Firstly i would like to start with what blog and a normal website mean. A blog (weblog) actually a e-dairy, like your daily dairy, through which you can express your feelings and write your experiences. Blogs can be of 2 types : public or private. A public blog can be viewed by all the users on web but a private blog can be viewed just by its authors(just like a personal diary) . Today most of the blogs are used are public and used for information/knowledge sharing purpose. Blogs are used when the content is not static and needs to be added or modified on regular basis. The blog scripts are readily available for free and needs only to be installed on a webspace. You can download one from Wordpress. Or an alternative is getting a free preinstalled blog from Wordpress or Blogger

Talking about normal websites, it is used wherever the content is static, in other words the content is not changed regularly. I prefer blogs for the following reasons :
->various predesigned blog themes (templates) are easily available. U can choose required design for ur blog just at the click of a button(template chooser) . If ur using a website u need to edit ur files to change their appearance or use website editing software on your pc.
->There is no need for uploading an stuff (exept images). Inbuilt editor allows you to add content directly and saving it. Websites need their files to be edited and uploaded many times.
->Easy interaction with users using "comments" . Normally websites use communication through email (non server side execution scripts).

Bored and frustrated of using free urls like yourname.blogspot.com etc. ?
You can buy your own domain name, ofcourse not for free, with some annual fee. The annual fee is not much !. It may range from $7-$15/year. Paying $10 for entire year, not a big deal, in return you get a unique personal domain name like yourname.com yourname.net etc !. You may search for free domain names and you may also get some results ! but mostly these sites will be fake, the reason is a person wont run his servers for free to provide domain names (he has to pay electricity bill, maintain his servers, etc). You may ask why there is something called free webhosting, the answer is that they may provide web hosting for free but inturn they earn by placing ads on those free sites. You promote your site and indirectly theirs too. Any ways this is out of scope of our discussion. You may come across url redirectors but these are not much efficient. You can read more about them in Start your own website. There are many other reasons you should buy a domain name, you can say its just like a key for treasure. The reasons are listed below :

- It gives proffessional look to your site.
- Visitors will trust your site.
- It helps in SEO.
- User will prefer to go to your site rather than any free site listed in search results.
- You get a personal email @yourdomain.com .
- More chances of getting selected for advertising programmes like adsense etc.

Here are some of the sites which provide Domain name services :

Godaddy.com
price- $9.99+0.10
1and1.com
price- $6.12
Yahoo
price- $9.95
No-ip.com
price- $15
Dnspark.net
price- $8.95
Jollyjodomains.com
price- $7.15
Namecheap.com
price- $9.29
Domainstudio.com
price- $7.15

If you want to use domain name with blogger you need to 1st register a domain name with any of above services. Login into blogger->Go to settings->Publishing->Switch to custom domain->Switch to advance settings-> then enter appropriate details. Read setup instructions and follow them.

Now i will show you how you can manage your own website. what you can get from your website will be disscussed in later section.

New to web hosting? don't worry its very simple hosting your own website!.

There are something known as web hosting companies which allow u to upload ur website to their servers. These may provide free or paid services. The only advantages of paid servers are few additional services (extra storage space, extra bandwidth, NO ADDS! etc.) . Once u signup and enter ur account u will find no. of tools which will help u manage ur site (file manager, automatic installer, database manager, etc) In free hosting u may not get a direct to your name website eg: if u signup on byethost.net you have a site yourname.byethost.net. And by having such

Sub-domain names its difficult to draw traffic coming from search engines(eg: google doesn't accept subdomain names to be added to their index.) So for a commercial site its necessary to have direct domain name. There are some domain name registrars whom you pay annually (Rs 350-750) to take up your own domain names . An alternative to these are what are known as url redirecters i.e. u signup with them for free & u get a short n sweet domain names (e.g. yourname.co.nr yourname.try.hu yourname.tk yourname.net.ts) When anyone enters these short domain names he reaches to your website u have stated in ur url redirect service account. To increase ur website traffic add ur site to all possible search engines. Also search and read all info about SITEMAP and ROBOTS.TXT on google. Add sitemap to your site make all the search engines search ur site faster!!! Optimise ur site & see that ur page titles indicate all the important keywords. Once you add sitemap to your server add it to search engines . Eg. To add it to google, use google webmaster tools.

URL redirect services (free short sub domain names):

c-o.in

.tk

co.nr

Here are some web hosting servers:

PAID

xoom

pugmarks

dreamhost

FREE

Ifastnet

Byethost

100webspace

Geocities

Tripod

Terrashare

Crosswinds

Homestead

Freeservers

Angelfire

Add ur site to these famous search engines:

· google

· Yahoo

· Windows live search

Search for “submit URL to google, yahoo, msn” in google.

Or signup for link exchange programs (they put ur website link to their site & u put their website link to ur site i.e. when u send them traffic, they send u traffic) to increase traffic on ur site.