I’ve used Blogger (blogspot.com) for my Spanish music website, http://spanishsongs.blogspot.com for quite a while now. It’s a unique website for the fact that it mostly concentrates on popular American artists singing in Spanish such as Janet Jackson, Mariah Carey and Jessica Simpson. But anyways, that’s not the point of this blog. The point is that I didn’t want to buy a custom domain name for the site because then I would have to purchase a hosting package and transfer all my archived entries to the new domain. (I use Wordpress for all my other custom-domain blogs except for the Spanish one.) I found out that Blogger now allows it’s users to choose a custom domain for the blog (which removes the blogspot.com url) and will host it for free! I chose SpanishJamz.com for my new custom domain name. All I had to do was buy the $8.95 domain fee at GoDaddy.com. Usually you have to spend $50 more for hosting but hosting with Blogger is for free!! After a few settings all your old permalinks and archives are automatically forwarded to the new domain name, so you don’t lose any of your old entries and your readers don’t get any 404 error messages if they click on their old bookmarks for your site.
So, if you are a long-time Blogger user but scared to get your own domain name in fear of losing all your archives and readers, you should definitely look into this. Personally, I think having your own domain name makes your blog look more professional and brings more readers to your site. Click here for Blogger instructions about how to get started with your own domain.
[tags]Blogger, blogspot, custom domain, free hosting[/tags]
5 users responded in this post
I don’t know. I think a lot of people are still pissed off at Blogger for that horrendous upgrade they did awhile back. They really screwed a lot of people then.
Me? I’ve been using WordPress from nearly the beginning. I was on TypePad before that.
Yea, I had to deal with the blogger upgrade switch also. But I prefer the new version. It’s more user friendly in my opinion.
I started a blog not too long before the big upgrade, so I missed out on the big headache (it’s about a year old) - I didn’t have the time to get used to the upgrade. I agree, it’s quite user-friendly in my opinion. Oh, the personalized domain has crossed my mind once in a blue moon. But if it’s only $9 per year, maybe it’s worth it?
Excellent tip, definitely something for the would-be bloggers to think about
I wanted to thank you for this information. I’ve been planning to get my own domain/hosting for awhile now, but have felt intimidated by the process. Your information has helped ease my fears, as I was mostly concerned about possibly having to do alot of html code changes etc. I’ll definitely check out GoDaddy.com. I’m keeping my fingers crossed that all will go smoothly and I don’t end up screwing it all up.
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