Planning to self-host your blog?

Update:  December 2008: Please see: Become a wordpress.org blogger free video tutorials

If you are a wordpress.com blogger who is considering self hosting your own blog then I would like to recommend a series:

“Going self-hosted with WordPress : A Wolfie Guide”

To self-host or not to self-host?
Plug-ins for WordPress
Of Blogrolls and Widgets
Domains
Why Go Self-Hosted?
Hosting Sites

“People start to worry when you talk about self-hosting; they look at you as if you’re talking some sort of strange, new foreign language. They assume that it’s really technical and they won’t be able to do it, or they assume that it’s really expensive and it’s not worth it. I’ll be honest, it’s not the ideal solution for everyone but it doesn’t have to be technical and it doesn’t have to be expensive. The question you need to ask yourself is whether your blog is worth a little bit of effort to learn some new skills and perhaps install a new piece of software? There are things that WordPress.com does for you at the moment that you will have to do for yourself if you move – are you prepared to put in that extra bit of work for the extra freedom you’ll get? Can you handle a little bit of FTP?” Wolfie

Related post: WordPress blogroll, links widget, categories widget