Self-hosting

[pinsanon]

I have a blog with blogger and use their custom domain so people can type the domain name rather than DOTblogspot or whatever.

IF I ask a friend to design me a custom template, host it myself (on the back of another website I have) and point the domain to the new site, will I lose the little google page-rank I have.

Are there any other pros & cons to doing this?

Thanks

Pins Anon
The Pinball Blog

[Bloggeries]

You can always use redirects to point to the new location so I would not worry about that. Are you getting much search engine traffic as is? Many people on this forum have moved from free hosting to self hosted with success.

[flashgordon]

I think initially you will lose PR and traffic, but after a while it will come back and can pay off.

[pinsanon]

I presume the fact I have a blogger 'blog' means that search engines and the such know it's a blog. If I'm running a blog on a website how do they know it's a blog rather than a website? Are there certain codes or tags that are needed? Does it matter?

Cheers

Pins Anon

[IronBlogger]

I have done this before and it all depends on how quickly you do it and act. If you love your website idle or mess up the process you can lose your rank as well as some links. The first time I did this I made a few mistakes so I'm not one to really give you advice .

I'd just recommend that you try to host your blog from your own domain right from the get go.

[kumarsaran]

ironblogger is right ...
It is all depends on how fast you can do it. There are tools like blog export import options and blog converters. These tools will allow you to move your posts, categories, tags, and comments with you. They will reduce your processing time too.

A good article on the same is available in hexahostDOTcom/blogs/