AutoBlog
Control Panels
There are several autoblog / blog farm mass installers and blog managers. Below are the 3 major players in the industry that get most all the attention. (that is until I build my own 
My personal favorite is http://www.wpmanagerdx.com, its $127 and comes with the ability to mass install, manage plug-in, mass upload themes and it’s a decent price. The day I decide to build my own, I will for sure model the software after WPmanagerDX, except work very hard to make it better.
Another great alternative is http://www.blogmatrixpro.com, you are getting es
essentially the same software as above, but it cost $147.00. However there is one HUGE difference that I can note. With Blog Matrix Pro you have the ability to import an existing blog farm and start managing. So if you were a moron and ordered the last guy on the list, don’t worry you can always switch using Blog Matrix Pro.
The last guy on the list is http://www.WordpressMassInstaller.com, . . . now as luck would have it I would doing some customer support for one of my other products last night and the chap was having a extremely hard time with their support, and virtually no training on the system he was left cold and in the dark. The only upside to this software is that it only cost $24.99 / month, but if you put the pencil to it you will see that in 6 months you could have paid for the above mentioned products.
Hosting
When you go to host a blog farm, there is some good options out there. What you are looking for is “Class C Hosting” . . . this means that you can get several different Class C IP addresses, thus giving you the ability to inter-link your blog farm sites with out looking like your interlinking.
One of the biggest mistakes is to get some cheese ball reseller hosting account and try to think you’re going to do serious damage with a blog farm. When you host domains in your blog farm from a cheese ball reseller account you are a setting duck and very easy to spot . . .
Here are some rules I follow on my own network (in regards to hosting).
#1 – All .com network . . . I don’t mess with .info domains. Sure they are cheaper, but they also don’t hold as good of weight in SERP’s as .com. Thus I can get indexed more and can drive more traffic with less domains.
#2 – Each domain has its own IP, this is where it gets expensive, but again it will depend on what kind of blog farm / auto blog network you are trying to build. I shot for sheer quality and didn’t short cut anything.
#3 – Every domain has custom NS records.
There is a few companies you can take a look at for doing this.
My favorite is www.SEOHosting.com, however they are the most expensive from any of the Class C / SEO Hosting guys. With that said their customer support is out of this world and you always get what you pay for. They will even do custom configurations for you . . . for instance if you need a dedicated server with 50 Class C’s installed.
The next on my list and I will soon give them a try is http://www.seo-host.com/, they are considerably lower priced and have a network of 100 different Class C IP’s. I spent some time with their chat support just before I wrote this article and the major drawback is that you must request an IP change via their ticket system. So you can save some big bucks by using them, but alas you will need to do some planning before you get rolling with their service.
http://www.webhostforseo.com, is a stable service, but should only be considered as a backup alternative. This host lacks in both ease of use and expandability. This network is the smallest with just 35 different Class C’s and there is not a considerable pricing difference to make his service appealing.
Services, that I cant comment on, but will be taking a look at is: http://www.class-c-ip.com/index2.html
Fantastic post as ever Michael. Thanks for the useful info and recommendations!
[...] One of the biggest mistakes is to get some cheese ball reseller hosting account and try to think you’re going to do serious damage with a blog farm. When you host domains in your blog farm from a cheese ball reseller account you are a … Excerpt from: AutoBlog – Part 5 – Blog Farm Control Panels and Hosting … [...]