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Do You Own Your Blog and… Do You Want To?
There seems to be much ado about blog ownership these days.
- Do I own my blog platform infrastructure?
- Do I own the content on my blog?
- Do I own the search engine indexing I generate with my blog?
- What does it mean to have a hosted blog or a free blog versus a custom blog that lives on my own server?
- Is it in your best interest to own your blog platform infrastructure?
These things are very important to digest. Above all you should understand that all options are viable, some are just harder and more technical to implement than others – certain things are for certain individuals. Hopefully the factual discussion below will help you think about what is right for you. Where is your time best invested?
Do I own my blog platform?
Any time you pay for a hosted monthly service, it is likely you don’t own the actual infrastructure but you do own the content (which in the long run may be preferable based on your needs). Meaning, you pay a provider to host, maintain and service that platform so you don’t have to worry about the day to day hassles of technology and service maintenance. This means that if you ever wanted to “switch” platfoms – your new provider would likely import content from the old platform which when finished, would be shut down. You may be given options to have your own singular “custom” blog built for you yet hosted on someone else’s servers. This is really just the same as paying for a hosted solution. If you wanted to transfer that entire site, you would likely be given code for the whole site infrastructure that only a skilled programmer could re-institute for you once you found a new hosting solution.
Do I own the content on my blog?
Yes. You will always own “access” and “rights” to the content on your blog. The devils are in the details with content ownership. With a hosted blog you don’t own the infrastructure of the site itself, so getting your content ready for conversion to another system may be somewhat of a challenge. Your new blog provider should be able to help you with this. Content conversion may be a fee-based service or one provided as part of your new setup cost. Content is not always easily transferred, so be aware of your take home options. Most platforms will offer you an RSS or XML feed that contains all the raw code (including active links and photos) representing each blog post you created historically.
You can run into content ownership problems with free solutions. For instance, let’s say you blog on a platform such as Active Rain – although you own the content that you put into the platform, Active Rain also has license to use the content how they wish. What if they change their business model? Sell the company? Create new marketing relationships? Where will your content end up? Ultimately the only way to fully control where your content ends up is to maintain your own hosted or custom blog presence. However, don’t overlook the “free” opportunities presented to you – often times there is great reason to utilize such vehicles, just be aware of the potential limitations.
Do I own the search engine indexing I’ve generated with my blog?
Nobody can control what search engines decide to do. Unless a new blog provider can offer you a URL re-writing map to tie the old content URLs to the new URL locations, you will likely lose any indexing you previously generated with your hosted blog solution if you make a change. Most blog platforms create a unique URL for each blog post. Each of these unique URLs tend to become indexed in the search engines individually and over time. When you import your content to a new platform, even if you use the same root domain (blog.mycompany.com), those unique, historic post URLs are likely created using a new system that makes them slightly different from what the search engines know them as. This means anything previously indexed will likely return a 404 Page Not Found error which will take time for the search engine index to learn to remove. Your new URLs will become re-indexed over time, but in some sense you are starting from scratch. And, as always, with search engines your indexing results are not guaranteed to stay – they will ebb and flow with time and as you change your content.
What does it mean to have a hosted blog or a free blog versus a custom blog that lives on my own server?
A hosted blog will be the most common thing for you to consider. This likely means that you will get a custom design and look created for you where you enter and control your own content, yet a third party manages and maintains the technical aspects of running that blog. The third party deals with technology problems, server outages, DNS issues, problems created from bad code insertions, time out issues, and anything else you can think of. They cover the details and keep you at your best while you worry about blogging.
A singular instance of a custom blog built and installed on your own server is only possible with a highly technical knowledge set. Either you or a skilled programmer hired by you would need to know the intricacies of installing a blog platform onto a server most likely located on-site in your office. It is unlikely you have the resources to house such technology. If you do, you will know just by reading this. In this case, you do own everything about the blog including the infrastructure, the code and the potential headaches!
A free blog solution will likely give you very few control options as well as few options for content conversion if you wish to switch (however they are usually possible to find with some digging). Although you own rights to such content, getting a cooperative helping hand to put it into a good conversion vehicle may be difficult.
And, Finally – Do you need or want a custom self-hosted blog solution?
Custom, self-hosted solutions are for highly technical folks or for people that have the resources to contract highly technical folks (likely for high costs). They are unlikely solutions for most. A hosted solution is a fine way to go providing you understand and ask the right questions prior to contracting:
- What are my content conversion options if I decide to cancel your service?
- Do I have any storage limitations?
- Do you host photos for me?
- What types of service and education do you provide?
- What is your technical support policy?
- Will you help me learn to blog effectively?
- What is your pricing model – what is included and what is ala carte?
- Do you provide statistics or systems monitoring?
- Will I get a custom design?
If you don’t want to manage the hassle of keeping technology up to date and you value education with a helping hand, a hosted solution is your likely choice. Your service provider takes on all the headaches for you. They should also be vested in your success, meaning providers of great educational resources and services that allow you to get the most return for your investment of time.
Kinetic Knowledge provides affordable, business-class blogging solutions that will help you easily leverage knowledge and information online. Our ongoing educational services (such as webinars and monthly email tutorials) demonstrate the value and how-to’s of blogging and help you to attain success sooner rather than later. Whether your needs are marketing, advertising, public relations, supplemental content creation or traffic performance analytics, we have user friendly, affordable and ever- evolving products and services that will meet your needs.
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March 21st, 2008 at 7:08 pm
Is this a new opportunity you are offering - to own our platform vs a monthly subscription fee?
March 21st, 2008 at 7:32 pm
It’s a great question Steve. We’re not offering to build individually owned platforms; however, its’ important to understand why. Our goal or model is to provide ease and affordability to folks like yourself. With our platform we can manage, evolve and improve the blog solution for our clients, while passing economies along. It’s important because opportunities on the web and search engines are ever- evolving and you want to be current. In fact, we even throw 4 tiers of ongoing education, accountable service and some other goodies… for $49 per month.
March 22nd, 2008 at 1:27 pm
Wouldn’t it be nice if every hosted solution and free site posted the answers to these questions on their site?
March 22nd, 2008 at 4:08 pm
do you think we should blog on the merits of a platform that evolves with the web and/ or the economies that are possible with a hosted platform sharon? cf
March 25th, 2008 at 3:45 am
The customer service is fantastic. Everyone that I have routed towards your blog solution - has gotten back to me with very positive feedback.
That is the way we run our business - Playing it forward - AS long as those “I refer to” take care of my Clients - Then all is well in the world!
Chris and Kristen do just that… “Take Care of Clients”.
CONNOR with HONOR
March 25th, 2008 at 9:15 am
“You should wake up every morning terrified with your sheets drenched in sweat, but not because you’re afraid of your competitors. Be afraid of your customers, because those are the folks who have the money. Your competitors are never going to send you money!”
Jeff Bezos CEO Amazon.com
We’re trying Connor, Cf
April 13th, 2008 at 3:49 pm
Kristen gave me the best advice about image hosting a while back… simple, cheap, effective…
Use one of the domain names you likely have sitting dormant on GoDaddy. Mine came with free hosting, so I have a bunch of free hosting “credits”. Create a folder for your graphics on this domain, and upload your graphics to that folder as you need them.
When using those graphics for your websites, you simply need to refer to where they are hosted (i.e. http://yourdomain.com/graphics/myfile.jpg). This makes it easy to use the same graphic on multiple sites (like a house photo), and it makes it so you’re not a slave to whatever website platform you’re currently using. And it makes it easier to transfer from a free host to a hosted site, since you don’t have to re-upload all of your graphics.
April 14th, 2008 at 5:44 pm
Thanks Linda! (although I think our conversation just sparked you to originate the idea)
Although our new system provides the ability to upload photos for your blog posts directly to our servers from your desktop, Linda offers a good point in her comment about GoDaddy hosting credits above…
“it makes it so you’re not a slave to whatever website platform you’re currently using”
By this she means that if you ever decide to transfer to a new service (we hope not! but such is life), you won’t lose your photos in the conversion because you are controlling them on a third party site/server. If you upload them directly onto our servers (which is a really nice, quick convenience) and you decide to stop using our service, your photos will likely also be deleted. If this is a concern, her solution is a good one! You can also use things like http://www.flickr.com or http://www.photobucket.com - there are many free storage services out there.
May 17th, 2008 at 9:19 am
[…] The skinny on content and blog platform ownership […]