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Hi, M.R.

I'm a new blogger, and I have a free Weebly blog. I was wondering if you'd be willing to answer a few of my questions? I'd like to purchase my domain through a different host? I read your post about Weebly and GoDaddy from 2013, and it seems like you've got a great knoweldge base about all this. I'm also paranoid that one day my Weebly blog will crash. You had mentioned that there's a way to back it up? I asked a Weebly agent, and he told me that there is no way to back up my blog posts.

I know your time is valuable, so if you do choose to respond, I'd be so very grateful for your help! I've been experiencing "bug" issues with Weebly (text and photos shifting, etc.), and I'm honestly not even sure I want to stay with them. I just love the ease of use!

Thanks,

K.

I had a similar question to this a while back, so I think other readers might have similar questions. Thus I asked K. if I could answer it on the blog. She prefers to remain anonymous at this time . Now that we've gotten the back story out of the way, lets get down to it.  

I'd like to get my domain trough a different host and forward to Weebly?

I've been with Weebly since 2013. Back then "pro" features were an add-on that worked on all your sites so you culd  resister the domain name with another company and use  Weebly to host it .These days, domain registry and features have been packaged together in one monthly fee.

This answer brings up something that may or may not be apparent. Domain registry and web hosting are two different services. Cheap registries make up their profit on the back end with site hosting services. Cheap site hosting makes their profit on selling more expensive domain registries.

Weebly does site hosting. They get their domains from Web.com. (Here's how I found that out.) I have not tried site hosts like s Squarespace, Wix, and others.  Weebly does have simple pricing. You don't have to worry about bandwidth limits , the number of pages you can have and so on. But just because something is all inclusive, does not mean it's the best deal. I don't know what amount of bandwidth I get, but whatever it is, it works well enough for my needs.

But lets say you buy into the hosting and domain registration together and one day in the future you want to use different site hosting. Can you? Yes, but you'll have to transfer you domain.  Here's how to do that according to Yahoo. 

I'm also paranoid that one day my Weebly blog will crash.

While this could happen, it's really unlikely. Even when my site went offline, my blog wasn't gone. Weebly has  a duplicate site button which allows you duplicate all of your pages, and though the blog does not transfer with that feature, you can call customer service. You can also download a .zip file of your site which is awesome. It does happen that you lose work from time to time or delete something  you regret later. Being able to back up everything before a major change... it's huge.  From what research I've done, Weebly is the only drop and drag service who offers this.

I asked a Weebly agent, and he told me that there is no way to back up my blog posts.

Well, that is true. There isn't a button that allows you to duplicate your blog nor is your blog copied when you zip y oru size. Either would be an awesome feature. (Weebly gods, hello? )

But you can back up one of two ways:  writing them in a word file and pasting them into Weebly. (Does not always copy well.)

Or copy and past your posts into a file. While Live Writer does not work with Weebly, you could still use it to back up your posts and pictures.  (Blogger for example has a word plug in and works with LiveWriter). Also keep in mind that Weebly is a WYSIWYG Editor Platform, which means what you see in the editor is what you get on the site. With sites like Wordpress and Blogger what you see isn't always what you get and you have to use your previewer a lot.

Another options, if  you're really focusing on your blog, not a site, you could us blogger with a registered name.

I'm honestly not even sure I want to stay with them. I just love the ease of use!

This a very good reason to stay. You know how to use the features. You find it easy to use. There are some things that are annoying, but that's true with every service. You can spend months comparing services and prices and now that you can port your domain to a new provider (as opposed to being stuck) who to go with isn't a such a big life decision. The only catch is you can't port your domain until you've owned it for 60 days.

A Weebly Blogging Trick

You can drop a photo into the text box and the text is supposed to wrap around the photos. It doesn't work well and can get messy. Instead, drop the photo in front of or behind the your text box. The blue line below indicates that I've created two columns instead of text wrap. If I want my blog to appear it is wrapping around the photos, I do two columns (photo box/text box) then a solo text box alone followed by two more columns (text box/ photo box.