

Ask HN - Where to host a blog for your startup?  With Wordpress or on our server? - jack7890

We want to start a blog for our startup, but we not sure whether we should integrate it into our site (e.g. www.example.com/blog) or if we should just use Wordpress and then link to it from our site (e.g. www.example.wordpress.com).<p>My gut reaction is that the first option is far more professional.  Plus, there are plenty of tutorials on the web about how to integrate a Wordpress blog into one's site, so I don't think that would be a problem.  But I notice that the majority of startups seem to go with option #2.  Why is this?
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swombat
We took a radically different approach and are using Webby (a ruby static site
generator) to generate our blog as a bunch of static pages with Disqus
comments.

This, by the way, is also the approach I've taken with danieltenner.com.

A good example of this is available on github: <http://github.com/ReinH/reinh-
com/tree>

+

The advantages:

1) It's easy to slot in your blog as mybusiness.com/blog (which should give
you extra SEO)

2) Unless your server is absolute trash, even a major slashdotting won't
trouble nginx (or even apache) serving a bunch of static files.

3) There's no hassle to do with upgrading versions, security issues,
maintenance, possible impact on your site's performance, etc.

4) It is extremely easy to get the blog/subsite to have whatever structure you
want, since you define the structure yourself.

5) Webby supports Haml, Sass, Textile, Markdown, Whatever-the-hell-you-want

6) You can test the site locally to know exactly what a blog post will look
like _before_ you push it live.

-

The downsides are:

1) Only someone with ruby installed can update the blog

2) You can't have dynamic bits (other than stuff you can include via
javascript... which, actually, tends to be all you need. Disqus is pretty much
all we're using on ours)

I deemed those to be acceptable downsides, and so far I haven't regretted it.

You can see examples of this at work at:

<http://www.woobius.com/scribbles/>

and

<http://danieltenner.com>

and

<http://reinh.com>

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aristus
Host it with Wordpress or Typepad but do the subdomain hosting option, eg
blog.example.com.

This will simplify your life and also give you a place to communicate when
(not if) your site goes down. I would also use a dedicated DNS hosting
provider (we use worldwidedns.net) with a short TTL on blog.example.com in
case you need to switch the IP in a hurry.

~~~
brk
I hate to make a me too post, but... Me Too.

This is by far the best advice. You get the SEO value of having the blog be on
your domain instead of someone elses, and you get the resiliency value of
having the blog be on someone elses server(s) instead of your own.

~~~
swombat
Actually, as far as I understand it, anyway (I'm no SEO expert), putting it
under a different subdomain does _not_ get you the SEO value.

Instead, what you want is to have your blog neatly slotted in as:

<http://mybusiness.com/blog>

 _That_ will give you the pagerank.

~~~
ra
This is absolutely correct.

blog.mybusiness.com is treated as an entirely different domain to
mybusiness.com

The only way to get any SEO benefit is to use a subdirectory like:
mybusiness.com/blog/

Wordpress is very easy to install just make sure you upgrade it once a month.

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spencerfry
I don't understand the sudden fad for professional companies to host their
blogs on Wordpress, Tumblr, etc. It makes absolutely no sense to me. Keep your
blog on your own domain as a subdomain or a subdirectory and NOT on
example.tumblr.com or example.wordpress.com. Both are great services, but
shouldn't be where you host your company's blog.

~~~
wensing
Can you give a reason why people should do this? We host the Stormpulse blog
on Wordpress. It handles the core function of communicating with our user base
just fine, and it means that I didn't have to spend any more time on it than
absolutely necessary.

My counter reason: what "looks professional" is the kind of thing that makes
doctors, lawyers, and real estate agents feel like they have to drive luxury
cars. On the Internet, if people love your product, they don't care what you
drive.

~~~
brk
A big reason for the subdomain is that these days it's all about getting found
when someone is searching for something that you sell. There is a lot of "fu"
that goes into how Google decides what results to return for a given search,
and how Google decides what page or site is the most authoritative for a given
search. While nobody knows the exact recipe, everyone seems to agree that your
domain name plays into the algorithm significantly. When you spread your
content across domains, you're essentially diluting the search value you can
achieve for a given query. Maybe it doesn't matter today, because you rank
very high now, but that may not always be true.

The other reason is that people will bookmark your blog (if you're lucky ;) ).
What if you later decide to switch from wordpress.com to whoknowswhat.com?
What if wordpress goes out of business or shuts down for some reason? People
will have bookmarks for what is essentially YOUR site on a domain that you
ultimately have no control over. It is a bad idea to build up a resource for
your company onto a mechanism that you ultimately have no control over.

~~~
simonk
Your url is still blog.yourname.com you should be paying the $10 a year to
have it on you own domain.

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tptacek
From bitter experience: if you can have someone else host your blog, let them
do it. WordPress has been a security debacle. You have better things to worry
about.

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whughes
Depending on what your startup does, I'm not sure that the resiliency value
will make much difference. If your site is down, in many cases you may be
screwed anyway; the blog won't help you get new users. In a long-term sense,
other people may be able to benefit from your blog if your startup is not
accessible, though.

~~~
hellweaver666
It won't help you get new users, but it's a good way to let them know you are
having problems and communicate when things will be back up. You can't do that
if you host it on your own web server and the server fails (unless of course,
all your users are following you on Twitter too!)

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arc
Own domain using www.squarespace.com with rest of your site. No reason to deal
with self-hosted setup, upgrades, and scaling when you have more important
things to do when you're starting your company.

Disclaimer: I work here and am biased ;)

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ashleyw
I prefer it on my own server, but also a "status" blog at
wordpress/blogger/etc. Then you get both the benefits — full control over your
blog, and a way to communicate with your users when the main site goes down!
:)

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marram
Sponty uses tumblr.

