BlogHoster - Anyone Use it?

[Elvie]

I've decided to offer the users of one of the communities I own a free blog service. I downloaded and installed the multiple users (mu) version of WordPress, but I can forsee many many hours of customization ahead. My time is at a real premium right now.

Today I discovered BlogHoster - BlogHoster.net. Does anyone use this? It's $299.95 for a license and it seems to do everything I will require, and it appears to be a serious time-saver compared to customizing the mu wordpress version.

Does anyone else here host a blog service? If so, do you forsee any chance of recouping the license investment with advertisements displayed on the users blogs (I suspect I'll offer a no-ads version for a low monthy fee, but I'm still putting together the fine details - this feature is already built into the BlogHoster software). This would be a bonus feature for my community which they are going to go crazy for. I'm just a little leery that it won't be much of a money maker. I did purchase a new domain for it so I'll be able to expand beyond the users of this particular community.

 

[EWebscapes]

I think the potential to recoup the cost of the license with advertising is pretty high, really - - but will take time, of course.

I run a blog hosting service - but don't offer any free accounts. A few months ago I purchased Blog Hoster and set it up, planning to provide a multi-user blog community whereby folks could sign up for a free blog (ala' Blogspot, etc).

I ran into a few issues with it - - from a design standpoint, the templates are easy enough to customize so you can provide your users with a variety of different and unique looks for their blogs. The one thing I didn't like about it is that the comments for the individual blogs are centralized - meaning it doesn't appear as if you can customize the comments section for each individual blog to coordinate with the template they are using, but rather the comments take the reader to a 'centralized' commenting area that looks the same no matter what blog you're visiting.

It's pretty slick, though - it sets up the accounts automatically, with automatic subdomain creation, etc.

You can re-coup some of the costs by offering premium packages for a small fee (i.e. a blog with in the community that contains no advertisement costs a few bucks... or an account that has increased file storage, bandwidth, .. or even email accounts.)... but packages like that require some more indepth coding and programming of the software than what you get right out of the box... luckily I'm married to a php/apache guru

Good luck!

 

[Elvie]

Thanks EWebscapes, just the kind of information I was looking for.
I hadn't noticed the comment section being centralized. That is a concern for sure.

 

[EWebscapes]

The comments thing is surely worth looking into before buying it.

I'm definitley not an authority on the topic of Blog Hoster - so I could be completely wrong on that, you could always check with the development folks on that issue