outs - slowly make your way to WordPress.

Their are also other blog-making script programs out there; but I'm not even going to mention them.