I want to run a blog. Do I need a website?

Blogs have become a hugely popular way to self-publish, diarise, communicate and record ideas and thoughts for others to read and comment. Many free services and platforms are available that fall into two distinct groups.

Firstly, blogging providers such as Blogger and WordPress allow anybody to create a blog on their website with a few simple steps. These sites are pre-made with templates and push-button publishing that allow anyone with a basic knowledge of the internet to quickly master.

However, there is a downside to quickly launching a blog on with one of these providers.

When creating an account with these services, a blog page is established as a sub domain of the blog provider, e.g. http://myblogsite101.blogger.com.au. Your blog is really just a walled off section of a much larger collection of thousands of blogs in the one website.

It is possible to register and delegate your own domain name to the blog provider who will likely have a set of instructions on connecting your domain name to the blog. It's a fairly simple process, and each blog provider should have a complete set of instructions on how to achieve it. This is fully supported by Netregistry.

A blog is potentially one of the strongest potential weapons in your SEO arsenal when trying to attract more search engine visitors. But if you also have a business website and domain separate from your blog, it won't benefit from any of the back links or the additional keyword rich content your blog produces – the host website will.

This is why many professional bloggers opt for specialist open source software such as WordPress that they can install on their own hosting server. This means that you can include your blog as part of a wider website or simply have greater control over how your blog behaves.

Software like this must be installed onto an existing web hosting environment and may require database and scripting support. Netregistry offers a Business Hosting package that supports PHP and ASP, and comes with WordPress as a free installation if desired. Simply administer your hosting account from the console and install WordPress with a couple of clicks.