In the advertising world there is a simple theory that if you’re given lots of options, it’s hard to make up your mind and you’ll never buy anything. But if greeted with one or two options, it’s easy to decide and you spend lots of cash. Well, that’s what some people think anyway. Just look at Apple products. They only have one option when buying a phone. The iPhone. They only have a few options for laptops and computers….and…the iPad?
I am this way when trying to decide where to post my blog, comic or artwork online. I’ve studied all kinds of options. I tried multiple services for years with my portfolio. I learned Flash and built animated menus. I tried free portfolios. Even MySpace for some dumb reason. I’ve used many hosting sites some of which really sucked and some were okay but overwhelming when trying to settle on a hosting package. I mean, what’s SSH, SSL, CGI, Ruby, RoR, Perl, PHP, and MySQL? Please don’t answer that. I really don’t want to know.
So to make this simple, I’m not going to go into all the options, hosts, sites and portals that you can use. Instead I will focus on the two best ways for artists to start a blog or comic online. I might talk about BAD options later, but not now.
The two best options are Google’s Blogger or WordPress.org. Both are great and could be your Internet home depending on what you want out of it. Before you decide, here are pros and cons of each that are important to me as an artist.
Blogger – Pros
- Blogger is super easy
- Blogger has free hosting of your blog and files.
- Blogger is easy to access from any online computer.
- Blogger does not spam your site with unwanted ads.
- Blogger has a big artist community.
- You don’t need to know any programming at all. Period.
Blogger – Cons
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WordPress – Pros
- ComicPress.
- WordPress has thousands of free plug-ins and widgets.
- which means WordPress is easy to customize to do ANYTHING you want.
- WordPress has the ComicPress template to help showcase your comics in addition to your blog.
- All your permalinks are registered to your domain name so they can be moved to a different host without changing your links.
- WordPress has page options and so it could pass as a website or portfolio as well as a blog.
- Comicpress allows you to click through your comic pages easily as well as many other features.
WordPress – Cons
- WordPress takes a bit more time to set up.
- ComicPress takes some knowledge of CSS to customize.
- WordPress needs a webhost to store your files.
- You need to buy a domain name and web hosting service.
- I recently noticed lots of spam comments. But this can be controlled. It’s still a little hassle.
So there you have it. If you want things as simple as possible then use Blogger but don’t expect it to be unique. If you want more info on the two then do the google search: Blogger vs. WordPress. You might want to get comfortable. It’s an endless search. But that just proves they are the two best choices.
I switched to WordPress because I wanted to start having a professional presence on the web. I wanted my site/blog to have a unique feel as well as other pages with links and information aside from my blog. I liked the idea of controlling my permalinks and content too. Here’s what reMINDblog looked like on Blogger. It’s still active but I rarely update it. But if you decide to set up a WordPress blog then I strongly recommend one host.
Bluehost.com
I’ve used many hosts before and the only one I will recommend is Bluehost. In fact Bluehost will give you a free Domain name for life if you use them as your host. It’s $6.95 a month for everything. Wordpress recommends Bluehost above all the other hosts and Bluehost is the only one to offer a WordPress auto install. I used it and it set up everything in a minute and logged me onto my new WordPress site. Bluehost also includes everything you need for WordPress and Comicpress to function. Bluehost has unlimited bandwidth. This is important if your art or comic gets popular. You don’t want your site getting shut down when tons of people start flocking to it or be forced to pay more money for more bandwidth.
You will need to buy a domain name too.
Usually about $10 a year. Use Bluehost.com not Godaddy.com. I have many domain names I’ve bought over the years through Godaddy and I hate logging in because it’s a maze of confusion and unnecessary complications. And Godaddy’s customer service is like talking to death. Bluehost is very simple without all kinds of stupid add-on options slapping you in the face trying to force more money out of you like Godaddy. I’m slowly moving all my domains to Bluehost now.
The only thing that takes time to get set up is ComicPress.org. Like I said before, it takes some CSS knowledge (which I have none) if you want to change it up much. Luckily I have a good friend who knows how to do that sort of thing. The CSS thing is the biggest drawback, in my opinion. But after the initial setup, it’s been a breeze ever since. I love it! I love Bluehost. I love Wordpres.
If you decide to use Bluehost then do me a huge favor. Click through from these page links. I will get some cold hard cash for sending people there who sign up. It’s the best and only host I’ll recommend and it’s perfect for WordPress.org.
In the advertising world there is a simple theory that if you're given lots of options, it's hard to make up your mind and you'll never buy anything. But if greeted with one or two options, it's easy to decide and you spend lots of cash. Well, that's what some people think anyway. Just look ...
