Where Do You Host Your Blogs?

Hi, Maggie,

I'm on Blogger (woefully out of date). Here's a recent-ish thread:

http://fineartamerica.com/showmessages.php?messageid=1428326

I only host my websites/blogs on standard commercial web hosting services (BlueHost.com is still my favorite). This gives me more flexibility, creative power, and the full range of online marketing potential. I would never create a website which was just a sub-folder or sub-domain of someone else's domain:

1. You lose some control of your own destiny. They could ban your site, or go out of business, or get too slow, or a whole list of other bad things.
2. It's harder to market a sub-folder or sub-domain effectively.
3. You may not be able to access the content you've built, for example if you wanted to move to your own independent website - depending on their TOS.

FAA is my only exception, because I like their "artist's website" feature and it's tied into the FAA transactions. But I also have an FAA shopping cart on some other websites.

I'm promoting my FAA photography pages through a community-oriented website I own, and a blog at blogspot. Neither are photography oriented but they give me exposure.

My website home page has a link in the main menu with a slideshow widget. http://www.montereypeninsula.info/

On other pages of my website I'm putting in image links from FAA to both illustrate my pages and promote my photography at the same time. Plus I have a text link in the navigation menu. Here's an example http://www.montereypeninsula.info/guide/mryintro.htm My website gets about 100-150 visitors per day, so it's my main promotional platform for my photography.

On my blog I have basic links to my FAA artist website on the left side: http://mrtoysmentalnotes.blogspot.com/ A blog is a good way to generate traffic to FAA provided you can build an audience for your blog.

My main blog, and reasonable up to date, is on my Zenfolio site http://www.ipgphotography.com/blog but I also have one using wordpress but I find it more difficult to add posts http://paulgulliver.co.uk/wordpress/

We use our own web site for a little bit of blogging, http://www.cassiopeiaart.com

Depending on your technical abilities, there are several options.

Because I've done alot of computing, we use the Windows Azure platform to run the site, and it gives us 100% control of what we can do, but you need to know how to setup servers, OS and keep them running, installing software etc.

The next option would be some hosting company (there are 1000s out there, one is http://www.hostmonster.com), they look after the servers, the OS, backups and give you a point and click to help you maintain your site (HTML, PHP etc). You need some knowledge of setting up something like wordpress and html, and possibly writing scripts in PHP etc. Depending on what/how much you want to do.

Next is where you just use a company that does all the technical work for you, and you just post blog entries to them. Like http://www.blog.com or http://www.wordpress.com etc.

The further you go down that list, the less control you get of how the site actually works, and what you are able to do.

HTHs,

Rob.

I just set up my first blog on Wordpress last week.
Already getting a surprisingly good amount of traffic

Set the whole thing up my self, chose a free theme and customised it. Pretty happy with how it looks and the functionality and may tweek it in due course when I get a feel as to how it works and the other options

http://mrbennettkent.wordpress.com/

I also use Wordpress. http://robertwoodwardphotography.wordpress.com/

I host mine on my Zenfolio site: http://www.haldanephotoart.com/blog

My latest blog is on the Blue Ridge Parkway. The poem in the blog was recently published in the Mountain Express Newspaper.

I"m on Wordpress ( .com ) and on Tumblr for posting my artwork. I post my thoughts on my FAA blog and share that as links in my email campaign.

I have done some searching and, though Wordpress and Tumblr have just as good SEO as FAA, which means these blogs platforms show up at the top of the list, I have found that the huge sellers on FAA who only use the FAA blog feature ( and not the other two mentioned ) share in the FAA natural SEO. Their blogging shows up on the first page in search, especially on google. So if you blog regular on the FAA blog it will show up, but you wont share in the outside audience that WordPress and Tumblr provide.



http://FrankJCasella.wordpress.com


http://FrankJCsella.tumblr.com

I use Wordpress and am very happy with it.

http://cjslattery.com/

I'm on Blogger.

http://www.kerrimortenson.com/

Wordpress. I've used Blogger in the past but Wordpress is so much more powerful.

Wow, a lot of different answers, though wordpress does seem to come out on top. I've started a site on weebly.com but I don't thick they do any SEO.

I have a blog at jimmiesart.blogspot.com and two other websites. It is getting hard to maintain all the sites as we sell at shows which includes travel.

Maggie,

I'm about 90% complete on a Weebly site, right this minute; there are lots of SEO opportunities available for your Weebly site. (Trust me -- I've been Googling and then following, step-by-step to maximize SEO.)

Let me get some links for you; back in a flash . . .

http://youtu.be/2J8ZdPGxUIU
http://weeblyforums.com/2013/03/weebly-site-settings-page-settings/
http://weeblyforums.com/2013/05/weebly-page-settings/
http://www.siriweberfeeney.com/14/post/2012/08/dont-miss-these-easy-to-add-seo-settings-in-weebly.html
http://justforwebsites.com/weebly-search-engine-optimization-seo/
http://artbiz.ca/seo-for-art-websites/#.U15qiqK5JvQ
http://divtagtemplates.com/weebly-seo-site-description-meta-keywords/
http://www.webnots.com/seo-for-weebly-site.html
http://www.siriweberfeeney.com/14/post/2012/08/dont-miss-these-easy-to-add-seo-settings-in-weebly.html
http://weeblyseo.weebly.com/

Okie dokie . . . apparently, I have more tabs open than I thought! :-) These should get you started; I'm finding the first link -- the YouTube tutorial -- to be pure gold!

I'm really enjoying working with the Weebly system; it's not at all the same as when I first checked them out, several years ago!

That being said, I still plan to keep my blog on Blogger (AKA Blogspot). I've been there for years, so have links to that blog all over the 'net. No need to rock that particular boat!

My hope is to use the Weebly site to funnel some new buyers to my AW.

Hope this info is helpful, Maggie. Happy Monday! :-)

Do you have to pay a fee on wordpress...........

I use BlueHost
very easy to use
You can check it out through my blog at
http://www.impressions-of-light.com/bluehost/

Wendy, do you have to be a registered member of Weebly to view their web sites/blogs. I just thought I would try to look at your Weebly site, if I go straight to Weebly I can't go anywhere without joining. I then tried a Google search for "Wendy J St Christopher on weebly" - this came up with a couple of links but both produced page 404 errors.

Hi, Paul,

I'm still building my Weebly site. It was invisible to you because I hadn't yet 'published' it for public viewing. I did (finally!) publish it -- just about an hour ago. It's not 100% finished, but I need to see it functioning to find all the problems! ;-)

The site is set up under my own domain, so can be found at www.art166.net -- my 'free' URL there is http://art166wj.weebly.com
I've upgraded to a paid account, so I can now use my own URL, plus a few other 'premium' perks.

I think I'll continue to edit the site in its live, published state, but the site can be published or unpublished at will.

As for moving around on Weebly — no idea how that works, as I did all my homework first, then signed up right away.

Thanks Wendy, you have a very professional site on Weebly, well done.

blogger and squidoo

Paul, thanks very much for the positive feedback!

After more than a decade online, this is my first personal website, so it's good to hear you think it's adequate to the task. :-)

Originally, I tried building a site on Virb.com, but have found Weebly immensely more flexible and user-friendly. I've been 'tweaking' for the last hour or so; time to step away for awhile, I think!

@Maggie -- Hope you don't mind the digression . . . which is not exactly a hijack! ;-)
I've opened a fresh thread about the new website.

http://fineartamerica.com/blogs/proverbs-to-live-by.html

On Faa.

I actually keep my own business web-site separate from any other sites including FAA. I however have a link from my website to buy greeting cards at a discount from FAA. Everything I have is the opposite and linked to my personal site. I do post the same blog from my personal site onto my FAA account. So I do that twice and keep them separate.

My apologies for being woefully behind in responding to discussion threads I started. So GLAD you all responded and shared your links. Such rich...modeling for me as I had no idea what to write about. Mr Bennet Kent, yours was the first I happened to click, and it was really, really nice. Am looking forward to spending the next few days on this thread clicking on reading. Thak you so very much everyone for the generosity of your time and sharing of your information! Enjoy your day!

I'm on Blogger but have my own domain. I'm at http://www.peggycollinsphotography.com .

I'm on Blogger, but am considering another option. I too don't blog as much as I should, I guess.
My blog: THIS REDHEAD CAN PAINT!

I do have a few blog posts through FAA just in case someone clicks it to see what I blog. I probably should update FAA's when I update my blogger. I just don't know if it's worth the effort and time it takes.

Kevin, is posting the blog from your personal site to FAA very time-consuming?

Conor -- you have quite a following on your faa blog ... which illustrates the brilliance of Sean to include it on the platform, when an artist cultivates it.

I use wordpress which was put in place by Go Daddy. I design and maintain it myself. I'm a bit of a control freak.

Www.OwnADebbie.com

Edward,

If Maggie doesn't mind me asking you your reasons as to why Wordpress.com is more powerful than Blogger?

Many thanks for your feedback Maggie Vlazny :0)

it is my first blog and still very new, so great to hear that it looks fine. I tailor made this from the free model "Twenty fourteen" on a free Wordpress account, so the bargain of the century. You can spend money on Wordpress with your own domain name and premium models, but well worth trying out the free options to see if you reckon blogs are a good use of your time (I do!!!!)

http://mrbennettkent.wordpress.com/

Zenfolio, Wordpress and FAA of course ('cept not much on my FAA pages!!!)

Hello All,

I have been showcasing the work of artists, many of them from FAA in Blogger for a while now. I ofen get emails from artists telling me how pleased they are for having their work included and I often receive updates from different charites regarding their work. I also receive information from artists telling me of upcoming exhibitions.

The two main themes of the Blogs are African Art and Christian Art.

I have tried other Blog platforms and Web pages but for now I find Blogger suits my needs.

http://christian-artworks.blogspot.co.uk/

http://nelson-mandelatribute.blogspot.co.uk/

I don't know Maggie...(not real sure about what exactly seo is) but the weebly site I've been using is doing really well. Averaging about 3000 hits a week and it comes up on Bing and Yahoo in the first page or two...on Google its about page three unless you put in an artist's name then it comes up on page one or two...that's pretty good for just two months in existence...

Hope you are doing well!