So, You Wanna Start a Blog: 2nd Step, Your Handle and Your Host
Okay, so if you have been following along, hopefully by now you have done some research about the oh, I don’t know, bazillion things to look at on the bazillion blogs out there.
Good. Next step.
Time to think about what to call your blog. Naming your blog may feel akin to naming your children. Because, in reality, your blog is going to feel like a child, or more like an infant for a long time as you nuture it, dress it up in different outfits, put it in timeout, and so on. So, for me, it took a while to find the right name. Here is what I took into consideration:
First, I did not want my own personal parent-given name to be a part of the title. Other people may think differently about this, especially people who may be running their own business and want their names “out there” and everywhere. I felt a bit more protective of my name. I wanted a “handle” or nickname or pseudonym, both for fun and for a tad bit more privacy. Of course, if I make it big, the privacy part is gone no matter what the blog is called.
Also, I thought about the topic of my blog — motherhood stuff — and wanted that to somehow be represented in the title. But in a way that said “me.”
I thought about search engines. What would my readers be searching for? And how would the name of my blog lead them to my articles.
After I thought about those things, I googled my name ideas to see what came up. You should do this, because one time I googled “Freckle Face Boy” to show Ty that boys can, indeed, have freckles and PORN came up. I clicked off of the results as soon as I could. Ty asked, “Mommy, were there pictures on that page that bothered you?” Uh, ya think?
So, all of that to say, google your ideas and be sure you are not inadvertently leading your potential readers into some sort of bold sin.
Then, “cross your fingers and hope to die and stick 1000 needles in your eye” that NO ONE out there was as clever as you and picked your name already. After you confirm that you can “own” your name, then BUY IT. I do so recommend purchasing your URL and owning it. It feels more official, it’s cheap, you don’t have to have “wordpress” or “blogspot” before the .com in your address. This, of course, is all about your own persnoal preferences, but I say, DO IT.
That goes hand in hand with the idea of hosting your blog. Now, I am not talking about serving it beer and nachos during the big saturday college football game (Go Cougs!). I am talking about having a service that you PAY to maintain and “host” your blog — rather than a free blog site. I admit it, though, that I turned to el-husband for this one. He knows all about this stuff and researched it. So, we do host our blog with a fantastic service called GO DADDY. They are available 24/7 for questions, set up, trouble shooting, and so forth. They walked me through (I should say, DAVE, because he set this up for me… ) getting my URL to magically transform before my eyes into a WORPRESS blog and they also waved their wands and I got email through my blog that comes into my outlook inbox. They are miracle workers, they are.
There are a lot of good hosts out there. And it is worth the small fees you pay to have the person on the phone to call when you cannot figure out how to make something work. Unless you love to cry. Then, go with the free service.
Next Steps: Design — Free or not that Free and What Do You Put in Your Sidebar?
