After moving correlate to its new location and re-building the blog, it became apparent to me the number of things I learned just by reading through some best practices and documentation on the web.  Whether it being how learn to dabble more than I’ve used to with stylesheets or page construction, or even learning some basic PHP.  Some advice though is that I would only personally recommending going self-hosting if you have a decent degree of technology knowledge and have built a web site before. 

So here is part I of the ten tips to think about when launching your own self-hosted blog (particularly if you are using WordPress) that I learned from my own experience:

1. Domain Hosting – After selecting your domain name, you’ll need to find a hosting provider where your site will live.  There are a variety of hosting providers out there, you’ll need to pick one that best suites your needs.  I’m using Laughing Squid who happens to be a mentioned host provider for WordPress.  (They’ve been great so far.)  Using a hosting provider that knows the blogging software you are going to use is as good a reason as any.
2. Blog Software – Very tied to your decision in number one.  Blogging software is all about personal preference.  I chose WordPress because my experience hosting correlate at WordPress.com over the past couple of months was such as positive one.
3. Content Port – If you already have a blog, you are going to want your data.  Using WordPress, the best way to do this is to ‘export’ your content to XML from the ‘manage’ page.  This will give you an XML file of all of your data which you then ‘import’ into your new blog in your new administrative area.
4. Theme Selection or Build – My suggestion to get a decent looking site off-the-ground quickly is to use one of the many themes that creators make available.  They are all of the place for you to use, edit and make your own.  Just at the official WordPress theme directory there are more than you’d wish to sift through and the creators have tons more at their own sites.  I used one by GFXedit.  Note:  Remember to give the original creator credit for their work by putting them in your footer and also note if you edited the theme, I’m sure they don’t want credit for any bugs/ugliness you create with your own sensibilities.
5. Widgets – If you are using WordPress and you want to use the ‘widget’ functionality (which I highly recommend), be sure to pick a theme configured for it, otherwise you will have to configure it yourself and wreaking havoc with the page construction.  Widgets give you tremendous capabilities for your sidebars and using the ‘text’ widgets is a great way to leverage third-part embed objects like Flickr, Shelfari, Skype and Twitter. This is in addition to the ones that WordPress provides you out of the box.

Stay tuned for next five tips…