One of the main questions you must ask before you create a blog is how and where you want it to be hosted. A great many bloggers prefer one of the convenient, user-friendly free blog hosting services that provide their own interface, known as a content management system (CMS), to make it very easy for users to post material on their blogs to their heart’s content. Some power users have gone so far as to create their own blog software or CMS, and host their blogs on their own servers. For people who have a number of blogs as well as other websites and can afford the luxury, there are dedicated and shared server options.

The most popular free blog hosting services include Wordpress and Blogger. These sites offer a very user-friendly interface and services with their content management systems, including integrated statistics, comment tracking, etc. This is probably the most convenient option for most bloggers, especially if they are not otherwise very familiar with the intricacies of content management and want all of their hosting needs taken care of for free.

Another option might be a shared or a dedicated server, but these cost money, and may not be worth for everyone. If you only want to host a blog (or a few blogs), check out the free hosting options above. If you have other websites and a lot of content, and you can afford to have your own server or a partition on a server, you can opt for a dedicated server, where you rent an entire server from the web hosting provider, or a shared server, where you only rent a partition on a server shared with other clients. For more information on these options, you can check out this Web Host Guide, or this guide to Dedicated Web Hosting.