The first and foremost step while building a blog is choosing the best CMS or platform for your blog. There are many blogging platforms at this era of developing blogosphere. Some of the best blogging platforms are wordpress, blogger, live journal, joomla, nucleus, PMachine, Greymatter, B2Evolution, TextPattern etc. There are a few pros and cons for each of the platform which normally leaves the new blogger into a confused land who finds it very much difficult to find the best CMS for blogging.
I have tried each of the above and a few other blogging platforms and also read in many other places, that wordpress is the best and satisfactory platform used by bloggers. Most of the large bloggers in the blogosphere have been blogging at wordpress.

Now coming to things like hosting and domain, blogs can be self-hosted or free- hosted.

Advantages and disadvantages of having a free hosted blog –
Advantages are –

– Easy setup – You just have to choose the name for sub domain and the rest of the process of setting up the blog is done by the blog host. And posting is also easy, just write and publish it.
– No investment – For blogging starters who find it difficult to invest money, it is a free option for them and they can start blogging for free anytime.
– Getting easily indexed in Search Engines – Search engine indexing speed depends on many factors like the age and quality of the domain, and the free blog hosts main domain is always old and of good quality, giving the ease of indexing of the content of the new free blogs.

Disadvantages are –

– Limited to sub-domains – You don’t have a choice to choose a good domain name such as myblog.com but you get a sub domain like myblog.blogspot.com which doesn’t always look good.
– Branding not possible – Having your own domain always increases your branding levels in the web world, but in the free hosted blogs you have no branding options as the first impression i.e. domain name would not be proper. This is not a problem if you are a personal blogger.
– Limited design options – The themes in free hosted blogs have many limitations provided by the script provided, and also you don’t have a wide range of themes to choose from. The themes can not be well customized.

Advantages and disadvantages of having a self hosted blog –
Advantages are –

– Right to choose – You are left to your own decision in choosing a good brandable and meaningful domain name, and you can choose the correct levels of hosting that you desire for your blog.
– Playing with design – The theme that you use in self hosted blogs have the option of edit in any part of it, and so it is in total control of the user.
– SEO friendliness – The URL structure and other SEO friendly options can be adjusted in such a way which will be liked by the Search engines, and helps in better rankings in SERPs.

Disadvantages are –

– Investment needed – Investment for the domain registration and hosting for the blog is a must if you are choosing to have a self hosted blog. Customization of templates can also make you spend more.

Conclusion – After i read many other blogs, i decided to have a self hosted blog and suggest you all to have the same as the self hosted blogs are more successful, can be easily monetized and you can have complete branding with it.
Remember “Spending a few bucks to start off is not bad if you need a bright future.”

Similar – WordPress better than blogger.