I’ve aways had a love-hate relationship with WordPress. I’ve been using it since day one of my blog, and despite the fact that it’s a huge step up from the clients I’ve used for my old blogs, there are still a lot of things to hate with WordPress. For one, when I first used it in 2006, the installation procedure was a bit of a pain. Sure, the installation process actually hasn’t changed much over the years, but for someone who didn’t know a thing about FTP, PHP and was too timid to ask for help, installing WordPress was a daunting task. Don’t get me started on figuring out how to upload and install plugins. Oh yeah, the themes too.
Although WordPress has improved by leaps and bounds since 2006 – installing themes and plugins don’t require you to fire up your FTP client, for instance – there is still a lot of room for improvement. I’ve beefed up my technical skils, and I can now install WordPress manually without having to break a sweat. However, I don’t think the average user with very little technical background will be able to get the hang of WordPress very quickly. Thank goodness for BlogMe.
BlogMe is a premium WordPress hosting solution and website builder service. It offers a complete WordPress installation, plus over 75 (count ‘em, 75!) premium WordPress themes! If you need a certain plugin for something that stock WordPress can’t do, you can probably find it on BlogMe. If you have a bandwidth-heavy site, BlogMe is perfect, because they also offer free hosting.
Don’t be daunted by the premium part of their product description, though – BlogMe is pretty affordable. Their packages are:
Almost Free – $3.99 one-time payment for 1 year hosting for 1 blog. You can renew at $49/year.
Starter – pay $39 for 10 blogs for the first year; if you exceed 10, you can pay $3.90 for each additional blog; you can renew at $15/year.
Small Business – pay $99 and you get 35 blogs; $2.82 for each additional blog; renewal is at $8/year.
Professional – $199 per month gives you an unlimited number of blogs, a dedicated account manager, and $5 renewal per year.
All you need to be able to get started with BlogMe is a domain. Once you’ve registered for their service, you will need to download the BlogMe manager. This is like an installation wizard for your blog, and it will guide you through the whole process, easy peasy. There’s also a tutorial video if you want to see this installation in action.
I haven’t been able to play around with BlogMe that much to see if I could easily transfer one of my blogs to their service. I’m impressed with BlogMe so much though that I decided to play around with the service for one day. You’re going to see me transferring my domains to BlogMe soon if they import other WordPress blogs. True to their tagline, BlogMe is WordPress made easy.
Originally posted on September 29, 2010 @ 2:58 am
