Getting a Domain Name

You can't judge a blog by its cover (but that's what people do)

Blog readers have notoriously short attention spans. And why shouldn't they? There are so many blogs out there, and readers only have a limited amount of time to spend reading them. Decisions about whether to stay or go, unfortunately, are made in an instant.

If you've spent any time at all reading blogs, you can sniff out a low- or no-budget blog a mile away. It's not that they're bad; often the blogger is truly passionate and dedicated. But there's something about that cookie-cutter layout with the same old colors, a theme we've all seen a dozen times, and the extra-long URL that just scream "amateur." And no matter how great the content is, you never quite get past that awful first impression.

I highly encourage readers to self-host their blogs. Self-hosting allows you to have your own domain name, not a cheap-looking ".wordpress.com" or ".blogspot.com" one. Neither of these gives the impression that you are serious about blogging long-term.

What's more, the customized look of a self-hosted site instantly sets it apart from the masses of cheap-looking, fly-by-night blogs out there. And with the aforementioned short attention spans of blog readers, that first impression is so important.

Why you need to host your own blog

Self-hosting also lets you choose among hundreds of free themes (or pay for a premium one), run advertisements and join affiliate programs without breaking any rules, and download free plugins to customize your site. It also allows you to make use of the tips on this site to increase your search engine visibility, one of the topics I write about a lot because of the success I've had with attracting search traffic. But you can't do most of them on a blog that isn't truly yours.

When you're self-hosted, you own your blog. Wordpress.com and Blogger.com might change the rules at any time, but when you host your own site, you make the rules. (Don't worry, you still use the free Wordpress software.)

Self-hosting seems intimidating to the non-tech-savvy, but it's really very simple to transfer your current blog to a self-hosted site. I've explained it all below in step-by-step instructions. (This was actually an early blog post; so many people have emailed me to tell me how helpful it was that I figured it deserved its own page.)

How to Move Your Wordpress Blog to Self-Hosting

Important: In what follows, I'm assuming your self-hosted blog will be a Wordpress blog. Though rare, I believe it's possible to self-host with Blogger, but there's not much reason to. The main advantage of self-hosting, from my perspective, is access to the thousands of free Wordpress plugins that help with everything from layout and design to search engine optimization. Those plugins aren't available for Blogger blogs. If you're a Blogger user, you have two options. Scan to the bottom of this post and see my "Note to Blogger Users," or not worry about self-hosting at all and just consider mapping a custom domain name to your current blog.

Signing Up with a Host

Click "Sign Up Now" at your chosen host's website. I chose to host this blog on Bluehost (at $6.95 per month) because they have a good reputation and the ability to one-click install Wordpress, rather than having to first download it to your computer and then back up to the server. This extra step is pretty involved and took me a couple days the first time I did it, so the one-click install option was a must for me. The rest of these steps are specific to Bluehost, but if you decide to use another company, you can probably still figure out what to do from these steps. Note: if you decide to go with Bluehost and use this how-to, I'd appreciate it if you use the link above when you do it, because I'll earn a commission for referring you. And that's how Health Blog Helper keeps on helping health blogs!
In the "I Need a Domain" option, fill in your DESIRED domain name. NOT your ".wordpress" name. You don't need to put in the "http://www." part either. Choose the ".com" extension, unless you have a good reason not to.
Assuming your domain name is available, you'll be asked to fill in your billing information. With this kind of stuff, it's good practice to make your passwords very complicated. Note that you have to pay for the full year of hosting up front.
Once your account is active, login to Bluehost and go to the Bluehost Control Panel (cPanel).
Near the bottom of the page, in the "Software/Services" section, click the Wordpress icon.
Click the green "Install" button under "Install on an Existing Server."
In the box under "Where would you like Wordpress installed?" your domain name should appear. If there's any chance you will ever want to create a website to accompany your blog, you may want to consider typing "blog" in the box on the right. For example, I decided to locate this blog at http://www.healthbloghelper.com/blog. Once you're finished, it's very easy to setup a redirect so that traffic to http://www.sampleblogname.com is sent to http://www.sampleblogname.com/blog, like I did with this site.
Read the legal information, and if you agree, check the box and complete the install. (You don't need to worry about "Advanced Options" now.)

Congratulations! At this point, you have your own domain name and hosting, and Wordpress is installed somewhere on the domain. You'll receive an email telling you your temporary username and password, and where to go to login to the good old Wordpress dashboard.

Exporting and Importing the Old Blog

Now all that's left to do is transfer your old blog. To do it:

Login to your OLD blog, at Wordpress.com.
From the Dashboard, on the left, click "Tools." Under that, click "Export."
Choose "All Authors" in the dropdown box, and click "Download Export File."
Save the file in place where you'll be able to find it.
Login to your NEW blog.
From the Dashboard, on the left, click "Tools." Under that, click "Import."
In the list of choices, click "Wordpress."
Find the file using "Browse," then click "Upload file and import."
When you are asked to map authors, decide whether you want everything from your old blog to be under a single author name, or if you want multiple author names. In either case, you'll need to create new users, which you can do in your new blog's Dashboard.

Most bloggers who have made the switch have done so without any issues. But every once in a while there's a snag; if there is, check out the Troubleshooting page.

Congratulations, you're self-hosted! Enjoy your new blog. On your old blog, you'll probably want to write a new post that very clearly links readers to the new one, and to let your subscribers know about the new URL. It's advisable NOT TO DELETE YOUR OLD BLOG, because spammers might take the space and use it for whatever it is they do. When I moved to self-hosting, I went back and linked each post on the old blog to its counterpart on the new blog. I even changed the blog name to "This blog has moved" with the new url in the tagline, but this is probably overkill. I eventually deleted my old posts from Wordpress.com, but not the actual blog.

If you encounter any questions along the way, so feel free to email me at healthbloghelper@gmail.com, or Twitter me at @NoMeatAthlete. I'll be happy to help you. When in doubt, go to wordpress.org and type your question in the search box. They have great support pages. The thing to remember is that there's no reason to panic over anything, because your old blog will be undisturbed during all of this. If anything is delayed, you can keep on blogging there until it gets resolved.

You'll want to get a few free plugins right away, see my post about must-have plugins to get started.

Just a Few of the Blogs that Have Made the Move

Once you're happy with the appearance of your new blog, send me a link so we can show everyone how nice it looks!

Note To Blogger Users

I'll (probably) only do this once, but if you use Blogger, I'm going to make an appeal for you to consider switching to Wordpress. Maybe I'm a little biased, since I've only used Wordpress, but I believe that whatever user-friendliness you give up with Wordpress is far outweighed by the flexibility to customize your blog that it allows. As evidence of this, consider how similar all the Blogger blogs look, versus all the different Wordpress themes you see. Yes, a large portion of blogs are on Blogger. But the portion of successful Blogger blogs is much smaller. Take a look for yourself. Of course, it's still possible to have an extremely successful Blogger blog, like the aforementioned Healthy Tipping Point.

You can transfer your Blogger blog to self-hosted Wordpress with only a few more steps than importing a Wordpress.com blog, and there are tutorials with specific instructions, like this one. I've never done it (since I don't use Blogger), but it looks like the biggest issue is that you will have to upload all of your images again, since they won't transfer automatically.

Even if you decide not to switch to Wordpress, don't worry, you can still get a lot of good information from this blog. Some of the search engine optimization things will be more difficult with Blogger, but you can still do 95% of it.

A blog about blogging...about food and fitness.