We’re not talking about your hosting company here, but where within your site (or on another site) should you host it. Let us explain…
You’ll be pleased to hear this is a short and sweet bit of info, but we felt a big urge to post this since it still seems to be handled in the wrong way.
There are a few options for where you can place/host your blog.
- On your site at: www.mysite.com/blog
- On a subdomain on your site, using: blog.mysite.com (notice the www. has disappeared and been replaced for blog.)
- On a completely separate site with a new domain name, using something like www.mysiteblog.com
Option 1 – Host the blog within your own site
Without beating around the bush, this is probably the option for you, but let’s get into why and let you consider all options.
Pros
- Easy to setup, especially if you use a neat CMS like WordPress
- You can likely create a blog without needing a developer
- You can usually manage content easily without much technical knowledge
Cons
- If you want to give access to your blog to an external company or resource, for example if you want someone else to do the blogging for you, you need to find a way to restrict access to the rest of the site
- If your site has high volumes of traffic, you don’t want blog visitors clogging up the site and slowing down the ecommerce element
Option 2 – Host the blog on a subdomain
Pros
- This method alleviates the challenge around giving an external party access to your blog
- Blog visitors won’t slow the main part of your site down, provided you host the blog on a separate server (we’re aware we’re getting a little technical here!)
- The URL structure still makes sense to a visitor, as it’s references the blog but still has your usual website URL on it
Cons
- Harder to setup as you’ll need a developer to create the subdomain and setup a new blog CMS system
- You’ll need to maintain these as two separate websites, which can be time consuming
- Naturally this makes setup more costly than option 1
Option 3 – Host the site on a new URL
Pros
- Easier to give access to the blog to an external party
- Visitors won’t slow your main site down
- Ummm.
Cons
- Disjointed brand experience. You’re asking visitors to bounce between sites
- Usually the most expensive method as you need to buy more hosting, a new domain, a new CMS, and ideally style this new site to match your existing site, or at least in the same branding
- This really is another website, which means managing is more time consuming
- Lack of confidence from visitors that links between the sites are genuine. How do they know a scammer hasn’t setup a site called mysiteblog.com and are asking your genuine customers to pay on there?
Summary
Please, please, please, don’t do option 3. There’s no need. Really.
Unless you have seriously high volumes of visitors, you want option 1. With WordPress you can get around most of the drawbacks we mentioned.