Creating a Blog at Your Own FTP Server

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Hosting a Blogger Weblog on your own server is more complicated, but the Blogger service remains the same. Blogger provides the template, manages your posts, and performs the necessary uploading. The difference is that it uploads to a Web host elsewhere, not BlogSpot.

Starting your blog at your own FTP site follows almost the same steps as starting it at BlogSpot. The only variation is on the Step 3 of 4 page. In the instructions in the preceding section, you choose a URL for your BlogSpot address. When creating the blog elsewhere, that step asks you to fill in the address and routing details of your Web host. Three required pieces of information, and one optional piece of information, are inserted on this page:

• FTP server (required): This is the IP address of your Web host server. If you are unsure of the FTP address, contact your Web host administrator or look at the control panel of your Web site.

Untangling Pro and Plus

Blogger’s basic account, which enables you to create a Weblog, is free. Likewise, the basic BlogSpot agreement enables you to host the blog at Blogger without cost. (Advertisements are displayed on your blog when hosted for free at BlogSpot.) Both basic services offer upgrades.

Blogger Pro upgrades the basic blogging features and also claims to be more reliable than basic Blogger. (I never found the basic version to be unreliable.) The upgrade is charged an annual subscription fee that, at this writing, is $35. Blogger has been promising (threatening?) to raise it for a long time.

BlogSpot Plus costs $15 a year at this writing, and its major upgrade is the elimination of advertisements. BlogSpot Plus also allows multiple blogs in one account and provides traffic statistics. The cost is much less expensive than full-featured Web hosting plans. So if the blog is your entire site (you don’t need e-mail and shopping carts and a multitude of other features), BlogSpot offers an attractive deal.

It’s important to remember that some Blogger Pro features don’t work with a basic BlogSpot-hosted Weblog — in particular, uploading images. So to get full mileage from Blogger Pro, you must have a BlogSpot Plus account, or you must host the blog at a different Web host (your own FTP server).

• FTP Path (optional): Fill this in if you want your Weblog located somewhere other than the root directory of your server. If your blog is the entire site or will share the root directory with other pages, you can leave this field blank.

• Blog filename (required): Common filenames include blogger.html, blog.html, weblog.html. In most cases, either the .htm or the .html extension works. If you use server-side scripting, you know to use the extension required by your scripts.

• Blog URL (required): Here, fill in the entire URL of your blog, which consists of your domain plus the blog filename, like this: http://www.bradhill.com/blogger.html. In this example, the domain is www.bradhill.com and the blog filename is blogger.html.

After filling in this information and clicking the Next button, you choose a template. Then you’re in business, just as you would be at BlogSpot.

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