Having a blog combined to your existing web site or as a standalone site is now a must. With a traditional web site , the owner is the sole content provider and the communication with the end-user is a one-way street.
• A blog opens a two ways of communication between you (the website/blog owner) and your site visitors through comments they leave to your posts.
• You blog helps you build stronger relationship with you the end-users/customers.
• You blog posts bring more traffic to your website and generate repeated visitors
Getting a blog to start building your online community is pretty easy. You can have a free blog by opening an account with websites such as wordpress.com or blogger.com. You get can instanly get a blog that is in fact a subdomain of those web sites (i.e. http://blogfornoob.blogspot.com).
The second alternative is to get a self-hosted blog. That is a blog hosted in our very own web hosting account so you can choose the domain name associated with your blog. You can setup your blog as a subdomain (i.e. http://www.blog.yourdomain.com) , in your website subfolder (i.e. http://www.saheltech.com/blog) or have it as the root of your hosting account (i.e http://www.blogger.com) as a website on its own.
I personally recommend owning a self-hosted blog no matter what content management system you choose (wordpress, MovableType,blogger).
With a self-hosted blog you have total control of your hosting space, your content and your blog site address. Should you decide to change a hosting server, your blog URL remains the same
