Starting a Blog on Wordpress Self Hosted (Without Breaking The Bank)
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Starting a Blog on WordPress Self Hosted (Without Breaking The Bank)

I see a lot of questions on Twitter about people thinking about making a move from a free blogging platform to something with their own domain name, but not really knowing how much it might cost, where to go for the service or how to find a theme, etc – I’ve seen some ridiculous prices that people have found, so I thought I would put together a guide on how to create a blog on WordPress without a massive investment of money.

Have you;

  • Heard about WordPress and wanted to know what the fuss is all about?
  • Looked at the different blogging platforms and finding it difficult to choose the best option?
  • Do you think it’s not for you because it’s too expensive?

Fear not! This guide will run through how much it really costs to set up a self hosted WordPress site, and why it may be cheaper in the long run compared with other blogging platforms.

This hopefully will be useful to everyone – yep, even you! If you are;

  • Just starting out, and thinking about going all in on WordPress to futureproof your blog
  • If you have a blog already and are looking to transfer from Blogger or WordPress.com to a self-hosted WordPress blog
  • If you want to move onto your own WordPress site, but you’re on a tight budget

What is WordPress?

You may know this if you have looked into this before, but there are actually two different versions of WordPress; WordPress.org and WordPress.com. So, what’s the difference between these?

WordPress.com is a blogging platform owned by WordPress, where they manage the software and site themselves, so you can just sign up and get blogging straight away. WordPress.org is the self hosted option, where you set up a WordPress installation on your own server – this sounds complicated, but this just means you buy a hosting package and install some software. You don’t need to be super technical to get started with this – many places where you purchase hosting plans will get WordPress set up for you.

Why, I hear you ask, should I go down the self hosted route when I can sign up and get blogging on their own platform?

  • You actually own the content on the site

Yes, that’s right – technically WordPress owns the content you produce on their platform and they could delete the site and you would be left with nothing.

  • You have to upgrade your WordPress.com account to get a custom domain name

You will get a myblogname.wordpress.com website address, and if you want a website address like www.myblogname.com, this currently costs £3 per month as you need to have a paid ‘Personal’ plan to have this option available to you – this is a total cost of £36 per year, which gets you a free ‘domain credit’ for a domain name.

  • The ablity to monetise your blog

This means you won’t be able to have any sidebar advertising, unless you pay for their ‘Premium Plan‘ at £7 per month, which costs £84 per year.

  • Google Analyics integrations, more add-ons and plug-ins and the ability to have a unique theme

To get to all of these features would have to choose their Business Plan at £20.83 per month, which works out at a touch under £250 per year.

For wordpress.com, to be able to add Google Analytics and further customise your theme – £250 a year is a quite a large chunk of money, especially if you’ve not got much going spare, or if your blog is a creative outlet rather than a fully fledged business.

WP beginner have a great comparison guide on the limitations and offerings for each platform that you should check out for a fuller

WordPress Hosting & Domain Names

There are many website hosting providers out there – it can get really confusing trying to work out who to go with.

The main things that I would look out for are:

  • Enough storage for all your media files such as your images, pdf’s etc.
  • SSL certificate / SSL support

    This is a security certificate for your website – you can tell a website is secure when the URL starts with https:// and shows a padlock figure in your web browser. Having this is much better for your site visitors, and avoids big ‘this site is on an unsecure connection’ warnings happening.

  • Enough pageviews / bandwidth to support you – a blog typically won’t need much – 2500-15000 pageviews should be fine

I use TSOHost*  and they have been an absolute delight to deal with – there is live chat available, and any issues that I have needed sorting have been fixed pretty much immediately – one time I couldn’t access the log in page, and I also had an issue with trying to get a site to redirect to another, and my issue was sorted within a couple of minutes! I really can’t fault their service, it’s been brilliant so far.

I would recommend the most basic package, which is the Startup plan for any bloggers – it has more than enough for blogging needs.

TSO Host plan pricing structure for their basic, business and ecom plans

TSOHost offer a free basic migration if you already have a WordPress self-hosted plan with someone else and would like to move.

Plus, you get a free domain name or transfer if you already have a domain name and they also offer free SSL certificates.  I pay £7.50 per year to renew my .co.uk domain each year, which I think is reasonable.

Their biggest positive for me, is I get 25 mailboxes – I can have custom email addresses with my website name in it, and I can also have 3 different websites too

You can get 10% off any hosting plan at TSOHost* with code AUTUMNFLOWER too.

FYI, if you use my code or the starred link I do get a little bit back – I do use them personally and can vouch for their awesomeness and they really do give great value and support  🙂

I have personally chosen to go with the cheapest supplier with a free mailbox and a SSL Certificate, that is UK based, but your checklist might be different.

Other places which have also come recommended are;

https://krystal.co.uk – £4.79 per month

One place I would look to avoid however would be SiteGround – not because they are bad per se, but they offer a fantastic looking starting price of £2.95/mo for their basic package, however this goes up to their “regular” price of £8.95/mo – which means you can be hit with a £200 renewal fee after your first year and have to spend precious time transferring everything to a brand new provider if you want to avoid this.

WordPress Themes

I found my WordPress theme on ThemeForest – these prices are in US Dollars, so they are a little bit cheaper when converted to GBP – but unless you have a VAT number, the price listed is without VAT, so you will need to add another 20% on to the price – this will only be added once you start heading through the checkout and list your billing details. Themes here range from $14-$59 dollars, and I believe my theme for this site cost $17 so adding the 20% VAT came to roughly $19 in total, and this converted to around £15.

I’ve found a few examples, such as the WordPress theme Suzette for $13. Do keep an eye out for which themes include support though, by checking the box on the right hand side of the Theme page, as then you can email the theme creators with questions and minor tweaks. Not all themes do include this service, so you might want to factor that in with the price.

Suzette Blog Template

For a little bit more, you can get the beautiful Highfill WordPress Theme which costs $29, so adding the 20% VAT this is $34.80 – this converts to roughly £26 and this theme comes with 6 months of theme support too

There are more places to get WordPress Themes too; Kotryna Bass and

TOTAL COST BREAKDOWN

Theme: £15-£49
Hosting: £19.31

Total cost for your 1st year = £34.31-£68.31

Domain renwal after 1 year: £7.49
Hosting: £19.31

Total cost for your second year = £26.80

You CAN go self-hosted without breaking the bank – I’ve seen some crazy figures in my time, so I hope this shows that you don’t need to break the bank when taking the plunge and going self-hosted on WordPress! To get all the features that the self-hosted option gets on WordPress.com you will be paying nearly £250 a year – shocking right!

If you have a question ask away in the comments too – I’m happy to help!

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