A blog is a very effective communication tool. Many individuals and businesses are using their blogs to reach out to consumers. Traditionally, blogs are meant to be personal online dairies. But today, blogs are open to the general public and used to acquire new readers and customers. It would be silly not to jump on the bandwagon because a blog is easy to setup and contrary to popular belief, it's easy to maintain as well. But first, you need to find some hosting for your blog.

There are three types of hosting that you can consider.

1. Free blog hosting.

These are free blog hosting accounts that you create at a website. The website offers you a free blog, which means that you don't have to pay a single cent to have a blog created. Unfortunately, there are some downsides for this type of hosting accounts. For example, most of these services don't allow you to have your own domain name. That means your blog is hosted as a sub folder, or as a subdomain on the website. That doesn't help if you are looking to brand your blog.

In addition, there are a whole bunch of rules and policies that you have to follow. Some free hosts don't allow you to host ads, and some even limit your usage.

2. Windows hosting.

Before you create a blog, you have to determine that blog platform that you are going to use. There are a few out there on the Internet that are available for free as they are open source software. The most popular among the bunch is Wordpress. Wordpress runs on PHP. So you have to ensure that you server supports PHP for the software to run correctly.

It used to be the case that a Windows server cannot run PHP scripts but that have changes now. You can now install a Wordpress blog successfully on a Windows machine. However, since Windows was not built to support PHP in the first place, you may experience some bugs. For instance, you can't use Mod Rewrite to create search engine friendly URLs if your blog is hosted on a Windows machine. In addition, users have complained that a Wordpress blog tends to run slower on a Windows server.

3. Linux, Cpanel hosting.

For Wordpress to run correctly, this is the most appropriate type of hosting that you should look for. Cpanel is an admin control panel that you can use to install your blog. You don't have to pay extra for the use of the control panel. It should be provided with your hosting account. Just login with the username and password provided and you will be able to access Cpanel.

Once in, look for an icon labeled as "Fantastico". This little feature allows you to install a Wordpress blog with a few simple clicks. Simply choose your admin username and password, click install, and it's done! You may then access the Wordpress admin area to configure and customize your blog. Make sure that you enable Permalinks so that your blog has search engine friendly URLs.