Choices for Personal Websites

If you have thought of starting a personal website, you are not alone. Tons of people have their own personal websites, for a variety of reasons: keeping friends and family updated on their lives, sharing photographs, or as a natural continuation of a favorite hobby.

There are plenty of options available for you if you are interested in having a personal website. However, in order to narrow down your choices to what will work best for you, here are a few questions to ask yourself.

What are your goals with your personal website? Do you want to keep a blog, or an online journal, to let friends and family know what you are doing in your life right now? If so, there are plenty of quick, easy, and — best of all — free options available to you. For example, Blogger and WordPress are two popular blog platforms that don't cost anything if you host your blog on their site.

There are other reasons you might want a personal website, of course, and one is to share photographs with friends and family. Before starting a website, take a look at the photo sharing platforms available, such as Flickr, as well as free file transfer services. An account with one of these services may allow you to share photographs without paying for a personal website.

Do you want your own domain name? If you don't care about domain name, you can easily host a blog on Blogger's or WordPress's websites. Your blog will then have a domain name such as yoursite.blogspot.com. However, if you want your own domain name, you can either go through a blogging platform such as Blogger, where you can buy your own domain name for $10 a year, or use an FTP hosting provider to buy your domain name and provide hosting and other services.

Do you want free hosting or something better? The answer to this question often depends on your budget. If you don't want to spend much on your website, you might prefer to go with a free hosting plan. This will either mean that the hosting provider runs ads on your website, or that your website's URL is a subdomain of their website (such as the free Blogger and WordPress blogs), or both.

As an alternative, many hosting providers offer paid plans that are small enough — and inexpensive enough — to justify getting them for a personal website.

No matter what you ultimately decide, just make sure it is appropriate for what YOU want out of your personal website.