Self Hosted WordPress is all the rage these days, in fact this is what we run here at Almost Geek. However there are other options for hosting a blog on your own domain, Blogger is one of them. WordPress and Blogger are two of the largest blogging platforms on the internet. What many people don’t realize is they’re able to run a Blogger blog on their website should they desire which is great for business sites as your not sending your traffic offsite to a blog hosted on a blogger sub-domain.
There are some distinct advantages to using self hosted Blogger over WordPress they are:
- Blogger requires little technical knowledge there are no upgrades to preform as there is with WordPress.
- Blogger can hosted pretty much anywhere as it doesn’t require PHP or a database.
With advantages of course comes disadvantages:
- Blogger has no add-ons to change the functionality of your site. WordPress has an entire site of plugins.
- Your pretty much limited to Blogger’s default templates unless you know how to edit CSS which more than likely out of your realm of expertise if your considering Blogger.
The decision is yours; Blogger is simple and easy to use set and forget. WordPress has a bit of a learning curve and requires regular security pataches but is infinitely customizable.
For the scope of this tutorial we’re going to work cPanel with putting your blog on a subdomain. A subdomain is simply something.yourdomain.com, you probably want your blog to be blog.mydomain.com The reason for this is to future proof the blog, should you decide to use mod_rewrite in the future or you already are we don’t want your blog in a sub directory of your main site as it will cause conflicts. Most hosts allow your to make sub-domains, if you don’t see the add sub-domain option in cPanel email your host’s support.
Login to your domain’s control panel @ yourdomain.com/cpanel and click on subdomains. You may want to add the sub-domain then go to bed and setup the rest of blogger in the morning, this way the new sub-domain has time to register with the DNS system (this doesn’t cost you a dime).
Next your want to name your subdomain, I choose blogger.almostgeek.com. After choosing the name you want to change the Document Root to /blog or whatever you feel is best. Be careful here as by default cPanel adds /public_html/, you have to change it and remove the /public_html section. As mentioned above in order to future proof you don’t want it under your current website’s directory, public_html.
Now we head on over to Blogger and register @ Blogger.com if you already have a Google or Gmail account sign in with that. The process is pretty self-explanatory here are some screenshots to follow along with.
In the following screenshot you will want to click “Advanced Setup Options” drop down and choose setup a custom domain.
Here on middle of the page, you will want to click ‘Already Own A Domain? Switch to advanced settings’
On this screen you need to put in the sub-domain you made in cPanel, ex. blog.yourdomain.com. This is where waiting overnight to complete this process will pay off, if you do it too soon you will get an error.
<rest of the sign up process including FTP information>