I can't believe how popular blogging has become over the last couple of years. With well over 100 million blogs, almost everyone I talk to either has a blog or reads blogs on a regular basis.

Now while the majority of bloggers start off by using a hosted blog site such as wordpress.com or blogger, the time comes when they are looking for some more independence and possibly considering making money from their blog - and they start looking at the self hosted version of Wordpress (and with that, they need their own hosting).

The thing that I have found is that most bloggers have no idea what is going on when it comes time to consider the features of the popular blog hosts and what sets them out from the fly-by-night hosting companies.

This is why I thought it would be a good time to start looking at a few features that you will want in your blog host and why - so you can have an idea what you are looking for!

1. A Uptime Guarantee of 99.9% - If you are paying for your website to be up, then don't you want some kind of guarantee that it will be? 2. Fantastico - a script installation addon that allows you to install Wordpress in just a couple of clicks - and no programming knowledge. 3. Unlimited Bandwidth Hosting - This has become common with most hosts so why pay for something that is limited when you can get unlimited hosting for such a small price? 4. Host A Lot Of Websites - When there are companies that have a track record of hosting over 500,000 (and they are not expensive), why would you go for a new start up host?

You will also want a host that provides at least a 30 day money back guarantee. Sometimes there are always problems - no matter who you host with. And wouldn't it be best if you were having problems from the start, to be able to move host without having to pay anything?