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Blogger Does Not Support Self Hosting

We see the occasional question, in Blogger Help Forum: Learn More About Blogger, about hosting blog content.
How do I self host my Blogger blog, as I do with my WordPress blog?
This blog owner does not understand that Blogger and Google provide far better hosting of our content, than any of us can individually provide.

All Blogger content is hosted in Blogger / Google servers, with observed benefits.

  • Content standards. Blogger content is family and search engine friendly.
  • Distribution standards. Blogger has its own internal Content Delivery Network.
  • Features provided. Modern Blogger accessories and templates can't be provided using self hosted services.

Blogger does not provide the popular WordPress "Self Hosting" feature.

Blogger blogs, by standard, are family and search engine friendly.

Blogger blogs are hosted on Blogger servers, to allow Blogger robotic processes to constantly scan blogs, as published, for undesirable content. Blogger encourages people to publish blogs that are free from hacking, malware, porn, and spam.

Any blog or website is only as acceptable as the off site content which is included or linked - and censoring content, as it's being edited, is not a reliable solution for enforcing TOS. Blogger relies upon robotic processes (aka "bots") constantly scanning published blogs, and looking at the blogs as the readers do.

To allow the robotic processes to reliably scan all published Blogger blogs, Blogger content is served from Blogger servers - not personally maintained servers, owned or rented by the blog owners.

Blogger blogs use the Blogger content delivery network.

The Blogger service, like other Google products, is hosted by the Google Content Delivery Network. Google operates a world wide network of data centres and servers, to provide both localisation and redundancy to our readers.

Both localisation (content hosted physically near to our readers, to minimise network delays), and redundancy (content hosted on hundreds of servers, simultaneously, as mutual real time backup), far exceeds the benefits of individually owned or rented server space, provided by any third party hosting services. The Blogger CDN, like other Blogger features, is included in the Blogger service, transparently.

All Blogger blogs are hosted by Blogger / Google - and subject to their restrictions.

Since all Blogger blogs - "BlogSpot.com" and custom domain published blogs, alike - are hosted using the Blogger CDN, all Blogger blogs are subject to Blogger / Google Content / TOS restrictions. WordPress self hosted blogs are subject to no content restrictions - and WordPress self hosted blogs are known for hacking / porn / spam content.

Blogger accessories and templates use Blogger proprietary XML.

FTP Published blogs were a Blogger option for many years - and provided both non BlogSpot URLs, and self hosted content. FTP Publishing was unreliable, even when hosting blogs that used only static HTML content (as WordPress does, today).

To use dynamic HTML and Blogger proprietary XML, required by the Blogger gadget and template libraries, FTP Publishing to remote servers became impossible. Both BlogSpot and non BlogSpot ("custom domain") URLs provide access to content hosted on Blogger servers.

The end result is performance and reliability that far exceeds individual ability.

Blogger provides features, hosting, and standards enforcement - far better than individuals could hope to provide, and independent of our personal efforts. That leaves blog owners free to work on blog content - and to spend more time outside Blogger, which gives us sources for blog content.

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