Getting Started

Website or Blog: What’s the Difference?

A blog is a specialized type of website. For an in-depth comparison of a website and a blog, try reading this article: Difference Between A Blog And A Website. More simply put, website pages require some technical knowledge and skills in order write or change them. A blog, on the other hand, requires no special skills; content can be added, changed, or deleted by anyone with basic computer literacy. In its simplest form a blog is an online journal containing dated entries whose content frequently changes. But if you look through our blog, you will see that it contains much more than just dated, journal-type entries. It also contains many topical pages (more than 60) of semi-permanent information organized in a hierarchical structure and accessed through a menu. A blog can be very robust in its content if so desired. A blog is the easiest, simplest, and fastest way for you to get on the web.

Start Blogging for Free

There are many different popular blogging programs available. Many websites offer blogs to people who sign up for an account. If you type “free blog” into your browser search bar, it will bring up several popular sites including www.blogger.com, www.blogspot.com, and others. There are also some Christian blog communities if you search them out. I will recommend the software with which I am familiar and which is probably the most well-known: WordPress.

I recommend that you begin with a free blog on the WordPress.com website to get you started. This will allow you to get started quickly and easily with very little investment of money or time. Eventually, however, you will want to upgrade to a paid host for your blogsite for the following reasons:

1. Free sites usually have limited functionality. When you first start out with a blog this is not important, but as you gain experience in managing your site and writing content, it will become more so. On a paid hosting site, you will have access to more features that allow you to modify the appearance and functioning of your site.
2. Free sites often contain advertisements displayed on your site by the host. At best these can be annoying, at worst morally objectionable. This is why you will want to choose your host carefully. After you upgrade to a paid site, you will not have this problem. On the WordPress.com website they state the following policy about advertising:

“To support the service we may occasionally show Google text ads on your blog, however we do this very rarely.”

3. When you use a free host, the address that visitors type into their browser to access your blog will contain the name of your web host in it (for instance, http://yoursitename.wordpress.com). With a paid site, however, you can register your own domain name (for instance, http://www.hannas.org).
4. A free site is a temporary home for your blog that allows you to “learn the ropes” before you make a serious comittment. When you are ready for a permanent home, that is the time to begin thinking about paying for a permanent location.

WordPress.com offers reasonably priced packages to upgrade your site by helping you to register your own domain name, stopping the appearance of ads, increasing the amount of disk space available, etc. Information can be found on their website.

Another option when you are ready to settle down permanently is to move your blog to a different hosting company altogether. WordPress software is free software and can be installed on any web server. There are hundreds of web hosting companies that can host your website and help you to apply for and register a personalized domain name. Our blogsite (hannas.org) is hosted by Datarealm using their “Non-Profit” pricing plan. On Datarealm, WordPress software can be installed from the administrator’s panel when you log in as administrator of the account. WordPress allows you to export your blog content from one location and import it to another, so you won’t lose any of your articles or postings in the move. Another popular option is Hostmonster, which also allows WordPress software to be installed from the control panel. If you choose another host, the free WordPress software can be downloaded from WordPress.org. (Note the difference between WordPress.COM and WordPress.ORG: On the commercial site you can sign up for a free blog; on the organization site you can download their free blogging software for installation on another host.)

So Go Ahead and Sign Up!

On the front page of the WordPress.com website push the button labeled “Sign up now” and follow the directions by filling in the form and providing the requested information. In about three minutes you can be looking at your own personal website. The user name you select in the registration process will become your new blog address, so select a name that is reasonably descriptive (such as matthannatw). It must be unique, however. If someone else is already using the name you want, you will need to choose a different one. Your new blog will be located at http://username.wordpress.com (where “username” is the username you chose in the registration process). When you are asked whether to make the blog visible to search engines like Google and Yahoo, select the option. You want people to be able to find you when they search for your name. Finally, be sure to write down for future reference your username, the email address you used, and your password.