Last updated on January 15th, 2011 at 12:02 pm

In my last post about using blogs as a marketing tool I said that I would discuss the merits and disadvantages of self hosting your own blog as opposed to using an off-site blog.

“Self hosted” and “off site”?

First of all, what do we mean by the terms “self hosted” and “off site”?  A self hosted blog is one like our blog that you are reading, it is run on the same server as the main site and often forms part of the site using the same domain name. An off site blog is one that is hosted on a different server, is not part of the main web site and does not use the same domain name, a typical off-site blog would be ukaccountants.wordpress.com  (in this case a WordPress blog)  or the Official Google blog.

Pros and Cons of a self hosted blog

Here at Forest Software we decided to go with a self-hosted blog, this was done for several reasons, including :-

• The ability to tie the blog into the site very closely
• The ability to tweak the code as we felt fit (bearing in mind that some of the code could be overwritten at the next upgrade if we were not careful)
• The fact that it increases the number of pages and content of our site each time we post an article and is easier to do than creating a new page for the website.
• We plan to update the blog at least twice a week, thus keeping the site content fresh.
• By using the right plug-ins and additional software we have found that we can get Google and other search engines to our blog within seconds of the article being posted (our record is 17 seconds so far).
• Our servers were already running the right operating system and supported the right programming language for our selected blog software.
• Our domain and site is over 12 years old and has a certain amount of authority because of that.  This means that the blog inherits some of that age and authority.

The drawbacks to this decision are :-

• We have to maintain the blog software applying updates when they are released
• We have to make sure that the underlying database is backed up or else we stand the chance of losing everything
• The categories and tags used in the articles only cross link to articles on our site, restricting the reach of the articles a little.
• The amount of disk space needed for the site increased when the blog was first installed and goes up every time an article is posted.
• There is the possibilty that you may have to pay for hosting if you do not already have a hosting account.

Off Site Blogs

Having said all of the above we sometimes recommend to clients that they operate off site blogs rather than try to use one on their own site.  Much of the time this relates to the technical ability of the client but another factor is how often the blog will be updated.

The advantages of using an off-site blog include :-

• The software is automatically updated for you whenever patches to the blog system are released (these can be new functionality or security patches)
• Usually the underlaying database is backed up for you by the firm that hosts the blog for you
• Posts that use categories and tags are automatically included in generated pages based on these categories and tags meaning that your audience is much bigger (and increasing the chances that search engines and human visitors will find your “pearls of wisdom”).
• Search engines will see your off-site blog as having pages that are votes for your main site.
• There is no software to install on your web-server, this can be important for some people and may prove to be the reason for going “off-site” if for example you are running your website on a Windows server that does not have the correct programming language installed on it.
• A less frequently updated blog does not reflect so badly on your main site if it is not part of that site, people will not look at the blog section of your site and say “no updates in 3 months – is this a dead site?”.
• Many off-site blogs are hosted on a free service.

Of course, for every upside there is a disadvantage, these are some of the drawbacks of offsite blogs :-

• There is a limited number of templates that you can apply and you may not be able to create your own design, meaning that the blog may look different to your main site.
• The url of the blog will not be the same as the domain of  your main site – this may confuse some visitors to your site and may hinder a “branding exercise” favoured by some marketeers.
• You may not be able to install all the additional software that you want for the blog.

To conclude

In the authors view, there are several factors you should consider before choosing which type of blog you want.  These include how important the branding is on the site, do you have the technical ability to look after the blog software if needed, how often you are likely to update the blog (and you need to be realistic here – everyone starts off with good intentions but very many people decide that it’s too much effort or that they have nothing to say and the frequency of posts dies off).

By considering the options before you take the plunge and start your blog you can minimise the risk of deciding that you need to change from off-site to self hosted (or vice-versa) and the extra work that that would entail.