Should I Move Out of Blogger?

Blogger or my own domain?

[goonewb]

Hi,

I have 2 blogs hosted on Blogger. I have worked on them for 1 year. 1 is PR3 and another PR5. But I only gets about 30 - 80 uniques per day. There seems to be little traffic from search engines. Can I improve the traffic if I have my own domain. And if so, what kind of web development program can give me professional look on webpage development but yet very easy to learn? And where to host them cheaply?

Thanks

[stajer]

I think your own domain will help improve your rankings. You can keep blogger - use their ftp function to publish your blog to a server where you new domain is pointed. No content to move at all.

Blogger's templates are sort of funny - they won't work with any conventional html editor. This might be one of those things where paying someone $250 to come up with a new design will save you 40-50 hours of your life.

[stajer]

I would also point out that content is king. The more articles/posts you have in your blog the more traffic you can bring in. Gone are the days where a few well tweaked pages from a new site can bring in a boatload of traffic.

[goonewb]

Hi Stager,

Don't quite understand what u mean by:

"Blogger's templates are sort of funny - they won't work with any conventional html editor. This might be one of those things where paying someone $250 to come up with a new design will save you 40-50 hours of your life."

Do you mean I can't just ftp the whole blog with Blogger templates to my own domain without changing the web site designs/looks?

If I want to start a new site with new domain, where is a good place to start where publishing is made very easy just like Blogger but its my domain? Is freewebs.com good enough if I purchase a domain with them?

Thanks

[Beagle]

I'm not familiar with Blogger, but I am familiar with a site-building program that sounds as if it might be similar. If this doesn't fit, stajer can let us know. In the program I'm familiar with, you build the site within the program then must use the program's built-in FTP function to publish it because it's that function that turns it into HTML - that's the reason it can't be edited with an HTML editor (which is the main thing making me think it may be similar to Blogger). This makes it somewhat like "online" sitebuilding programs, but, as stajer says about Blogger, you can publish the site to any domain, which isn't usually true with online programs.

If I'm connecting the dots correctly, that would mean that you could keep building your site with Blogger and, using its built-in FTP function, publish to your own domain in exactly the same way you publish to Blogger now.

I wish very much that I could point you toward the program I'm familiar with, as it's easy to learn but also can grow with you as you learn (there is a way to "do" the HTML on your own computer and then use an FTP program to upload it, if you get to a point in your learning curve where you want to do that). Sadly, though, it was discontinued last summer and is no longer available in any format (it was being sold through a license agreement, not by the owner of the program, so when the license ended, that was it.)

A note on freebie webhosting services: Any that I know of aren't worth the little bit of money you'd save. In almost all cases, paid hosting will give you better customer service, more uptime, and more options than a free one, and there are some very good ones that are inexpensive. Don't limit yourself by saving a few dollars a month. And definitely don't tie yourself down by using a free sitebuilding program that doesn't let you move your site to another domain.

[edited by: Beagle at 6:23 pm (utc) on Jan. 10, 2007]