Now I'm going to bring it down a notch, and get somewhat serious. A friend of mine asked me the other day how did I go about selecting a web host. In the very early days, before I knew what wordpress was, I hosted SwollenPickles.com with a local hosting company. My first host was found via "word of mouth", and, not knowing anything about hosting at the time, that is all I went on. No research, no shopping around, and clearly I exercised no common sense! I got locked into a 12 month contract and it didn't take me long to figure out I could get a similar, if not better, service and still pay far less.

I finally settled on HostGator, after looking into a few of the higher profile hosting companies. Since I've been with them I've had no problems whatsoever, and there support has been excellent. The shopping around was a bit of a pain in the a$$, and it was a little difficult to compare plans as it was often a case of not being able to compare apples with apples. Since then, I've found out that there are sites, like http://www.webhostingchoice.com that can make the research phase a lot easier. If I'd known that three years ago, I might have saved myself quite a bit of money!

My advice, if you are looking to move from blogger to your own hosted blog, shop around. Don't just take the first hosting deal that comes along, ask questions, and get the opinions of a wide range of people. Hope that helps.

This has been a sponsored post.