The letter for today’s Blogging from A-Z Challenge is H which stands for HTML, Hosting and Housekeeping.
HTML. HTML stands for Hypertext Markup Language and is used to control how most web pages appear, from things like colour, font, margins, paragraphs, spacing and a whole ton of other things. A lot of bloggers will never really need to understand much about HTML other than copying and pasting certain bits of HTML code into their blog so that things can appear when viewed by the audience. Occasionally, adding in HTML will bring up errors but they can be easily fixed by doing a Google search on the error or asking in a forum dedicated to HTML coding.
Hosting. Hosting is where your blog is housed, where all the files are stored and where all the technical “background” things are looked after for you. There are 2 ways to get hosting for your blog, either through a dedicated blog platform (such as WordPress.com or Blogger for example) or you can self-host and take care of all the technical aspects yourself (such as through WordPress.org). Depending on your level of technical expertise and the amount of time you have should be the main factors in which you choose. I have my blog hosted through WordPress as I like to know that I have support from the WordPress team should anything go wrong. There are lots of pros and cons to self-hosting vs hosted and you should weigh them all up when making the decision.
Housekeeping. Housekeeping or blog admin (I like to call it Blogmin!) is all the things that you do on a weekly or monthly basis to keep your blog running smoothly and looking the best for visitors. Blogmin things include checking that all posts appear in the same format – things such as how and where images are placed, headings, paragraphs, that all links work as they should, that each post has been categorised and tagged properly and that the text used is legible and big enough.
What are your thoughts on HTML, Hosting and Housekeeping? I’d love to read about them so let me know in the comments!